Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/234

226 grace of God. It is the window of the soul looking heavenward and letting in the life-giving light. This word, this simple, beautiful, inspired and mighty word, Mrs. Eddy would empty of its meaning or resolve it into understanding. Out upon such wicked exegesis! To pagandom with it, whence Mrs. Eddy got it!

But we are concerned principally in showing that Mrs. Eddy's explanation of salvation and regeneration, which is one and the same to her, is an echo of Neoplatonism. Proclus says: “A conversion to the whole imparts salvation to everything” and “to this conversion prayer is of the greatest utility.” “A conversion to the whole,” in the case of a thinking being, would be simply a conception of the unity of the universe or the harmony of all things himself included. So Proclus says that “prayer is of the greatest utility” in effecting this result. Remember what Proclus and Mrs. Eddy understand prayer to be. It is not petition, as we have seen, but metaphysical meditation continued until one sees the unity of all things, or, what is the same thing in Neoplatonism and Christian Science, until he himself swings into harmony with the universal order. So Proclus, using language a little different but meaning the same, says: “The salvation of all things is through the participation of it (First Cause).” A thinking being participates in the first cause of all, or deity, by means of the