ithout being "himself God." If we are to be able
to believe in either a universe or a humanity which, though the scene
of Divine immanence, are not identical with God, it seems to us that
such a view of creation as we have just propounded is inevitable; and
unless this non-identity can be maintained--unless, that is to say, we
definitely repudiate the idea of the "allness" of God--religion itself
is reduced to a misty and ineffective theosophy.

The issues involved in the acceptance or rejection of this view appear
to us of such importance that, at the risk of seeming to labour our
point unnecessarily, we are anxious to make it perfectly plain. In the
phase through which {29} religious thought is passing to-day there are
few things more urgently needed than to dispel that interpretation of
immanence which obliterates the line of demarcation between God and
man. We may decline the mechanical dualism which placed the Creator
altogether outside the universe, and yet embrace a view which for want
of a better name might be called spiritual dualism, and which maintains
the distinction of which we are speaking. What happens when that
distinction is lost, is sufficiently apparent from a statement like the
following, actually addressed to a miscellaneous audience: "If there is
an eternal throne, you are on it now; there has never been a moment
when you were not on it." Such downright extravagance is most suitably
met with a bald contradiction: man is _not_ on the eternal throne, and
there has never been a moment when he was on it. It is this fact which
makes worship so much as possible; it is, in short, the transcendent
God with whom we are concerned in the exercise of religion, for as Mr.
Chesterton puts it in his own manner, "that Jones shall worship the god
within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones."

Let us see what follows if we once seriously persuade ourselves that we
are "on the eternal throne," or, to extract its meaning from that
picturesque phrase, that the presence of God is already perfectly
realised in us. We cannot but think we shall carry the reader {30}
with us in saying that such a belief is in itself indicative of
spiritual danger; indeed, there can hardly be a greater danger than
that which is directly encouraged by the idea that we have already
attained, and that all is well with us, seeing that we are one with the
All-good. On such a supposition, why pray--for even were