ence which does not imply the {25} allness of God._"
[1] It is not too much to say that this brief statement contains the
_fons et origo_ of all the misunderstandings with which the
re-enunciation of this idea has been attended; it is this assumption of
the allness of God which underlies and colours quite a number of modern
movements, and will be seen to lead those who accept it into endless
and inextricable tangles.

If God is all, _then what are we_? Granted the basal axiom of this
type of immanentism, it follows with irresistible cogency that our
separate existence, consciousness, volitions and so forth are merely
illusions. We can be "ourselves God" only in the sense that we are
individually nothing; the contrary impression is simply an error, which
we shall have to recognise as such, and to get rid of with what speed
and thoroughness we can. This, it is true, is more easily said than
done, for our whole life both of thought and action bears incessant
witness to the opposite; there are, however, those to whose temperament
such a complete contradiction, so far from being distressing, is
positively grateful because of its suggestion of mystery and mysticism.
Sometimes a Tertullian voices this abdication of the reasoning faculty
defiantly--_certum est quia impossibile est_; but more often perhaps
the same position {26} is expressed in the spirit of Tennyson's
well-known lines, which, indeed, bear directly upon our immediate
theme:--

We feel we are nothing--for all is Thou and in Thee;
We feel we are something--_that_ also has come from Thee;
We know we are nothing--but Thou wilt help us to be.

We submit, however, that while such a contemplation of, or oscillation
between, mutually destructive tenets may for a time minister to some
kind of aesthetic enjoyment, the healthy mind cannot permanently find
satisfaction while thus suspended in mid-air; nor are we appreciably
advanced by the temper which, after pointing out some alleged
fundamental antinomy, "quietly accepts"--_i.e._, in practice
ignores--it. Problems of this description are not solved by what
Matthew Arnold called a want of intellectual seriousness; is it true,
we ask, that the "mystical view of the Divine immanence" compels us to
believe in the allness of God, and so to deny our individual existence?

The answer is that this _soi-disant_ "mystical view" is simply a
distorted view of what immanence means. We are not really called upon
to do