Unity of Good | Page 6

not. Is not our comforter always from outside and above
ourselves?
God says, I show My pity through divine law, not through human. It is
My sympathy with and My knowledge of harmony (not inharmony)
which alone enable Me to rebuke, and eventually destroy, every
supposition of discord.
Error says God must know death in order to strike at its root; but God
saith, I am ever-conscious Life, and thus I conquer death; for to be ever
conscious of Life is to be never conscious of death. I am All. A
knowledge of aught beside Myself is impossible.
If 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