Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/199

Rh were openly hostile to Christianity I am unable to imagine, unless it was that this virtue was so generally and profoundly appreciated in their day that they too must in some fashion exalt it. And still another surprise was awaiting me — the discovery that Christian Science also identifies love with understanding. We have here another example of what we consider something different from pure thought pressed down into the Christian Science funnel and made to come out the little end as only that.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Infinite Mind cannot be limited to finite form, or Mind would lose its infinite character as inexhaustible Love;” “What is infinite Mind or divine Love?” She calls Mind and Love synonyms. Sentences that give this conception of love abound in Mrs. Eddy's writings. It is unnecessary to say that mind does nothing but understand or exercise consciousness. She does not consider love as affection or desire or any mental state that is produced by external objects or implies the existence of time. Love is intellectual knowing and only this. So she says: “To love one's neighbor as one's self, is a divine idea.”

Plotinus says: “Intellect, therefore, possesses a twofold power; one, by which it perceives intellectually, and beholds the forms which it