LECTURES
......,
PANTHEISTIC IDEA
OF
AN IIPERSONAL- SUBSTANCE - DEITY,
AS CONTRASTED WITH
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH CONCERNING
ALMIGHTY GOD.
BY TIHE
REV. MORGAN DIX, S. T. D.
RECTOR OF TRINITY CHIURCH, NEW YORE.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY HIURD AND) HOUGHTON,
BOSTON: E. P. DUTTON AND COITPANY.
1864.
ON THE 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
HURD AND HOUGEHTON,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHITON AND COMPANY.
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ADVERTISEMENT.
THE following Lectures were prepared in the early
part of last year, and were delivered at St. Paul's
Chapel during the Lenten season of 1863. They
were preached, for the second time, in Trinity
Chapel, during the past winter, at the request of a
large number of the members of our parish. After
that, the Vestry of Trinity Church expressed, by a
resolution to that effect, the wish that they should
be published. This desire could not be acceded to
without embarrassment; for the lectures were written without reference to publication, and the author,
while aware of the character ar  extent of their imperfections, knew also that he had no time to make
them what he would have them, and that they must
cro forth as they were, or not at all. But the hope
that they might do good outweighed the fear of
criticism, while the author felt tnat the known difficulties of his position would establish his claim to
favorable indulgence. It is our misfortune, in this
country, that we have no body of clerk,- sequestered
for careful and holy studies in defence of the faith;
0 
ADVERT1SEMENT.
no cloistered band whose only work it should be to
read and write and pray, and thereby sustain the
active laborers in the open field. Till this defect be
mended, the out-door workers must be also the
writers, notwithstanding all the disadvantages of
their situation. But while it is so, they should be
treated with allowance, and judged not so much in
respect to the manner in which they accomplish
their tasks, as with reference to the object and end
proposed. The priests of the Church, in the full exercise of their functions, can hardly be expected to
have time to write at all; much less can it be
thought that they should be able to write with careful and polished style, and with the finish and refinement which come of leisure for practice and discipline.  But reputation is the last object which we
may propose to ourselves who have upon us, day
by day, the care of the souls of sinners: only to the
good of those souls may we look, and to the glory
of Almighty God. Enough if the former of these
ends be secured, and the latter in any degree promoted; the writer will cheerfully bear the reproach
of those who may read, not to grow better and
wiser, but to find occasions against the theme in
the shortcomings of him who handles it. What has
been written and preached, and is now given to the
public, was so prepared and spoken solely with the
view of stating the truth concerning the Almighty.
May He accept the work done unto His honor; and
iv 
ADVERTISEMENVT.
may He forgive the weakness of His servant, and
bring, as He ever does, spiritual strength out of
mortal infirmity. Unto Him be glory everlastingly.
Amen.
TRIMITY RECTORY, New York, 3lay 23, 1864.
V  
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION............
LECTURE I.
THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.....
LECTURE II.
PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM...
LECTURE III.
PANTHEISM-I IN ITS APPLICATIONS.....
LECTURE IV.
OBJECTIONS TO THIE PANTHEISTIC THEORY.
LECTURE V.
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD
LECTURE VI.
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS
NOTES................
PAG-?
....   IX
...     1
....  15
...   32
.... 49
....  65
...   80
*  *  *   97 
I 
INTRODUCTION.
+
ALTHOUGH it is considered that the design of
the following Lectures could hardly be misunderstooc by one who should read them without prejudice, yet it seems proper to meet one objection
which may be thought by some to lie against them.
The writer would, therefore, in advance disclaim
the intention of fixing upon every one whose theories on history, on ethics, and on the course and
movement of terrestrial things, are in the following
pages more particularly referred to, the stigma and
reproach of consciously holding the philosophical
system with which those theories are undoubtedly
allied. For it is a well-known feature of the pantheistic heresy, and characteristic of that profound
spiritual disease, that the very individuals whose
views most nearly harmonize with it may yet be
strenuous in disclaiming the relationship, although
it be evident that their position is a complete inconsequence, except as interpreted on the hypothesis
of such a tie. We are willing, then, to admit and
to give prominence to the fact of their protests and
denials, thinking it sufficient to prove the identity 
INTRODUCTION.
of the results reached in either case.  If the popu lar and plausible rationalism of the day is found to
involve the same consequences which follow fron
the principles of simple Pantheism, that should be
enough to secure for it the mistrust and aversion
of thoughtful men; the question of the degree of
consanguinity may be held as not essential.
