MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM 71 



is to be thought as capable of existing without a 

 world, and as literally separated from the world in 

 time and space, then deism says it is purely arbitrary 

 to declare the separation overcome by means of 

 miracle. Consistency, and in so far rationality, 

 would rather require that the separation be kept 

 up ; and the folly of the zoomorphic dualism is 

 made to display itself in the deistic inference, which 

 such dualism cannot consistently refute, that divine 

 revelation and providence, without which the prac- 

 tical religion indispensable to the reality of theism 

 cannot have being, are by this literal separateness 

 of the divine existence rendered impossible. 



The comparative virtue of pantheism here, as 

 against deism and sensuous theism alike, is that it 

 transcends, in a certain sort at least, this mechanical 

 rigidity in divine relations. However faulty its way 

 of accomplishing this may be, — and we shall pres- 

 ently sec this is indeed faulty, — it does us the 

 service of calling attention to the religious need of 

 cancelling this mechanical view ; and it habituates 

 our thoughts to an inseparable union and commun- 

 ion between God and the world. It teaches us the 

 great and lasting lesson, that the relation between 

 God and the world of souls is in no wise contingent 

 or temporal, but is necessary, essential, eternal. 



