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a basis of intellectual principles; it can devise plausible reasons even for its most extravagant details; it can make itself indispensable to it; and by doing so it can secure the assistance of all the forces of faith and superstition possessed by polytheism. This may be a source of enormous influence, as the example of India convincingly shows.

Further, pantheism has a certain marked superiority over every doctrine or system which leads men to think of creation as independent of the Creator, or of God as withdrawn from His creatures. Where theism has degenerated into deism, or Christianity into a mere intellectual creed, it is not unnatural that pantheism should prevail. In such a case its spread may serve a providential purpose as a counterpoise to the opposite extreme of error. It is the expression of a sense of a Divine presence in the universe. It insists on the all-pervading activity of God. It is belief in Him as

One

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, which impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."

In the possession of this truth it has nothing which a true theism, such as we find in the Bible,

has not also, but it has a truth which the human soul needs, which theists have often not prized enough, and which many professed theists have virtually forgotten altogether.

It

Pantheism likewise ministers in some degree to devout emotion and affection by centring all in, and even by sacrificing all to, the one absolute Existence. It teaches men to rise both above the good and the evil of the visible and temporal world, and to yearn after eternal rest in the world of immutable being. It teaches them to sacrifice egotism, and to glory in being parts and particles of God. That many minds can find a certain satisfaction and strength in this teaching the wide prevalence of pantheism in religion abundantly proves. pervades all Hindu religion, and elicits and sustains in many a Hindu mind a piety which concentrates the thoughts and energies with such wonderful intensity and exclusiveness on eternity, that time and the things of time appear only the delusions of a dream. It has in every age of Christian history presented itself either as the rival and opponent of Christian doctrine, or with the claim to be its highest and truest expression; and many great and elevated minds have been found to listen to it, and to look to the absorption in the Infinite which it promises as their highest good.

Pantheism, however, falls far short of giving such satisfaction to the religious wants of man as a true

theism supplies. It does well to insist on the omnipresence of God, and on the complete and ceaseless dependence of the universe on His power. But all true theism does the same. There is no pantheism in the Bible, yet no book is more thoroughly pervaded and inspired by the thought that finite things are not self-existent, nor self-sustained, nor selfevolved, but that God is over all and in all, the ground of existence, the source of life, the giver of every good. This thought is implied on each page. It is strikingly expressed in the words of the Psalmist when he says,-" If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me: of the Prophet,-" Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord: do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord:" of the Apostle Paul,-" For in God we live, and move, and have our being:" and of the Apostle John,-" He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." To call language of this kind pantheistic has no warrant in reason, and no other tendency than to mislead. The truth that "of God, and through Him, and to Him, are all things," is common to pantheism and theism, and distinguishes both from deism. There is more,

God's presence.

however, than this to be said. Pantheism is, in fact, far from teaching the full truth even as to It cannot consistently conceive of it as a personal and spiritual, but only as a natural and necessary, presence. It tells us that God is in all that we see and touch and hear,—in the light of day, the springing grass, and whispering breeze; but it tells us too that the God who is there is present only as substance, force, and law, not as reason, love, and will. If so-if God is only thus present to us in the elements and agencies of nature, His presence is, in reality, only their presence. It adds nothing to their presence. Were it withdrawn, if the things themselves existed, there would be no difference. Imagination and poetry may endeavour to make something of the distinction between the presence of a merely impersonal God in nature and the mere presence of nature, but I do not see how either reason or a reasonable faith, either philosophy or religion, can attach any importance to it. If the God who is in the sunbeam can only be present as its light and heat, the sunbeam without God must be equivalent to the sunbeam with God. Only when God is felt to be the creative and legislative Reason-the supreme Will, free, righteous, and loving,—can His presence in the objects and processes of nature. acquire a real religious significance. If He is even only so present in ourselves that there is no dis

tinction between Him and us, between His power and our power, His presence with us is not distinguishable from His absence from us. Another sort of presence is needed before the soul can be satisfied, the presence of one spirit with another spirit. Religion implies, undoubtedly, that we realise God's presence with us; but it equally implies, what pantheism denies, that He is personally distinct from us; that He can have affection and compassion towards us, and that we can love Him with an unselfish love; that He can guide and help us, and that we may trust Him as we cannot trust ourselves; and that we may fear Him as one whom we can offend, and pray to Him as one who can hear and answer us.

Religion supposes faith, love, hope; but pantheism when it denies the personality of God refuses to these affections an appropriate object. It withholds from the view of the spirit what can alone satisfy its best and deepest feelings. The less of determinate personal character God is regarded as having, the less is it possible to love or trust Him. When supposed to be wholly indeterminate and impersonal, no room at all is left for a religion characterised by the personal affections. To a necessarily self-evolving impersonal Godwhether conceived of as substance, identity, force, law, process, or idea-the only worship which can reasonably be offered is a cold, passionless resigna

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