THE CONTRAST BETWEEN PANTHEISM AND tion from such existences as are unconscious ceived in the cruder dualistic and mechaniup to those that are completely conscious, cal view of things, with which human efforts and although it would be the more natural at theological theory so naturally begin. and obvious view, to read the series as a development genetically upward from atoms to minds, still the incomprehensibility of the transit from the unconscious to the conscious cannot fail to suggest the counter hypothesis, and the whole series may be conceived as originating ideally in the perceptive constitution and experience of the conscious members of it. There is, however, a marked distinction between the two orders of idealism given respectively by the acosmic pantheism and by the atheistic: the former, grounded in the consciousness of the Universal Substance, has naturally a universal, and in so far, an objective character; the latter has no warrant except the thought in a particular consciousness, and no valid means of raising this warrant even into a common or general character, much less into universality; it is accordingly particular and subjective. Pantheism, then, in both its forms, is not only a more comprehensive view of the world than either materialism or any onesided idealism, whether abstractly universal or only subjective, inasmuch as it makes either of them possible; but it is also a deeper and more organic view, because it does bring in, at least in a symbolic fashion, the notion of a universal in some vague sense or other. This advantage, however, it does not secure with any fullness except in the acosmic form. Indeed, the atheistic form is so closely akin to the less organic theories of materialism and subjective ideal ism, that we may almost say we do not come to pantheism proper until we pass out of the atheistic sort, and find ourselves in the acosmic. An additional gain afforded by pantheism, and eminently by acosmic pantheism, is the conception of the intimate union of the First Principle with the world of particular phenomena: the creative cause is stated as spontaneously manifesting its own nature in the creation; it abides immanently in the latter, and is no longer conceived as separated from it and therefore itself specifically limited in space and in time, as it is con Ar this point, we strike the eminent merit of pantheism, as contrasted with deism. By the latter name, it has been tacitly agreed to designate that falling-short of theism which stands counter to pantheism. As the latter is defective by confounding God and the world in an indistinguishable identity, so deism comes short by setting God in an isolated and irreducible separation from the world. Deism thus falls partly under the same condemnation of materiality which a rational judgment pronounces upon sensuous theism-with its physically anthropomorphic conceptions of the Creator, dwelling in his peculiar quarter of space called Heaven, and its mechanical theory of his communication with the world by way of "miracle" alone-by way, that is, independent, and even subversive, of the ordered process of means and end in nature. But while thus suffering from mechanical limitations in thought, deism must still be allowed its rela tive merit, too. That merit is the criticism which it makes upon the mechanical method of physically anthropomorphic theism. If, in the interest of distinguishing the Creator from the creation, God is to be thought as capable of existing without a world, and as separated from the creation, then, as deism justly says, it is purely arbitrary to declare the separation overcome by means of mechanical miracle. Consistency, and, in so far, rationality, would rather require that the separation be kept up; and the folly of the anthropo morphic dualism is made to display itself in the deistic inference, which it cannot consistently refute, that the divine revelation and providence, without which the practical religion indispensable to the reality of the 1 I must be understood here as reflecting only upon the popular thaumaturgical conceptions of the supernatural. The genuine doctrine of iniracle has, to my mind, a speculative truth at its basis, profound and irrefragable. ism cannot have being, are by the separateness of the divine existence rendered impossible. THE PERMANENT INSIGHT CONTAINED IN Creator and the creature, between the human soul and its redeeming God, can never be truly stated as a distinction in place and time, as a separation in space and by a period. And it is not until the pantheistic insight has been realized in our minds, whether by name or no it matters not, that we discover clearly that this fundamental religious truth, which none of us, upon reflection, would think of denying, and which in some sense we may rightly say we have always known, is effectually violated by our ordinary an IN approaching, then, the question, Why should pantheism be regarded as a doctrine to avoid? we must be careful not to neglect the fact that it plays a valuable and, indeed, an indispensable part in the formation of a genuine theological theory. It is the transi- thropomorphic conceptions. tional thought by which we ascend out ence. In of the idolatrous anthropomorphism of sensu- THE PERMANENT DEFECT OF PANTHEISM. ous theism into that complete and rational theism which has its central illumination in the realized truth of the divine omnipresIn the immanence of God in the world, it finds the true basis-the rational theory of the divine perpetual providence; in his indwelling in the creature, as "the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," it finds a like basis and theory for the universal and perpetual divine revelation. Indeed, in this realized and now fully uttered omnipresence of God, and in God's active indwelling in the inmost spirit of man, it lays the rational foundation for the Perpetual Incarnation, the doctrine of the Divine Humanity; and when Christianity sets the doctrine of the Triune God in the very center of practical religion, pantheism prepares the way to vindicate it as the genuine interpreter of a rational theism. That the Eternal eternally generates himself in our higher human nature; that this Son of Man is truly and literally the Son of God, and the Son only begotten; that, by the discipline of life in worlds of imperfection, men, and through them the whole creation, ascend by devout faith (or fidelity) toward this Son, and by his life, immortally unto God in the Holy Spirit-this, the epitome and essence of Christian theism, first becomes apprehended as a rationally natural truth in the insight which pantheism brings with it, that God is not separate from the world but immediately present in it, and that the distinction between the BUT while this permanent insight