Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/70

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62
The Origin of Christian Science.

should occur to them that, if they were so dull as to have believed error all their lives, maybe they are at it still, which very thing I am proving. And from henceforth, if they say, “never man or woman so spake,” it is not an innocent but a wilful blindness that they are afflicted with. Indeed, some are about ready to believe that Christian Scientists are the best illustration of the proverb that “None are so blind as those that will not see.”

Having “preached” this little bit, if you please, I turn to the language of Mrs. Eddy. She says: “The divine Mind includes all action;”[1] God is “omni-action;”[2] “Immortal Mind is ever active;”[3] “God rests in action;”[4] “There is but one primal cause. Therefore there can be no effect from any other cause.”[5] Plotinus holds that being and energy (or activity) are one[6] and that energies and essences of intellect are the same.[7] Proclus states the same principle more clearly when he says: “That which is in energy is perfect,”[8] and “that which in capacity (or inactivity) * * * is imperfect.”[9] And Spinoza states the doctrine more clearly than does Mrs. Eddy, when he says: “It is as impossible for us to con-


  1. S. and H. p. 187.
  2. S. and H. p. 587.
  3. S. and H. p. 387.
  4. S. and H. p. 519.
  5. S. and H. p. 207.
  6. Cf. 5. 9. 8.
  7. Cf. 5. 3. 12.
  8. On Tim. Bk. 2. (Vol. I. p. 250.)
  9. Theo. Ele. 77.