Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/235

Rh of the understanding. Spinoza says: “My understanding is too small to determine all the means, whereby God leads men to the love of himself, that is, to salvation.” The love here referred to is that love which we have seen to be identical with intellectual understanding.

As to the experience of regeneration Spinoza has this explanation: “When we now perceive such activities, then can we in truth also say, that we are born again; for our first birth occurred, when we were united with the body, through which such activities and movements of the spirit arise. But this, our other or second birth will take place, when we take notice of altogether different activities in us, namely, activities of love, corresponding to the knowledge of immaterial objects, between which activities there is as great a difference as there is between the material and the immaterial, flesh and spirit. And this can with even more right and truth be called the second birth, because there follows first out of this love and union an eternal and unchangeable existence, as we will show.” That Spinoza in this language explains the second birth or regeneration as Mrs. Eddy does is evident without comment.

In the highest form of blessedness or the doctrine of the greatest good we find another parallel between Neoplatonism and Christian Science. It