The object proposed in these lectures- is as follows: - To show, after stating scientificallyN the
vast and disastrous heresy of the ages, that modern lines of thought, professed modern discoveries,
and modern theories of human progress, of history,
of ethics, and of religion, are but new developments
of the spirit which invented that fatal system; that
they run in parallel lines with it; that they lead to
the same conclusions. The author entertains no10
doubt of the fact of this correspondence.  It is not
necessary to prove identity of origin: it is enough
to show that the principle which underlies the
whole system of modern speculation involves the
results which were reached by the ancient philosophies, and that the movement is toward the very
same position of a final and universal skepticism.
After that, it matters little whether the writers of
our day consent or decline to be classed as followers of the old pagan masters. They labor toward
the same ends, and are walking in the same direction.
The grand idea of the age in which we live is
X 
lVTRODUCTIO'N.
progress. That word is rung in our ears incessantly, from pulpit and platform, with the pertinacious tintinnabulation of a jangling chime. It is
a progress without God, and apart from the institutions of Christianity; a progress aside from revelation and in independence of spiritual authority;
the progress of humanity, confident in itself and in
its own powers. The Church also announces a
progress to mankind; but not a progress such as
that of which the world is dreaming, and in the
fancied accomplishment of which society seems
fairly drunk. A progress is implied in the very
idea of redemption; the prophets, the evangelists,
the apostles, have spoken and written thereof, in
language of unmatched sublimity; and God Himself, incarnate, has illustrated its nature and initiated it in His own person. Let us not forget
that progress is the symbol of Christianity; but
let us also remember of what sort that progress
is: that Christ, becoming man, did grow in wisdom and in stature, and in the showing forth of
love and sacrifice, until, having been made perfect therein, He was lifted up, and glorified, and
set on the right hand of the Majesty on high; and
that, in Christ, man is also to be in like manner
elevated and exalted, yet only through grace and
by the favor of God, -not for his own merits,
nor in his own strength; and that he is also to
grow to the measure of the stature of the fulness
xi 
INTRODUCTION.
of Christ, and to find at length his home in
heaven, and his sphere of action in eternity.  This
idea of progress, - through grace by faith, and in
the path of sacrifice and love,- is the grand
idea of Christianity.   But  it is not that progress
which is spoken of in the world and in the philosophic and rationalistic schools.   Their's is a godless progress, a merely human progress, an illusion and a dream; the speech is as sounding brass
and a tinkling cymbal, and the end is disappointment and disgrace.  It is so, because men do not
include ill their idea of progress the truth concerniljg the personal and living God, revealed to
us in the gospel and through the Church of Jesus
Christ.   When that faith is lost to man, his progress is that of one who rushes headlong in the
dark, and sees not the gulf toward which he is
hastening.
The rationalistic schemes in vogue in our own
day would seem to rest, as upon a basis, on three
principles, two of which are positive and the third
negative.   Tile  two  positive  principles are, the
unity and identity of substance, and the mutable
and  variable character of truth.   The  negative
principle is, the denial of the existence of any revelation aside from that which is supposed to be
made to each individual through his own mind arind
spirit. The presence of these principles may clearly
be detected, not merely in the writings of the phi
xil 
INTTRODUCTIOjV.
losophizers of the day, but also in the tendencies
of our popular religionists, who have practically
annulled the authority of the Word of God, by admitting in its extremest rigor the fatal right of
private judgment as to the meaning of the Scriptures, and who have no more idea of a divinely
established church than a barbarian has of a constitutional government.   It is against that threefold
basis of rationalism that we are now called to put
forth all the strength we possess; and there is no
work of more sacred obligation for us, at this hour,
than to declare the opposite principles of the infinite and radical distinction between God and the
universe; of the immutable and unvarying nature
of truth, as contradistintguished from human opinions; and of the binding force and sole sufficiency
of the revelation once for all made to the world by
Jesus Christ, and perpetuated in the visible Church.
Other themes possess but slight importance as compared with these; about them lie the issues of life
death.
