sia, and indeed very generally in the higher
regions of thought. Ecclesiastical authority succeeded in repressing
them in the sixteenth century, but they never altogether disappeared.
In our own times so silently and extensively have they been diffused in
Europe, that it was found expedient in the papal Syllabus to draw
them in a very conspicuous manner into the open light; and the Vatican
Council, agreeing in that view of their obnoxious tendency and secret
spread, has in an equally prominent and signal manner among its first
canons anathematized all persons who hold them. "Let him be anathema who
says that spiritual things are emanations of the divine substance, or
that the divine essence by manifestation or development becomes all
things." In view of this authoritative action, it is necessary now to
consider the character and history of these opinions.

Ideas respecting the nature of God necessarily influence ideas
respecting the nature of the soul. The eastern Asiatics had adopted the
conception of an impersonal God, and, as regards the soul, its necessary
consequence, the doctrine of emanation and absorption.

EMANATION AND ABSORPTION. Thus the Vedic theology is based on the
acknowledgment of a universal spirit pervading all things. "There is in
truth but one Deity, the supreme Spirit; he is of the same nature as the
soul of man." Both the Vedas and the Institutes of Menu affirm that
the soul is an emanation of the all-pervading Intellect, and that it is
necessarily destined to be reabsorbed. They consider it to be without
form, and that visible Nature, with all its beauties and harmonies, is
only the shadow of God.

Vedaism developed itself into Buddhism, which has become the faith of
a majority of the human race. This system acknowledges that there is a
supreme Power, but denies that there is a supreme Being. It contemplates
the existence of Force, giving rise as its manifestation to matter. It
adopts the theory of emanation and absorption. In a burning taper it
sees an effigy of man--an embodiment of matter, and an evolution of
force. If we interrogate it respecting the destiny of the soul, it
demands of us what has become of the flame when it is blown out, and in
what condition it was before the taper was lighted. Was it a nonentity?
Has it been annihilated? It admits that the idea of personality which
has deluded us through life may not be instantaneously extinguished at
death, but may be lost by slow degree