as a part of that great whole which is God, and, being in your place, you have your wholeness. This is as much of a religion as a pantheist can have. It was this that the Stoic meant when he said: "Get into the stream of nature, and if you do not like the way it is flowing, at least you need not squeal." 62 And this is the reason why the re- ligion of mystics — who are pantheizing in their fundamental thought — tends to run into what we call Quietism, which is on the passive side resignation, on the active renuncia- tion, and in its lowest reaches becomes placid acceptance of the lot that has come to us, in its highest rises into dis- interested love. Do we not have here the account also of the special type of piety which is said to be developed in Christian Science circles? Christian Science, we are told, has brought not only relief from suffering and disease, but release also from worry, anxiety, contentiousness. We will let Frank Podmore depict this self-centred piety for us. "The religion of Christian Science," says he,63 "oils the wheels of the domestic machinery, smooths out business troubles, releases from fear, promotes happiness. But it is entirely egoistic in expression. . . . For Christian Sci- entists there is no recognized service to their fellows, be- yond the force of their example." "There are no charities or institutions of any kind for social service in connection with the Christian Science churches." "Poverty and sin, like sickness, are illusions, errors of 'mortal mind/ and cannot be alleviated by material methods. If a man is sick, he does not need drugs; if poor, he has no need of money; if suffering, of material help or even sympathy. For the cure in all cases must be sought within. The New Religion, then, is without the enthusiasm of Humanity. It is, in fact, without enthusiasm of any kind. We shall look in vain here for spiritual rapture, for ecstatic contem- plation of the divine. There is no place here for any of the passions which are associated with Christianity, nor, indeed, for any exalted emotion. There can be no remorse
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where there is no sin; compassion, when the suffering is unreal, can only be mischievous; friendship, as we shall see later, is a snare, and the love of man and woman a hindrance to true spirituality. There is no mystery about this final revelation, and there is no room, therefore, for wonder and awe. Here are no 'long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults'; the Scientist's outlook on the spiritual world is as plain and bare as the walls of his temple, shin- ing white under the abundant radiance of the electric lamps."
The ethics of pantheism tend either to license or to as- ceticism. The flesh is nothing, and all its delights and desires are nothing, and may be treated as nothing — whether in the way of careless indulgence or of stern ex- tirpation. We may be thankful that Mrs. Eddy's thought turns in the direction of asceticism, though, to be sure, it is to an asceticism of sufficiently mild a type. On all mat- ters of dietetics and hygiene she of course pours contempt, because she is thinking of them primarily as curative agents, and she can have nothing to do with curative agents; yet she manages to spice her remarks upon them with an ascetic flavor. Eat what you please is her prescrip- tion: much or little — it is all nothing. God gave men "dominion not only over the fish in the sea, but over the fish in the stomach." 64 But, of course, remember65 "that gustatory pleasure is a sensuous illusion, a phantasm of the mortal mind, diminishing as we better apprehend our spiri- tual existence, and ascend the ladder of Life" — Life with a capital "L," for Mrs. Eddy was not thinking of growing old. "A metaphysician never . . . recommends or trusts in hygiene." 66 "The daily ablutions of an infant," writes she,67 "are no more natural or necessary, than would be the process of taking a fish out of water every day, and covering it with dirt, in order to make it thrive more vigor- ously thereafter in its native element. ' Cleanliness is next to godliness ' ; but washing should be only for the purpose
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of keeping the body clean, and this can be done without scrubbing the whole surface daily. Water is not the natural habitat of humanity." "Is civilization," she exclaims,68 "only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air ? " But she has a deeper feeling. "Bathing, scrubbing, to alter the secretions, or remove unhealthy exhalations from the cuticle," she declares in her earlier editions at least, received a "useful rebuke from Jesus' precept 'Take no thought ... for the body.'" "We must beware," she adds, "of making clean only the outside of the platter." 69