ith the state of society in which they live, have
publicly expressed their apprehension that, unless some seasonable and
effective check can be given to the progress of this fearful system, we
may yet witness the restoration of Polytheistic worship and the revival
of Paganism in Europe?[112]

The most cursory review of _the history of Pantheism_[113] will serve to
convince every reflecting reader that it must have its origin in some
natural but strangely perverted principle of the human mind; and that
its recent reappearance in Europe affords an additional and very
unexpected proof that, like the weeds which spring up, year after year,
in the best cultivated field, it must have its roots or seeds deep in
the soil. In the annals of our race, we find it exhibited in two
distinct forms; _first_, as a Religious doctrine, and, _secondly_, as a
Philosophical system. It had its birthplace in the East, where the
gorgeous magnificence of Nature was fitted to arrest the attention and
to stimulate the imagination of a subtle, dreamy, and speculative
people. The primitive doctrine of Creation was soon supplanted by the
pagan theory of Emanation. The Indian Brahm is the first and only
Substance, infinite, absolute, indeterminate Being, from which all is
evolved, manifested, developed, and to which all returns and is
reabsorbed. The Vedanta philosophy is based on this fundamental
principle, and it has been well described as "the most rigorous system
of Pantheism which has ever appeared."

We learn from the writings of Greece that a similar system prevailed in
Egypt, different, indeed, in form, and expressed in other terms, but
resting on the same ultimate ground; and we know that Christianity found
one of its earliest and most formidable antagonists in the philosophical
school of Alexandria, which was deeply imbued with a Pantheistic spirit,
and which, perhaps for that reason, has recently become an object of
much interest to speculative minds in France and Germany. The Gnostic
and the Neoplatonic sects maintained, and the writings of Plotinus and
Proclus still exhibit, many principles the same in substance with those
which have been recently revived in Continental Europe. In the earlier
as well as the later literature of Greece we find traces of Pantheism,
while the Polytheistic worship, which universally prevailed, was its
natural product and appropriate manifestation. The ancient Orphic
doctrines, which were taught in the Mysteri