ion from borrowed scintillations.

Jesus distinctly taught the arrogant Pharisees that, from the beginning,
their father, the devil, was the would-be murderer of Truth. A right
apprehension of the wonderful utterances of him who "spake as never man
spake," would despoil error of its borrowed plumes, and transform the
universe into a home of marvellous light,--"a consummation devoutly to be
wished."

Error says God must know evil because He knows all things; but Holy Writ
declares God told our first parents that in the day when they should
partake of the fruit of evil, they must surely die. Would it not absurdly
follow that God must perish, if He knows evil and evil necessarily leads
to extinction? Rather let us think of God as saying, I am infinite good;
therefore I know not evil. Dwelling in light, I can see only the brightness
of My own glory.

Error may say that God can never save man from sin, if He knows and sees it
not; but God says, I am too pure to behold iniquity, and destroy everything
that is unlike Myself.

Many fancy that our heavenly Father reasons thus: If pain and sorrow were
not in My mind, I could not remedy them, and wipe the tears from the eyes
of My children. Error says you must know grief in order to console it.
Truth, God, says you oftenest console others in troubles that you have 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 com