MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM 73 



nation, the doctrine of a Divine Humanity. So when 

 theology sets the doctrine of the Triune God at the 

 centre of practical religion, pantheism has prepared 

 the way for vindicating it as in so far the genuine 

 interpreter of rational theism. That the Eternal 

 is eternally generated in our higher human nature; 

 that this Son of Man is in practical truth the Son 

 of God, and the Son only-begotten ; that by the 

 discipline of life in worlds of imperfection, men — 

 and, following men, the whole world of conscious 

 beings — ascend, through fealty to this Son, immor- 

 tally toward the Father in the Holy Spirit, — this, 

 the epitome of Christian theism, first gets appre- 

 hended, or at least suggested, in the insight which 

 pantheism brings, that God is not separate from the 

 world, but effectually present in it, and that the dis- 

 tinction between the soul and the God who recog- 

 nises and redeems it can never be truly stated as a 

 distinction in place and time, a separation in space 

 and by a period, a contrast between efficient cause 

 and produced effect. On the contrary, the dis- 

 tinction must be made in terms of pure thought, 

 which is essentially timeless and spaceless, neither 

 lasts nor extends, nor is dated nor placed, but simply 

 is. It must be viewed as a contrast (and yet a rela- 

 tion) between different centres of consciousness, each 

 thoroughly self-active ; and further, as a distinction 

 in the mode by which each conscious centre defines 