With one remark, in addition, these introductory
observations shall be terminated. Much has been
said in the following Lectures concerning the origin
of the world, the course of human events, and the
progress of our race. The views entertained upon
the latter two of these subjects will vary according
to the idea held respecting the foremost of the
three.  Let it then be  observed that there is a
xiii 
INTRODUCTION.
crucial test of all theories of the origin of the universe.  It is the Catholic dogma of the creation:
"In princizpio Deus creavit colum et terram." It
is impossible to misconstrue those words; it is
equally impossible to evade them. A man must
accept them or refuse them.   If he hold  them
frankly and honestly, he cannot be a pantheist.
If, on the other hand, he stagger at them, and
hesitate about receiving them, he is not to be depended upon. And if any one deny them outright,
we maintain that there is for him no possible choice
save between the schemes of Dualism and Pantheism. The dogma of the creation, as opposed to the
hypothesis of emanation or that of development,
a dogma sublime above all others, as well as first
of all in order, - is declared to us in the Scriptures
and secured to us in the Creed, to the end that we
may be forever settled and established in the
truth; that the dark problem, against which the unenlightened mind has ever dashed itself in fruitless
striving, may be cleared up; that we may have a
rational and satisfying cosmogony; and that the
whole of life may be rendered real and practical
and comnprehensible to man. When that dogma is
denied, all is in effect denied. When the belief in
a God who created the world has been lost, all is
lost that is stable or permanent in human thought.
If the theories to which reference is hereinafter
made can be reconciled with the first article of the
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INTRODUCT'ION.
Christian faith, we are ready to withdraw our objections to those schemes.   But if, on the contrary,
it be found impossible to harmonize them with that
article, we charge them with being radically antichristian; and we shall classify them with the great
traditional heresy of the ages, until cause be shown
why they should not be assigned to that stock, and
until it be proved that, as to leading ideas and practical results, they are not substantially one and the
same with it.
XV  
LECTURES.
4
LECTURE I.
THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
THE seasons of Advent and Lent have been from
very ancient time regarded in the Church of Christ
as especially suitable for the work of instructing the
people in the higher mysteries of the Faith. There
are at those times strong, though silent, influences
about us which affect the heart with unusual force,
and dispose to a more thoughtful attention to the
word of life; and the power of the Spirit is upon us
then in fuller measure and with more evident effect.
Accordingly it is purposed, by God's permission, to
devote a part of this season of Lent to studies of
the class referred to, by means of a course of lectures, ill which the subject shall be the EXISTENCE
OF ALMIGHTY GOD.
They who watch and comprehend the current of
modern thought, will not feel surprised at my choice
of a theme. For the great question of our day is
about the Personality of the Deity, with all that the
term implies. It is not in dispute whether there
1 
2      THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
be, or be not, a God; but whether the God, whose
existence is in terms admitted, be, or be not, a Personal God.   Upon this point the controversy is
joined. On the one hand, we find a series of propositions, clear and intelligible, concerning the Almighty Being, in which are included affirmations
touching His eternity, His providence, His acts in the
past, His purposes in the future, and His relations to
the universe and to mankind. This body of doctrine
is formulated in the Creed of the Catholic Church.
On the other hand, there may be noticed a class of
expressions, variable, misty, vague, and unintelligible, concerning a somewhat which is, for convenience'
sake, styled God.   These constitute a kind of tissue
in which are packed the religious thoughts of the
free-thinklers and rationalizers of the period.  It is
proposed in the following lectures to contrast these
two ideas of the Deity, so far as the looseness of the
latter will permit: - to compare the dogma and the
speculation, the substance and the shadow, the truth
and the fable, the reality and the dream.
In position, in importance, and in necessity, this
subject stands second to none.
In position; because the question about the existence of Almighty God precedes all others that can
be raised whether in religion or in philosophy.
In importance; because He hath none that may
be compared with Him, and we, without Him, are
less than nothing. 
THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
In necessity; because of the rashness, the levity,
the ignorance with which His being, His attributes,
and His works are treated of or referred to by the
writers and talkers of our day.
The task in hand is, therefore, approached with
serious convictions of duty, as respects the honor of
the Almighty and the safety of the souls of men.
