physical sense, then all things are divine or are God, just as Mrs. Eddy reasons: “If Mind is within and without all things, then all is Mind.”[1] Mind is one of Mrs. Eddy's “Divine Synonyms”, we are to remember. Again Proclus says: The Demiurgus “is intelligibles themselves.”[2] The Demiurgus is the creator and by “intelligibles” Proclus means the forms or realities of things. Plotinus and Proclus then identify God with nature, when nature is spiritually or ideally conceived, just as Mrs. Eddy does. This is the thought of Proclus when he says that the Demiurgus “will contain (contains) the paradigms of the things that are generated”.[3] Paradigms are patterns, forms or ideal essences. Proclus, speaking of an eternal being, considered as cause and of its eternal effect and distinguishing these from all temporal causes and effects, says that “the maker and that which is made are one”.[4] This is an identification of God and nature as Mrs. Eddy understands God and nature in the language referred to. “Spiritual nature” is to Mrs. Eddy nature conceived as eternal, not as temporal and changing. This may be difficult for us to understand but we must attempt to understand it if we would know what Christian Science really is. It seems that we can understand this much at any rate, that whether or not Mrs. Eddy and the Neo-
- ↑ S. and H. p. 257.
- ↑ On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 302.)
- ↑ On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 225.)
- ↑ On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 236.)
