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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
shape of thought and word, or in that of creative power or physical force (The Vedanta Philosophy, pages 22 and 142).
Imagination, or Mind, taken in the abstract, that is, as a quality common to all souls, then, is the Creator of theology. For this reason almost all the religions of the mystical type describe God as an all-pervading Essence. The Bhagavad Gita also has it:
“By Me all this world is pervaded in My unmanifested aspect; all beings have root in Me, I am not rooted in them. Behold My Sovereign Yoga ! the support of beings, yet not rooted in beings, Myself their efficient cause. As the mighty air moving everywhere is rooted in ether, so all beings rest rooted in Me. Thus know thou."
To the same effect is the statement in the Foly Bible : "Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee" (1 Kings, VIII. 27),
St. Paul, too, had the idea of divine immanence in his mind, wben he said* :-- “In him we live and move and have our being.".
If we now analyse the idea disengaged from its mystic setting, we shall discover that divine immanence implies neither more nor less than the immanence of a genus or species among the individuals falling within its scope ; that is the presence of an element of abstraction among those from whom it has been separated off in thought.
It is thus clear that the idea of an anthropomorphic Creator is in no way acceptable to reason. This argument would have ordinarily been sufficient to dispose of the point, but as deep-rooted prejudices have become associated with the notion of a personal creator, we
* See The Acts XVII. 28.
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