72 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



IV 



Now we face the question, Why then is panthe- 

 ism regarded by so many with instinctive inhibition 

 — as if indeed a doctrine to avert? In coming to 

 this after what we have just discerned, we must 

 not neglect the fact that pantheism plays an in- 

 dispensable part in the forming of a genuine theistic 

 theory. It is the transitional thought by which 

 we ascend out of the idolatrous anthropomorphism 

 of sensuous theism into that rational and complete 

 theism which has its central illumination in the 

 comprehended truth of the Divine Omnipresence. 

 In the morally interpreted immanence of God in 

 the world, this completed theism finds the true 

 basis, the pure rational theory, of the divine per- 

 petual providence. In God's dwelling with the 

 society of spirits, as " the Light which lighteth 

 every man that cometh into the world," it finds 

 the rational basis for the universal and perpetual 

 divine revelation. Even this higher, this ethically 

 rational view of Divine Immanence, we must not 

 forget, has come to us through the suggestion in 

 the lower immanence taught in pantheism. 



Indeed, in this suggested omnipresence of God, — 

 this indwelling of God in the world by the activity 

 of his image in the soul, — pantheism lays a founda- 

 tion for the rational conception of a Perpetual Incar- 



