Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/106

98 not omnipotent and like ourselves, He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will.” Her statement that “What Deity foreknows Deity must foreordain,” is equal to the statement that what God knows he must create.

In the above language Mrs. Eddy expresses briefly what is amplified and illustrated in the foregoing sentences from Plotinus, Proclus and Spinoza. The thought is this: God knows nothing as going to happen; what he knows is; he did not choose in making the world between two or more plans; he does not deliberate; he forms no picture of what could be but is not; he has no imagination; he works toward no ideal; he has no purpose, for the realization of a purpose would render him subject to time, that is imperfect, or it would involve the knowledge of something that does not yet exist and such knowledge would be other than consciousness which only is divine knowledge. When men make things they are subject to all these mental conditions but we must have no anthropomorphic conception of God. Mrs. Eddy says: “Material senses and human conceptions would translate spiritual ideas into material beliefs, and would say that an anthropomorphic God, instead of infinite Principle&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;is the father of the rain,” etc.

Now hear again Mrs. Eddy's masters. Plotinus considers it absurd to suppose that the Demiurgus or the creative cause should make the