350 F.SSJYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



bearing the ominous title AtJieism in Philosophy} 

 To be sure, monism was in a way Dr. Hedge's reli- 

 gion, and so pluralism was for him the unpardonable 

 sin. But for every type of the genuinely religious 

 mind, the omission of God must be unpardonable; and 

 what we need in these perplexing discussions is some 

 settlement of what is the central attribute of God, 

 that shall impart to all the others legitimate mean- 

 ing, and put an end to unmerited charges of atheism. 

 So that I am now called upon to show that the 

 elevation of the human spirit to genuine freedom, 

 with the consequent placing of the soul in the order 

 of eternal being, so far from transforming men into 

 gods or rendering God superfluous and non-existent, 

 carries us, on the contrary, to just such a central 

 attribute of genuine godhead. I am to show you, 

 too, that in the world of eternal free-agents, the Di- 

 vine offices called creation and regeneration not only 

 survive, but are transfigured ; that in this transfigura- 

 tion they are merged in one, so that regeneration is 

 implicit in creation, and becomes the logical spring 

 and aim of creation, while creation itself thus insures 

 both generation and regeneration — the existence of 

 the natural order within the spiritual or rational, and 

 subject to this, and the consequent gradual transfor- 

 mation of the natural into the image of the spiritual : 



^ F. H. Hedge : Atheism in Philosophy, and Other Essays. Boston : 

 Roberts Brothers, 1884. 



