imagined to be gods, and resumes its natural affection for the Creator; and because of that natural affection for Him, it eagerly accepts Him, who first showed these truths to the Gentile world by means of the disciples whom He prepared, and whom He sent forth with Divine power and authority to preach the Word concerning God and His Kingdom.

"Let him attend to what is said by the Greeks about matter, in itself unqualified, acquiring whatever qualities the Creator wishes to invest it with . . . is it any wonder that the quality of mortality attaching to the body of Jesus, should by the Providence of God, who so willed, change into one that was heavenly and Divine."

There are three passages in Mrs. Eddy's writings which support this particular trend of thought, indeed which express the inward vision of Origen with even greater metaphysical accuracy. She says:

"Consciousness constructs a better body when faith in matter has been conquered." "What the human mind terms matter and spirit indicates states and stages of consciousness." (Science and Health, pp. 425, 573.)

Origen had the clearest perception that the manifestation of God must partake of the same nature and substance as God Himself. "It is on account of reason that man is said to have been made in the image of God" he writes, "for reason is the image of the supreme God Himself." He had what would be termed in modern parlance, no use at all for matter, and what is most remarkable, classes it as one and the same with all evil. This virtually amounts to saying that evil is material mentality, or mortal mind, and that matter is its grosser substratum or manifestation,

a view-point which is exactly the teaching of Christian Science on this subject.

He pursues his point in Book VII of the Praeparatio Evangelica of Eusebius of Palestine, a book which is incorporated in the Philocalia, with the statement that it has been discovered word for word in Origen's discussion with the Marcionites.

"For if anyone will carefully look into things, he will find that the present condition of matter is worse than that of the original chaos. Before it was differentiated it had no perception of evil; but now every part of it has the perception of evil.

"There could be only one Creator, or principle, consisting of different parts. But if God were in matter, or matter in God, God would be circumscribed and finite. Besides this it follows that we must affirm God to be in the lower forms of being. For if matter ever was inordered, and God of His own free choice ordered it with a view to progressive development, there was a time when God had no order of His own, and we might fairly ask whether God filled matter, or was in a part of it. If anyone prefers to say that God was in a part of matter, he makes God infinitely smaller than matter, if a part really contained the whole of God. If he says that God is in all matter, and pervades the whole of matter, let him tell us how God worked on matter. Either there was some contraction of God before He worked on that from which He withdrew, or He worked at Himself as well as the matter, because He had no place to withdraw to. If anyone will maintain that matter is in God, we must similarly inquire whether we are to suppose that God stood apart from Himself, and as living creatures are in the air, that He split up and divided Himself to receive the things in Him, or whether matter is in Him

locally, like water in earth. If we say that matter is in Him like birds in the air, we are bound to admit that God is divisible; if we say that matter is in God as water is in earth, or if matter was in a state of confusion and disorder, and moreover contained even evil things, we must of necessity allow that God was the place of disorder and of evil, which does not seem to me consistent with piety, but to be rather dangerous. If I maintain

that evil is an effluence of matter, it is that God may not be the cause of evil, but matter the cause of all the evil in the world."

It would be impossible to quote all Mrs. Eddy's arguments against the reality of matter, but the following lines from page 119 of Science and Health are pertinent to Origen's discussion:

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"When we endow matter with vague spiritual power, that is, when we do so in our theories, for of course we cannot really endow matter with what it does not and cannot possess, we disown the Almighty, for such theories lead to one of two things. They either presuppose the self-evolution and selfgovernment of matter, or else they assume that matter is the product of Spirit. To seize the first horn of this dilemma and consider matter as a power in and of itself, is to leave the creator out of His own universe; while to grasp the other horn of the dilemma and regard God as the creator of matter, is not only to make Him responsible for all disasters, physical and moral, but to announce Him as their source, thereby making Him guilty of maintaining perpetual misrule in the form and under the name of natural law."

Origen continues his argument thus: "If you say that the reason why evil was not stopped was that God could not remove it, you will affirm that God is impotent; and His impotence must either be caused by natural weakness, or be due to the fact that, as if He were the slave of some stronger power, He is overcome by fear. If you venture to say that He is weak by nature you appear to imperil your salvation; and if you say that He is overcome by fear of some stronger power you will be affirming that evil is mightier than God, inasmuch as it is strong enough to resist and overcome His will; and this seems to me an absurd statement to make about God."

This thought is embodied in Mrs. Eddy's statement that:

"Either there is no omnipotence, or omnipotence is the only power." (Science and Health, p. 249.) "Do you not also agree that water is destructive of fire, light of darkness, and so on with similar things? Yes. If then, the parts of a thing are not destructive of one another, it follows that they are not parts of one another; and if they are not parts of one another, they will not be parts of one and the same matter. So then if matter is a single substance, it cannot be its own opposite, and if this doctrine of opposites holds good, it appears that there is no such matter."

Origen consistently lays aside material law in all his reasoning, and holds always to the laws of God as being spiritual and controlling every situation necessary for progress and salvation.

"So, then, it is as true as ever that 'apart from the law' the law of nature, ‘a righteousness of God hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.'

And we would tell those readers who shrink from admitting the double meaning of 'the law' that if we were to understand the same law to be referred to in both clauses,'But now apart from the law, a righteousness of God hath been manifested' and 'being witnessed by the law and the prophets,'-we must conclude that if the righteousness hath been manifested apart from the Law, it is not witnessed by the Law; and if it is witnessed by the Law, it hath not been manifested apart from the Law. The truth is that the law of nature by no means witnesses to the righteousness of God manifested by Jesus Christ, for it is inferior to that righteousness; but the Law of Moses, not the letter but the Spirit, does witness, as also the Prophets in accordance with the Spirit of the law, and as does the spiritual word in them.”

His spiritual searching of the Scriptures was always the source of his inspiration, and it was ever a searching for intelligent, reasoned knowledge. "The Saint," he declares, "is a sort of spiritual herbalist, who culls from the sacred Scriptures every jot and every common letter, discovers the value of what is written and its use, and finds that there is nothing in the Scriptures superfluous.

He loved to give a spiritual interpretation of passages of the Bible, verse by verse. In the following explanation of the text, "And God hardened Pharoah's heart," it will be noted how pure and clear he keeps the nature of God, and how utterly apart from evil or responsibility for any erroneous or distressing effect.

"Observe further that the sun though white and shining seems to be the cause of a man's turning black, not because of what it does itself, but because of him who turns black. And so also, perhaps, the Lord hardens Pharoah's heart, though the cause of this was connected with the King's