[London Lectures of 1907 by Annie Besant]@TWC D-Link book
London Lectures of 1907

PART I
74/96

But it also included all that here we speak of as Literature, as Art, as Craft--everything, in fact, which the human brain can study and the human fingers can accomplish--the whole of that, in one grand generalisation, was called "Divine Wisdom," but it was the lower divine Wisdom, the inferior knowledge of God.

Then, beside, or rather above that, came the Supreme Knowledge, the higher, the superior, that beyond which there was no knowledge, which was the crown of all.

Now, that supreme knowledge is declared to be "the knowledge of Him by Whom all things are known"-- a phrase indicating the Supreme Deity.

It was that which was called the supreme knowledge, or, _par excellence_, the Divine Knowledge, and that old Hindu thought is exactly the same as you have indicated by the name Theosophy.
So, again, classical students may remember that among the Greeks and the early Christians there was what was called the Gnosis, the knowledge, the definite article pointing to that which, above all else, was to be regarded as knowledge or wisdom.

And when you find among the Neo-Platonists this word Gnosis used, it always means, and is defined to mean, "the knowledge of God," and the "Gnostic" is "a man who knows God." So, again, among the early Christians.


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