t the many and the one. For
our spiritual genealogy is not from them, but from a nearer and double
line of begetters, including seers--in the true sense of the word--and
saints, for both are represented by Kepler and Hooker, Newton and Jeremy
Taylor, Descartes and Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wesley, Spencer and Newman.
And even these have authority not through any divine right of genius or
acquired claim of learning, but because they illumine and interpret
obscure suggestions of our own thoughts. Indeed, to the sacrament of
historic communion with the past, as well as to the chief rite of the
Church, the apostolic injunction is applicable: "Let a man examine
himself; and so let him eat of that bread."

[Sidenote: Suggestions of Nature.]

Obeying that injunction, any man possessing ordinary powers of
observation and reflection may, in the course of a summer day's walk,
find abundant reason for interest in the speculations of historic
Pantheism. For the aspect of nature then presented to him is one both of
movement and repose, of variety and harmony, of multiplicity and unity.
Thus the slight breeze, scarcely stirring the drowsy flowery the
monotonous cadences of the stony brook, and the gliding of feathery
flecks of cloud across the blue, create a peace far deeper than absolute
stillness, and suggest an infinite life in which activity and repose are
one. Besides, there is evident everywhere an interplay of forces acting
and reacting so as mutually to help and fulfil one another. For
instance, the falling leaves give back the carbon they gathered from the
air, and so repay the soil with interest for the subtler essences
derived therefrom and dissolved in the sap. The bees, again, humming
among the flowers, while actuated only by instincts of appetite and
thrift, fructify the blooms, and become a connecting link between one
vegetable generation and another. The heat of the sun draws up water
from ocean and river and lake, while chilly currents of higher air
return it here and there in rain. So earth, sea, and air are for ever
trafficking together; and their interchange of riches and force is
complicated ten thousandfold by the activities of innumerable living
things, all adapting themselves by some internal energy to the ever
varying balance of heat and cold, moisture and drought, light and
darkness, chemical action and reaction. And all this has been going on
for untold millions of years; nor is there any sign of weariness now