Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/185

Rh mysterious personal trinity of the Bible by means of this pagan speculation, as many unbelieving and a few believing theologians have done, is a specimen of scholastic sophistry, exploited as a precious finding from deep digging in the Scriptures. It is on the contrary a travesty on sane exegesis. As an orthodox Christian my blood is made to boil at such an accommodation of the sacred Scriptures. Its only reason for existence is that it ministers to human pride which the Biblical trinity causes to wither to the roots.

It will be seen that this psychological trinity is also the foundation for the rational mysticism in which Mrs. Eddy reproduces the Neoplatonists.

The writer was surprised to find in Science and Health a parallel to a very curious position as to knowledge found in the Neoplatonists. It is that the highest kind of knowledge or the knowledge of infinite intellect is that which proceeds from cause to effect, not from effect to cause.

Mrs. Eddy says: “We reason imperfectly from effect to cause, when we conclude that matter is the effect of Spirit; but a priori reasoning shows material existence to be enigmatical. Spirit gives the true mental idea&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;* Reasoning from cause to effect in the Science of Mind, we begin with Mind, which must be understood through the idea which expresses it and cannot be learned from its opposite, matter. Thus we arrive at Truth, or intelligence, which evolves its own unerring idea and never can be co-ordinate