Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/69

Rh death. But who could endure her saying that God does not know anything? Still it ought to occur to anyone who thinks twice that not to know evil is not to know good; that not to know sin, sickness and death, is not to know goodness, health and life; that not to know darkness is not to know light; that not to know “straight down” is not to know “straight up”; that not to know error is not to know truth; that not to know the negative is not to know the positive; that a knowledge that does not recognize opposites and contradictories is no knowledge at all. I repeat, Mrs. Eddy joins the Neoplatonists in presenting to us a dumb deity, though very naturally, she does not so plainly describe her idol.

Mrs. Eddy, like her masters, teaches that God exists in an active state only and never in a passive state. It may be easily seen how this doctrine follows logically from their adoration of their idol, Infinity. Since their god is identical with “allness” there can be nothing outside of it to act upon it. So it is never acted upon but is ever active. We are in the habit of thinking of a person being the active agent and of a thing being the passive recipient, but these pantheists, as usual, demand that we reverse this mental process; and if we hesitate to walk backwards at their command they tell us politely that we are “dense”, and some are so meek as to respond to this “word of the oracle” by falling down and worshipping, saying, “Behold, how wonderful is this divine wisdom. No man nor woman ever so spake before.” It