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1054
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
wretches who are to people that place of insufferable torment to worship the creator of their undeserved suffering and pain. Does Islam expect to convince mankind of the advisability of licking the hand that relentlessly inflicts the blows ? Can those who are created to fill the hell with their shrieks and yells be expected to find love in their aching hearts for the author of their everlasting misery ? Surely, the idea is too much even for a mystic !
Christianity is more or less in the same plight, since Isaiah's verse, quoted above, fixes the authorship of evil on the Lord. Zarathushtra, however, foresaw the force of the objection, and endeavoured to evade it by bringing in his twins of good and evil, and, by ascribing the creation of evil to the less holy of them. But though escaping out of the frying pan, he could not altogether avoid falling into the fire, for if the creator of Evil be regarded as the personification of intellect, he must be an aspect of his twin-spirit, the author of Good, intellect being, in reality, only a form or modification of will. The difficulty is not solved by regarding matter as the author of Evil, for matter cannot be considered as a creator and is certainly not a holy spirit. Zarathushtra's successors saw the difficulty, and tried to avoid it in different ways. Thus, Moses who introduces the serpent on the scene in the Garden of Eden does not call it the twin brother of God, while Isaiah and Mahomed carry the natural consequences of the doctrine of creation to its ultimate end, and, consequently, attribute the creation of all things, including evil, to God.
The root of the error into which mysticism has fallen
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