Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/77

Rh else than intellectual knowledge or perfect understanding. But the reader may be able already to grasp this; at any rate he can see for himself that Spinoza affirms that prayer is “extremely useful to us” in that it leads us to love God, and that it is the “only means for arriving at the highest stage of blessedness.” He could not teach that God answers our prayers and gives us for the asking a blessing (such hope as this he brands, it seems, as “prejudices and childish superstitions”), for God is without “any human qualities” and “cannot be passive”, that is, affected by anything. Spinosa thinks of God as something impersonal, as Mrs. Eddy does. He cannot then be changed, for to change this kind of perfection is to render it imperfect. It would turn perfection into imperfection. Hear Mrs. Eddy once more: “Prayer can neither change God nor bring His designs into mortal modes; but it can and does change our modes and our false sense of Life, Love, Truth, uplifting us to Him.” It would be difficult to find a more perfect parallel than we here discern between Christian Science and Neoplatonism.

I may sum up most of what has been said concerning the non-personality of the god of Mrs. Eddy and the Neoplatonists by saying simply that they present to us an indifferent deity. He desires nothing, he is displeased with nothing; for if he desired anything he would lack something and