Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/243

Rh With the passing of one's finiteness or otherness than God must pass his personality. It is the wave of the sea sinking back again into the water of the sea and thereby ceasing to be. The individual in order to reach eternal blessedness must, like everything else of value, be pressed through the Christian Science funnel and made to come out as principle; his personality must be squeezed out of him in order to get him to heaven. The heaven of Christian Science is about the same as the Nirvana of Buddhism.

A wave that started from Alexandria in the third century hit the shores of New England in the nineteenth century and by a strange and wicked tempest of wind received a new impetus and momentum. That wave we are confident ought to and will sink back into a calm sea.

We are reminded of Sidney Smith's sarcastic saying that “the ancients have stolen all our best thoughts”; which put in plainer prose is that some moderns steal the thoughts of the ancients, both their best and their worst. If Mary Baker G. Eddy ever had an original idea she failed to give expression to it.

And here, patient reader, I may rest my case. We have perhaps pursued our investigation as far as it is necessary. I have been anxious for you to know the character of Christian Science. If you have followed me through carefully and comprehended the arguments, you now understand it. In doing this you have also obtained some insight into the treasury of worldly wisdom, the worth of