not to be done by making any false statement of the Law, for Truth can never come out of falsehood; it must be done by presenting the Truth under such figures as would indicate the real relations of things, though not explaining how these relations arise, because to undeveloped minds such an explanation would be worse than useless. Hence came the whole system of the Mosaic Law.
On one occasion, when the Master was asked which was the greatest commandment of the Law, he replied by quoting the fourth verse of the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord", or, as the Revised version has it in Mark 12:29, "the Lord is ONE". This, he says, is the first of all the commandments; and we may therefore expect to find in this statement of Divine Unity the foundation on which everything else rests. Nor need we look far to find the reason of it, for we have already seen in the opening words of Genesis that in principio — that is, as the originating principle in all things — there can be nothing else but God or Spirit. That is a conclusion which becomes unavoidable if we simply follow up the chain of cause and effect until we reach a Universal First Cause. We may call it by what name we choose: that will make no difference so long as we realise what must be its inherent nature and what must be our necessary relation to it.
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