Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/101

Rh Mrs. Eddy thus contrasts these two worlds as Plato and his followers did: “Eternal things (verities) are God's thoughts as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real. Temporal things are the thoughts of mortals and are the unreal, being the opposite of the real or the spiritual and eternal;” “Things spiritual and eternal are substantial. Things material and temporal are insubstantial.” With such a conception of the real world, it is necessary that the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy consider it eternal.

A quotation from Spinoza, when carefully considered, will sharpen the point to the parallel that we are now tracing. He says: “All the decrees of God have been ratified from all eternity by God himself. If it were otherwise, God would be convicted of imperfection or change. But in eternity there is no such thing as when, before or after; hence it follows solely from the perfection of God, that God never can decree, or never could have decreed anything but what is; that God did not exist before his decrees and would not exist without them.” Spinoza means by the decrees of God simply his ideas or thoughts; for he identifies the will of God with the intellect of God. Spinoza, like the Neoplatonists and Mrs. Eddy, considers God's thoughts as creations and assigns them to the sphere of eternity, where “there is no such thing as when, before or after.” Proclus fourteen centuries and Spinoza two centuries ago