MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM 59 



vague formula, after all. Of hoiv the contradiction 

 whose extremes are represented by deism and pan- 

 theism is to be transcended and reconciled, it has 

 nothing to say. Hoiv the divine personality is to be 

 thought consistently with the divine omnipresence, 

 or Jiozo the omnipresent providence of God is to be 

 reconciled with his distinctness from the world, this 

 merely general proclamation of orthodox theism does 

 not show, and in itself has no power to show. When 

 we pass from the general formula to the attempted 

 supply of the desired details, we are too often made 

 aware that the doctrine professedly theistic is en- 

 cumbered with a mass of particulars profoundly at 

 variance with its own principle. We notice that 

 confusion or contradiction reigns where consistent 

 clearness ought to be ; that faultily anthropomor- 

 phic or really mechanical conceptions usurp the 

 place of the required divine and spiritual realities. 

 We too often discover, for instance, that every 

 doctrine is construed as deism which refuses its 

 assent to a discontinuous and special providence, or 

 to an inconstant, localised, and miraculous revelation. 

 On the other hand, we find every theory condemned 

 as pantheism that denies the literal separation of 

 God from the world and asserts instead his imma- 

 nence in \\.} We find that in the hands of such 



^ This apparent assent, en passant, to the expression of theism in 

 terms of immanence is liable to great misinterpretation ; but I think it 