If He be what He is represented to be in the Creed,
then is the rationalistic conception of Him an outrage on His majesty and a libel on His name. If,
on the other hand, the Rationalists are correct, then
are we Christians the victims of a delusion, and our
hope in Him, our love for Him, our fear of Him, are
but phases of childish superstition.
Let me open this great theme, by drawing a
clear and sharp distinction.  It is the  distinction
between  the Church  and Philosophy.   All who
think and believe as the Church instructs us, have a
faith; while they who think and speculate independently of her definitions, can rise no higher than
the level of a probable opinion. A faith is the gift
of God to us in the Church; while the suggestion
of an opinion is the highest attainment of Philosophy.
The Church has her Creed. It is unvariable and
fixed. It has come to us from the earliest days.
That Creed, so far as it relates to the Most High
and undivided Trinity, is held (and we rejoice to
remember this) by multitudes who are not exter
8 
4       THE CHURCH ANVD PHILOSOPHY.
nally in union with us. When, therefore, I speak
of the faith, I mean the belief in God which is expressed in that Creed; and all who think of Him as
He is therein described, we place together as holding,
so far forth, the Church view, the Christian idea.
Upon the other side we set all those persons who
hold opinions at variance with the articles of the
Creed, and we comprehend their views under the
general name of philosophy. W\e do this, remembering that the themes of philosophy, in the highest
sense of the word, are the same as those of theology;
that tile chief studies of the ancient philosophers
were about God, man, the soul, our duties, and our
destinies; and that it is possible to speculate on these
subjects independently of revelation. Opinions about
Almnighty God, when formed and held without reference to the Creed of the Church, may be termed,
without harshness, philosophical opinions; and their
maintainers we regard, not as believers, but as philosopl)hers. There were schools of philosophy in the
time of our Lord and his apostles; St. Paul refers
to them and warns the faithful against them. There
are schools of philosophy now, in our own day, and
in our own land, and in our very midst; and we,
who stand upon the apostolic platform, must bear
our witness against them. The modern schools have
as little authority as the ancient; whatever they may
call themselves, we owe them no more deference or
respect. 
THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
We class, therefore, under the head of philosophic
speculation all those views which differ from the
standards of the Church; and we say, that if a man
believes the Creed, he has a faith, and that if he
denies it he has a philosophy, And so, iii the philosop)hic schools of the period, we shall find ideas
very different from those entertained and taught in
the Church. We shall find the particular views of
men, stated with grace of diction, presented with
plausibility, defended by weighty arguments, asserted
with zeal, full often recommended by the pure and
moral lives of their maintainers. But yet we shall
feel that these men are offering us a philosophy and
not a faith; and that if we were to exchange what
we have received for what they would give we
should be bartering confidence for hesitation, assurance for doubt, and humble trust in Another for
reliance in self.
To these philosophic schools must we go, however,
in order to learn what are the opinions of men concernillg Almighty God. Nor shall we reck, though
among these schools there be some whose members
style them Christian churches, and propose their
own speculative theories for consideration as Chlristian doctrine. On the contrary, we shall regard such
claims as but additional instances of groundless
opinions on the part of their maintainers.  To hear
such claims need cause us no surprise, for it seems
the most natural thing in the world that they should
$ 
6      THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
be made. If men entertain erroneous views of God,
of Christ, of sin, of redemption, it would seem to
follow of necessity that their views respecting themselves should also be incorrect.   Since the philosophlic schools, exhibiting no stability, vary incessantly in their opinions about Almighty God, we
cannot count as better than an opinion the special
views which they may hold concerning their own
corporate character.   We  shall, therefore, go  to
them, whatever they may style themselves, as we
would go to schools of opinion, which in fact they
are; and from them we shall learn how the human
mind thinks of God, when that mind has shaken
itself free from the restraints of law and has rejected the traditions of the past.  We  shall then
compare these results with the articles of faith as
taught, the same everywhere and always, in the
Church;-.and thus we shall obtain the double advantage, first, of a clearer view of the truth, and secondly, of a more loving appreciation of its worth
and power.
