Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/133

Rh the relation of individual things to the creator to be as the relation of “waves of the sea to the water of the sea”, and cites another illustration like it in the Kabbala, namely, that they are related as “the folds of a garment to the gar- ment itself”. The conception, if not the language, is traceable to the Neoplatonists. It is a good illustration for idealistic pantheists. Mrs. Eddy is following these thinkers who do their best to teach both the sameness of created things with the creator and their distinction from him. They all are experts at it. We have no fault to find with their way of doing it. We are simply showing that Mrs. Eddy is doing it just as the pagan philosophers and infidels did it, but no better than they did it.

Man as defined by Mrs. Eddy cannot be a free agent. An idea of the mind is determined by the mind. Therefore man's activities or ideas are of necessity what they are. They are causally determined. Freedom of will is a delusion. Choice is impossible.

It may be repeated that Mrs. Eddy, since she finds the expression, “will of God,” in the Scriptures, must ascribe will to God; but she means by it when so used, as we have shown, not the power of choice or self-determination in view of future action but divine understanding. Will in any other sense, or what we mean by the term,