Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/86

78 such an application of this principle is a mark of genius. She is entitled to all the honor that is due her for this and all the dishonor that is due her for refusing to apply the principle in other practical cases that logically demand it.

Mrs. Eddy makes an application of it to the Christian ordinance of the Lord's Supper, which she very naturally rejects. Since our business is to get away as far as possible from matter or darkness, the opposite of spirit or light, then we should discard all material emblems. This is good logic if we grant her premise.

But Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a Neoplatonist rather than anything else, rejected the Lord's Supper evidently for the same reason. He was, as is well known, a Unitarian minister of the Gospel for several years, but renounced that vocation when he found that he could not any longer conscientiously administer this ordinance of the church. His philosophy now had the right of way and his Christianity was side-tracked. It may be said to the credit of this great thinker that his conscience was too sensitive to truth and honor to permit him to propagate his philosophic principles in the livery of Christian terms. It is good and beautiful to be spiritual, but it is not wise, however philosophic it is, to be so spiritual that we are nothing else. It may be a sublime experience to glide in a flying machine in thin air far above the earth, but one does not possess