356 THE FUTUEE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



with nothing behind it, a series of outside aspects of 

 unreal things temporarily painted and effaced on the 

 canvas of consciousness the canvas itself scarcely real, 

 a bubble that might at any moment burst, having 

 nothing in the inside of it. There is a Power behind 

 phenomena, which produces them ; a substance one and 

 the same at the bottom of the universe and of our 

 thought, which preserves them both in law and order ; a 

 power whose existence is our only final guarantee that 

 the physical universe will not resolve itself into chaos 

 before our eyes, and that the universal reason will keep, 

 steady on her throne. This Power removed if we could 

 or dare suppose it anarchy in the atoms, universal 

 chaos within and without, in the brain and in the cosmos, 

 is conceivable; this Power present and eternally sup- 

 porting all is our guarantee to the contrary. And, once 

 more, this final support and Power is God. 



5. And can Theology accept this conception ? Will 

 it suit her exigencies and requirements ? To this it must 

 be replied at once that it will not suit a theology that 

 insists on standing on a non- scientific cosmogony, or on 

 a discredited chronology, or on particular anthropomorphic 

 sketches of the nature and character of God, or one that 

 exacts, as the only true test of theism, our ascription of 

 certain inscrutable metaphysical attributes to Him. It 

 will not suit any of these, nor hardly, indeed, any form 

 of dogmatic theology; but when supplemented by the 

 attribute of purpose, which Science on her side must 

 grant, it will harmonize very well with a theology which 

 allows that there may be development in theology as in 

 all other knowledge, and development in our conception 

 of Deity as development in our conception of the universe, 

 which is His manifestation. 



Theology may dislike the seemingly pantheistic 



