universal Spirit,--for whom the Infinite was the
beginning and the end, and the Universe his only and everlasting
love,--he who, in holy innocence and profound peace, delighted to
contemplate himself in the mirror of an eternal world, where, doubtless,
he saw himself reflected as its most lovely image,--he who was full of
the sentiment of religion, because he was filled with the Holy Spirit!"
"Instead of accusing Spinoza of Atheism," says M. Cousin, "he should
rather be subjected to the opposite reproach."[104] "He has been loudly
accused," says Professor Saisset, "of Atheism and impiety.... The truth
is that never did a man believe in God with a faith more profound, with
a soul more sincere, than Spinoza. Take God from him, and you take from
him his system, his thought, his life." "Spinoza, although a Jew," says
the Abbe Sabatier, a member of the Catholic clergy, "always lived as a
Christian, and was as well versed in our divine Testament as in the
books of the ancient Law. If he ended, as we cannot doubt he did, in
embracing Christianity, he ought to be _enrolled in the rank of saints_,
instead of being placed at the head of the enemies of God."

Contrast the language in which Spinoza is now compared to Thomas a
Kempis, and proposed as a fit subject for canonization itself, with the
terms in which he was wont to be spoken of by men of former times; and
the startling difference will sufficiently indicate a great change in
the current of European thought. And if we add to this the
contemporaneous reappearance of such writers as Bruno and Vanini, whose
works have been reprinted by the active philosophical press of Paris, we
may be well assured that it is not by overlooking or despising such
speculations, but by boldly confronting and closely grappling with them,
that we shall best protect the mind of the thinking community from their
insidious and pestilent influence.

But we are not left to _infer_ the existence, in many quarters, of a
prevailing tendency towards Pantheism, from such facts as have been
stated, significant as they are; we have explicit testimonies on the
point, in a multitude of writings, philosophical and popular, which have
recently issued from the Continental press. In a report presented to the
Academy of Sciences, M. Franck, a member of the Institute, represents
Pantheism as the last and greatest of all the Metaphysical systems which
have come into collision with Revelation; and describes it as a th