Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/203

Rh alone to the alone.” When Christian Scientists, then, fail to give thanks orally at the table, they are not following Christ, who set us an example for so doing, but Plotinus, the heathen.

Porphyry long ago explained the principle of the position, that words are a hindrance to the highest thinking, thus: “All are familiar with bodies, but the knowledge of incorporeal essences is attained with great difficulty, because our notions about their nature are indefinite, and we are not able to behold them by and through intuition as long as we are under the dominion of the imagination.” It hardly needs to be said that we are “under the dominion of the imagination” when we are subject to or dependent on words.

One may be surprised, if not confused, to find that Mrs. Eddy identifies revelation with intellectual discovery. This conclusion, akin to the one just discussed, follows also from her psychology. Divine revelations by means of the eye or ear are inferior or impossible. They originate on the contrary in the mind itself. Whenever one sees a truth, such as the geometrical principle that the three angles of triangle are equal to two right angles, he has a revelation. Of course this is another example of the trick of using a word bereft of its proper meaning.

Mrs. Eddy says: “Truth is a revelation;” “Science&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;has a spiritual, and not a