xhibit an outline of the
Pantheistic system, to resolve it into its constituent elements and
ultimate grounds, to examine the validity of the reasons on which it
rests, and to contrast it with the doctrine of Christian Theism, which
speaks of a living, personal God, and of a distinct but dependent
Creation, the product of His supreme wisdom and almighty power. The task
is one of considerable difficulty,--difficulty arising not so much from
the nature of the subject, as from the metaphysical and abstruse manner
in which it has been treated. We must follow Spinoza through the
labyrinth of his Theological Politics and his Geometrical Ethics; we
must follow Schelling and Hegel into the still darker recesses of their
Transcendental Philosophy; for a philosophy of one kind can only be met
and neutralized by a higher and a better, and the first firm step
towards the refutation of error is a thorough comprehension of it. But
having an assured faith in those stable laws of thought which are
inwoven with the very texture of the human mind, and in the validity and
force of that natural evidence to which Theology appeals, we have no
fear of the profoundest Metaphysics that can be brought to bear on the
question at issue, provided only they be not altogether unintelligible.

Pantheism has appeared in several different forms; and it may conduce
both to the fullness and the clearness of our exposition if we offer, in
the first instance, a comprehensive outline of the theory of Spinoza,
with a brief criticism on its leading principles, and thereafter advance
to the consideration of the twofold development of Pantheism in the
hands of Materialists and Idealists, respectively.

SECTION I.

THE SYSTEM OF SPINOZA.

The Pantheistic speculations which have been revived in modern times can
scarcely be understood, and still less accounted for or answered,
without reference to the system of Spinoza. That system met with little
favor from any, and with vigorous opposition from not a few, of the
divines and philosophers of the times immediately subsequent to its
publication. It was denounced and refuted by Musaeus, a judicious and
learned professor of divinity at Jena; by Mansvelt, a young but
promising professor of philosophy at Utrecht; by Cuyper of Rotterdam; by
Wittichius of Leyden; by Pierre Poiret of Reinsburg; by Fenelon,
Archbishop of Cambray; by Huet, Bishop of Avranches; by John Howe, and
Dr. Samuel Clarke, as well as by many othe