But a difficulty may suggest itself to the mind
of somine one here present; a question may arise
upon the design which has been announced. To
some it nmay appear as though the subject chosen
for these lectures were too simple a one to admit
of protracted discussion.   It might  be said, all
men, or almost all, believe in God. All admit
His existence; all do Him reverence, and confess 
THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
their obligation to obey Him. Why then select a
theme about which there is practically so little variance among men?  Why not rather choose some
subject distinctly characteristic of the system of the
Church?
Alas, my hearers, these are but assumptions.
To name the name of God is not enough; to say
that a man believes in Him is not enough; to admit
His existence is not sufficient. The name which
you give Him must be His own name, and not the
name of another. The faith in Him must not be an
erroneous faith, but a true one.   The confession of
His existence must accord with the sublime facts of
His eternal nature and being. There be gods many
and lords many in these days, but unto us there is
only the one God, the very and  the true.   The
doctrine of Almighty God is indeed the first of all;
but there, at the threshold and at its mnere anniouncement, men stumble and fall. Count not too
surely on the correctness of any one's conceptions
of Him until you know how those conceptions have
been formed; whether the mind has humbled itself
before His word, or whether the will has marked
out for itself a path, and struck away therein.
There is not perhaps a greater want at this hour, a
deeper want, a more urgent want, among our people, than that of a true and right knowledge of
God. Even from the first has man erred therein.
Our first parents doubted of Him; they mistook His
7 
8      THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY
character, and in that error they disbelieved His
word. And this they did, although He was with
them as a father and a friend, although He communed with them face to face, and called them by
their names.  It is a strange and a most instructive
picture. With them, day by day; accustomed to
walk with them among the trees of the garden;
wont to reason with them and to teach them, as a
parent deals with the child: not even then did the
Lord God succeed in impressing on their minds
and hearts a correct idea of Himself. They mistook Him altogether.  They thought, "He will not
keep His word; and, though He promise, yet He
will not perform." And so, they considered, that
they might with impunity taste the forbidden fruit,
although He  had declared in their ears, "in the
day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."
If then, in Eden, and ere yet they had fallen from
original righteousness, our first parents had and
acted on a false impression of God, notwithstanding the advantage of a habitual, a most intimate
intercourse and communion with Him; - let us not
marvel that aberrations should be found to-day,
and every day, and everywhere on this subject;
aberrations in the course of human thought, as
men plod wearily through the world. Error there
is, on this first point, on this fundamental truth;
error, wvide-spread and profound.  It shall be shown
to you; it shall be set before you, in its deepest 
THE CHURCH ANVD PHILOSOPHY.
shades of gloom; and you shall see what horrible
heresies have arisen to hide from our eyes the Lord
God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.
You shall hear of schemes of doctrine in which the
true idea of Him has vanished, although His name
be, for decency's sake, retained.  And  then  the
ramifications of error shall be traced; its influence
pointed out; its tracks and footprints noted in
places where they were unsuspected; until you
feel that for want of knowledge of this first article
of the Creed, multitudes are in actual and extreme
peril; and until you thank the good Lord for preserving us from the calamity of losing the truth, as
many in our midst have lost it forever.
To proceed. The observations already made
have been but preliminary. It was intended to introduce by them the subject to which your close
attention is to be called.   And in order to show in
what course we are to journey together, I would
next remark, that there exists, and has existed from
very ancient days, a certain infidel theory which,
though not widely taught at the present time in its
scientific form, underlies most of the popular errors
of tile (lay.  It concerns the nature and manner of
existence of Almighty God, and it may be regarded
as the just expression of the cast of modern philosophic thought on those mysteries.   I refer to the
system commonly known as Pantheism. That
system will form the subject of our studies; and
9 
10     THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
you are now invited to a comparative view of the
philosophic theory known as Pantheism, and of the
Christian faith as contained in the Creeds of the
Catholic Church. The discussion will be arranged
as follows:  In the next lecture, it is proposed to state the
system of Pantheism in its crude, its abstract, its
theoretic form.
In the third lecture of the course, I shall endeavor
to show under what shapes, and in what quarters
we meet with that system in its practical operation;
for in its theoretic form, it is, as yet, hardly known
or admitted amongst us.
In the fourth lecture, the consequences and results
of the theory will be pointed out; since in these we
find our strongest arguments against it.
The fifth lecture will be devoted to the presentationI of the Christian ideas of Almighty God, as
gathered from that revelation of Himself which He
has made to us through His eternal Son.
