Unity of Good | Page 6

such knowledge of evil were possible to God, it would lower His rank.
With God, knowledge is necessarily _foreknowledge_; and foreknowledge and foreordination must be one, in an infinite Being. What Deity foreknows, Deity must _foreordain_; else He is not omnipotent, and, like ourselves, He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will, yet which He cannot avert.
If God knows evil at all, He must have had foreknowledge thereof; and if He foreknew it, He must virtually have intended it, or ordered it aforetime,--foreordained it; else how could it have come into the world?
But this we cannot believe of God; for if the supreme good could predestine or foreknow evil, there would be sin in Deity, and this would be the end of infinite moral unity. "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" On the contrary, evil is only a delusive deception, without any actuality which Truth can know.

Rectifications
How is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal or revision,--by seeing it in its proper light, and then turning it or turning from it.
We undo the statements of error by reversing them.
Through these three statements, or misstatements, evil comes into authority:--
_First:_ The Lord created it. _Second:_ The Lord knows it. _Third:_ I am afraid of it.
By a reverse process of argument evil must be dethroned:--
_First:_ God never made evil. _Second:_ He knows it not. _Third:_ We therefore need not fear it.
Try this process, dear inquirer, and so reach that perfect Love which "casteth out fear," and then see if this Love does not destroy in you all hate and the sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance.

A Colloquy
In Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle's description of mental processes wherein human thoughts are "the mean while accusing or else excusing one another." If we observe our mental processes, we shall find that we are perpetually arguing with ourselves; yet each mortal is not two personalities, but one.
In like manner good and evil talk to one another; yet they are not two but one, for evil is naught, and good only is reality.
_Evil._ God hath said, "Ye shall eat of every tree of the garden." If you do not, your intellect will be circumscribed and the evidence of your personal senses be denied. This would antagonize individual consciousness and existence.
_Good._ The Lord is God. With Him is no consciousness of evil, because there is nothing beside Him or outside of Him. Individual consciousness in man is inseparable from good. There is no sensible matter, no sense in matter; but there is a spiritual sense, a sense of Spirit, and this is the only consciousness belonging to true individuality, or a divine sense of being.
_Evil._ Why is this so?
_Good._ Because man is made after God's eternal likeness, and this likeness consists in a sense of harmony and immortality, in which no evil can possibly dwell. You may eat of the fruit of Godlikeness, but as to the fruit of ungodliness, which is opposed to Truth,--ye shall not touch it, lest ye die.
_Evil._ But I would taste and know error for myself.
_Good._ Thou shalt not admit that error is something to know or be known, to eat or be eaten, to see or be seen, to feel or be felt. To admit the existence of error would be to admit the truth of a lie.
_Evil._ But there is something besides good. God knows that a knowledge of this something is essential to happiness and life. A lie is as genuine as Truth, though not so legitimate a child of God. Whatever exists must come from God, and be important to our knowledge. Error, even, is His offspring.
_Good._ Whatever cometh not from the eternal Spirit, has its origin in the physical senses and material brains, called human intellect and _will-power_,--alias intelligent matter.
In Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear, it was the traitorous and cruel treatment received by old Gloster from his bastard son Edmund which makes true the lines:
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us.
His lawful son, Edgar, was to his father ever loyal. Now God has no bastards to turn again and rend their Maker. The divine children are born of law and order, and Truth knows only such.
How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with the word of Scripture, in Hebrews xii. 7, 8: "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons."
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