Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/48

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40
The Origin of Christian Science.

Spinoza's, whose pantheism, as Windelband observes, is “complete and unreserved”.[1] It is set forth in a form absolute and without a “saving clause”. Spinoza teaches the immanence of God in nature so positively as hardly to suggest his transcendence. The Neoplatonists teach the transcendence of God, which is a modification or limitation of their pantheism. I am not able to find the transcendence of God very clearly set forth in Christian Science, but it is implied in the doctrine of emanation which is in both Christian Science and Neoplatonism. This doctrine is that the world or nature spiritually or ideally conceived, proceeded from the first principle or God, as light radiates or emanates from the sun. This is the famous illustration of Plotinus and is used often by Mrs. Eddy.

Plotinus says: “The One is all things;”[2] “intellect is real existence and contains all real existences in itself, not after a spatial fashion but as though they were its own self, and it were one with them.”[3] By intellect Plotinus means the creator or what Mrs. Eddy means by mind as a synonym for God. Proclus says: “The fabricator of the universe * * * contains in himself the forms of all things.”[4] To a follower of Plato “forms of all things” means realities of all things. If all things are in God in this meta-


  1. Hist. of Phil. p. 409.
  2. 5. 2. 1. Tr. by Fuller.
  3. 5. 9. 6. Tr. by Fuller.
  4. Nat. of Evil. 3. (p. 144.)