of pantheism must be carried up into all genuine theistic thought, it remains also true that it falls seriously short of the theological conception demanded by the highest practical religion. For the possibility of religion as a practical power in human life-the very conception of theism as an operative force in the spirit-depends not merely on the omnipresent existence and work of God, but upon the freedom (that is, the unqualified reality) and the immortality of man. deed, if the space permitted, it might clearly be shown not only that man cannot be properly man apart from freedom, immortality, and God, but that God cannot be properly God apart from man and man's immortality and freedom; in other words, that the selfexistent, free perfection of the Godhead, by virtue of its own nature, demands for its own fulfilment the establishment and the control of a world that is God's own image; the divine creation must completely reflect the divine nature, and must therefore be a world of moral freedom, self-regulating and eternal. But this demand of a genuine theism, pantheism cannot meet. Its theory, whether in the atheistic or in the acosmic form, lies in the very contradiction of human freedom and immortality. Indeed, we may say, summarily, that the distinction between theism and pantheism, in the loftiest form of the latter, lies just in this-that theism, in asserting God, asserts human freedom and immortality; but that pantheism, while apparently asserting God to the extreme, denies his moral essence by denying the immortality and the freedom of man. WHY PANTHEISM IS A DOCTRINE TO BE DEPRECATED. AND now we see why pantheism is at war with the permanent interests of human nature. Those interests are wholly identified with the vindication of freedom and immortal life; and this, not on the ground of the mere immediate desire we have for freedom and permanent existence, which would, in deed, be shallow and even unworthy of a rational being, but, on the profound and never-to-be-shaken foundation laid by reason in in its highest form of conscience. For when this highest form of reason is thoroughly interpreted, we know that the value of freedom and immortality lies in their indispensableness to our discipline and growth in divine life. To no theory of the world can man, then, give a willing and cordial adhesion, if it strikes at the heart of his individual reality, and contradicts those hopes of ceaseless moral growth that alone make life worth living. Not in its statement of the Godhead as the all and in all, taken by itself, but in its necessarily consequent denial of the reality of man-of his freedom and immortal growth in goodness-is it that pantheism betrays its insufficiency to meet the needs of the genuine human heart. It is true, to be sure, that this opposition between the doctrine of the One Sole Reality and our natural longings for permanent existence, or our natural bias in favor of freedom and responsibility, in itself settles nothing as to the truth or falsity of the doctrine. It might be that the system of nature-it might be that the Author of nature-is not in sympathy or accord with "the bliss for which we sigh." But so long as human nature is what it is; so long as we remain prepossessed in favor of our freedom, and yearn for a life that may put death itself beneath our feet: so long will our nature reluctate, and even revolt, at the prospect of having to accept the pantheistic view; so long shall we inevitably draw back from that vast and shadowy Being, who, for us and for our highest hopes, must be verily the Shadow of Death. Nay, we must go farther, and say that even should the science of external nature prove pantheism true, this would only array the interests of science against the interests of man—the interests that man can never displace from their supreme seat in his world, except by abdicating his inmost nature and putting his conscience to an open shame. The pantheistic voice of science would only proclaim a deadlock in the system and substance of truth itself, and herald an implacable conflict between the law of nature and the law written indelibly in the human spirit. The heart on which the vision of a possible moral perfection has once arisen, and in whose recesses the still and solemn voice of duty has resounded with majestic sweetness, can never be reconciled to the decree, though this issue never so authentically from nature, that bids it count responsible freedom an illusion, and surrender existence on that mere threshold of moral development which the bound of our present life affords. Such a defeat of its most sacred hopes, the conscience can neither acquiesce in nor tolerate. Nor can it be appeased or deluded by the pretext that annihilation may be devoutly accepted as self-sacrifice in behalf of an infinite "fullness of life" for the universe—a life in which the individual conscience is to have no share. In defense of this pantheistic piety, quoting the patriarch of many tribulations, in his impassioned cry: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!" is as vain as it is profane. This is only to repeat the fallacious paradox of those grim and obsolete sectarians who held that the test of a state of grace was "willingness to be damned for the glory of God." The spirit that truly desires righteousness longs with an unerring instinct for immortality as the indispensable condition of entire righteousness, and, when invited to approve its own immolation for the furtherance of the divine glory, will righteously answer as a noble matron, applying for admission to the church, once answered the inquisitorial session of her Cal vinistic society: "I am assuredly not willing to be damned for the glory of God; were I so, I should not be here!" THE PROFOUND INTEREST OF THE PANTHEISTIC PROBLEM. THIS is what makes the question of pantheism, as a possible outcome of science, of such vital concern. Science is thus made to appear as the possible utterer of the doom of our most precious hopes, the quencher of those aspirations which have hitherto been the soul of man's grandest as well as of his sublimest endeavors, the destroyer of those beliefs which are the real foundation of the triumphs of civilization-of all that gives majesty and glory to history. To present universal nature as the ocean in which man and his moral hopes are to be swallowed up, is to transform the universe for man into a system of radical and irremediable evil, and thus to make genuine religion an impossibility; and not only genuine religion, but also all political union and order, which stands, among the affairs and institutions of this world of sense, as the outcome and the image of the religious vision. Belief in the radical and sovereign goodness of the universe and its Author and Sustainer, is the very essence of religious faith and of political fealty. It is impossible that either faith or fealty can continue in minds that have once come to the realizing conviction that the whole of which we form a part, and the originating Principle of that whole, are hostile, or even indifferent, not merely to the permanent existence of man, but to his aspirations after the fullness of moral life. A professed God who either cannot or will not bring to fulfilment the longing after infinite moral growth that has arisen in his creature, is not, for such a creature, and cannot be, true God at all: "The wish that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave- “And he, shall he, "Man, the last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer "Who trusted God was love indeed, And love Creation's final law, "No more?