verging toward Pantheism, on a transcendent as well
as an immanent God, that is on a Creator existing, so to speak, outside
the Universe and apart from it as well as permeating every part. Thus,
for example, Augustine would seem to deny to the world any separate
creature existence when he says, that but for the divinity everywhere in
it, creation would cease to be. But in his insistence on the creation of
the world from nothing, he directly contradicts Pantheism, because he
must necessarily be taken to mean that there is now something other than
God.

That there have been devout Christians whose mystic speculations on the
relations of the soul to the Eternal logically involved Pantheism--if
logic in such a case had any function--there can be no doubt. But for
most of them "God's word written" seemed to confirm God's word in
heaven and earth as known to them, proclaiming that there had been a
beginning and there must be an end. Therefore, whatever might be the
immanence of the Creator in His works, God could not, in their minds, be
identified with "the fashion of this world" which "passeth away."

Yet the time was coming when the Divine word both in Scripture and in
Nature was to be otherwise read. For men began to learn that the Bible
was other than they had supposed and the Universe immeasurably greater
than they had conceived.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: _De Mundi Opificio_, p. 5B. I take him to mean by [Greek:
kosmos noetos]--the world as apperceived--realised in our
consciousness.]

[Footnote 13: It should be noted that Philo, who was contemporary with
Jesus, often uses the title "the Father" [Greek: ho Pataer] as a
sufficient designation of the Eternal. It was not very usual, and is
suggestive of certain spiritual sympathies amidst enormous intellectual
divergencies between the Alexandrian philosopher and the Galilean
prophet.]

[Footnote 14: See Col. i. 15-17 and refs. John i. 1-3; iii. 13; viii.
58.]

CHAPTER III

MODERN PANTHEISM.

[Sidenote: Spinoza.]

[Sidenote: A Pantheistic Prophet.]

[Sidenote: The Main Subject here Is his Religion and not his
Philosophy.]

Modern Pantheism as a religion begins with Spinoza. Whether it ended
with him is a question which the future will have to decide. But the
signs of the times are, at least in my view, very clearly against such a
conclusion. And amongst the omens which portend immortality, not
necessarily for the philosophical scheme, but for the