ROME AND PANTHEISM. 



40s 



admitted I am persuaded the Church of Eome will not 

 deny. 



Granted that Paul's notion of the unity of all man- 

 kind in one spirit animating, or potentially animating 

 the whole was mystical, I submit that the main dif- 

 ference between him and the Evolutionist is that the 

 first uses certain expressions more or less prophetically, 

 and without perhaps a full perception of their import; 

 while the second uses the same expressions literally, and 

 with the ordinary signification attached to the words 

 that compose them. It is not so much that we do not 

 hold what Paul held, but that we hold it with the 

 greater definiteness and comprehension which modern 

 discovery has rendered possible. We not only accept 

 his words, but we extend them, and not only accept 

 them as articles of faith to be taken on the word of 

 others, but as so profoundly entering into our views of 

 the world around us that that world loses the greater 

 part of its significance if we may not take such sayings 

 as that "we are God's flesh and his bones" as meaning 

 neither more nor less than what appears upon the face 

 of them. We believe that what we call our life is part 

 of the universal life of the Deity — which is literally and 

 truly made manifest to us in flesh that can be seen and 

 handled — ever changing, but the same yesterday, and 

 to-day, and for ever. 



So much for the closeness with which we have come 

 together on matters of fact, and now for the rapproche- 

 ment between us in respect of how much conformity is 

 required for the sake of avoiding schism. We find 

 ourselves driven through considerations of great obvious- 