-A monster then, a dream, A discord! Dragons of the prime, That tare each other in their slime, It is this profound feeling, which Tennyson has thus so faithfully expressed, that gives to the question before us in these days its anxious import. Let us not fail to realize that pantheism means, not simply the all-pervasive interblending and interpenetration of God and the creation, but the sole reality of God, and the obliteration of freedom, of moral life and of immortality for man. WHY SHOULD MODERN SCIENCE GIVE IT is urgent, then, to inquire if there is anything in the nature of modern science that really gives color to the pantheistic view. It is obvious enough that there are not wanting philosophers, or even schools of philosophy, who read pantheism in science as science appears to them. But the real question is: Is such a reading the authentic account of the teachings of science itself? Here, we must not mistake the utterances of men of science for the unadulterated teachings of science; for, on this borderland of science and philosophy, it need not be surprising if men familiar with only that method of investigation which science pursues, and not at home in the complex and varied history of philosophical speculation, should sometimes, or even often, be inclined to a hasty inference when the borderland is reached, and, overlooking the fact that their science and its method have necessary limits, take that view in philosophy which the illegitimate extension of their method would indicate. Disregarding, then, the mere opinions of certain cultivators of science, we are here to ask the directer, more searching and more pertinent question, What is there-if, indeed, there be anything casting out of the largest mean of possible errors in experiment or observation, by such methods, for instance, as that of least squares -in the nature of science itself, as science is now known-what are the elements in it and in its method, that might be taken to point toward a pantheistic interpretation of the all these refinements are for the single universe and its Source? And to this it must in all candor be answered, that both in the method of modern science, and in the two commanding principles that have legitimately resulted from that method, there is that which unquestionably suggests the pantheistic view. Nothing less than the most cautious discrimination, founded on a precise and comprehensive knowledge of the course of philosophical inquiry, can detect the exact reach, the limits, and the real significance of this suggestion, or expose the illegitimacy of following it without reserve. The trait to which I am now referring in the method of science is its rigorously experimental and observational character; indeed, its strictly empirical or tentative character. And the two commanding results, which now in turn play an organizing part in the subsidiary method of all the sciences, are (1) the principle of the conservation of energy, and (2) the principle of evolution manifesting itself in the concomitant phenomenon of natural selection-the struggle of each species with its environment for existence, and the survival of the fittest. The apparent implications of this method and of these two principles accordingly deserve, and must receive, our most careful present attention. How, then, does the experimental, or, more accurately, the empirical, method of science suggest the doctrine of pantheism? By limiting our serious belief to the evidence of experience-exclusively to the evidence of the senses. The method of science demands that nothing shall receive the high credence accorded to science, except it is attested by the evidence of unquestionable presentation in sensible experience. All the refinements of scientific method-the cautions of repeated observation, the probing subtleties of experiment, the niceties in the use of instruments of precision, the principle of reduction to mean or average, the allowance for the "personal equation," the final purpose of making it certain that our basis of evidence shall be confined to what has actually been present in the world of sense; we are to know beyond question that such and such conjunctions of events have actually been present to the senses, and precisely what it is that thus remains indisputable fact of sense, after all possible additions or misconstructions of our mere thought or imagination have been cancelled out. Such conjunctions in unquestionable sense-experience, isolated and purified from foreign admixture by carefully contrived experiment, we are then to raise by generalization into a tentative expectation of their continued recurrence in the future;-tentative expectation, we say, because the rigor of the empirical method warns us that the act of generalization is a step beyond the evidence of experience, and must not be reckoned any part of science, except as it continues to be verified in subsequent experience of the particular event. Thus natural science climbs its slow and cautious way along the path of what it calls the laws of nature; but it gives this name only in the sense that there has been a constancy in the conjunctions of past experience, a verification of the tentative generalization suggested by this, and a consequent continuance of the same tentative expectancy, which, however, waits for renewed verification, and refrains from committing itself unreservedly to the absolute invariability of the law to which it refers. Unconditional universality, not to say necessity, of its ascertained conjunctions, natural science neither claims nor admits. Now, to a science which thus accepts the testimony of experience with this undoubting and instinctive confidence that never stops to inquire what the real grounds of the possibility of experience itself may be, or whence experience can possibly derive this infallibility of evidence, but assumes, on the contrary, that the latter is underived and immediate-to such a science it must seem that we |