And, in the sixth, and closing lecture, we shall
contrast the life of one who holds the pantheistic
scheme with that of the believer, and exhibit the
probable working of the two systems in the way of
this mortal existence and at the hour of death.
And now may the Holy Spirit, whose aid and
blessing we invoke, guide the preacher and the
hearer into the fuller knowledge and deeper love of
the truth. 
THiE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
In bringing these introductory observations to a
conclusion, two suggestions will be made on points
connected with our general subject.
The first is this: that while the word Pantheism
is very frequently used, the system known by that
name is but imperfectly understood. And hence it
has come to pass that careless, ignorant, or interested speakers allow themselves the widest latitude
in its employment; while the ordinary hearer gathers from it only a vague and uncertain impression
of evil because he knows not precisely what it
means.   It is convenient for the unlearned to have
within reach some high-sounding term, with which
to lay about him, in emergencies, to the surprise
and  alarm of the vulgar.  In  this manner,  the
term  "Pantheism"  has  been employed.   When
the partisan does not know precisely what to say
against some dogma or some view which he regards as erroneous or unsound, he cries out, as a
last resort, that it is pantheistic, trusting with that
wordy blast to make an end. But such a charge,
although it may at first alarm, through its power
of suggesting a freight of unknown horrors, soon
ceases to terrify, especially if too frequently repeated; for the people, attaching no very precise idea
to the word, are not likely to feel the proper degree
of abhorrence for things pantheistic, because they
do not know what Pantheism is. Full often has
the preacher heard this term employed in a loose,
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12  TIE CHURCHl AND PHILLOSOPHY.
impracticable way, and in cases where there was no
ground at all for the charge. For this reason, the
attempt will be made to give a clear definition of
the word and an intelligible account of the system.
If that attempt should prove successful, the result
will follow, that, while you recoil from that dark,
that gloomy, that hopeless theory with the deepest
horror, you will at the same time have formed too
clear an idea of it to be in danger of tracing it or
thinking that you  see it where it is not.  The
remark has been made of a certain great commentator on the Holy Scriptures, deceased some two
centuries ago, that he was crazed on the subject of
an early sect of heretics known as the Gnostics, so
that there was hardly a chapter in St. Paul's Epistles, in which he did not think he saw allusion to
gnostic opinions or gnostic error.   Thus has it been
in a measure with Pantheism. Men cry out that it
is here, that it is there, whenever they meet with a
difficulty which they are too ignorant or too lazy
to grapple with and master, or whenever they would
refute a doctrine unpalatable to their taste.  Thus,
when we speak of Christ as having the common humanity of all our race, some cry "Pantheism!"  Or,
when we refer to all the faithful as truly and really in
Christ, and He in them, there are well-meaning folks
who utter the same exclamation, because they think
that they ought to make some protest, and yet can
imagine nothing else to say. But, brethren, all error 
THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
is not pantheistic.   And our attempt to explain the
system will involve an indirect defence of certain
doctrines of the Church; since when you conme to
know what it really is, you will perceive how idle are
some of those charges which are brought by sciolists
against the mysteries of redemption.
The second and final suggestion for your thoughts,
dear brethren in Christ, is this: that studies such as
those now proposed may help to prepare us, under
the blessing of God, and under thle guidance of the
Holy Ghost, for meeting the last danger which comes
on the inhabitants of the earth, as the end of the
world approaches.   We  are told, that, before the
Lord's return to judgment, antichrist shall come.
Who  is antichrist? and what?   The  answer to
these questions our studies in philosophy may help
to furnish.   Be  not misled.   Antichrist, it seems,
is more likely to appear in the habit of a speculative philosopher than in the vestments of a pope.
The  real  antichrist, I think, will be the reason
of man; that reason in its final attitude, when,
having first refused the guidance of revelation,
having despised the Church and thrown away the
scriptures, having theorized for itself, having sought
out many inventions in the field of thought, having
announced its own conclusions as the sum of all
wisdom and knowledge, it stands, at length, erect
and defiant, proclaiming its self-sufficiency and dedaring its independence of any God above, of any
is 
14     THE CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY.
law, tradition, order, faith below. Do not look for
antichrist in any of the temples of the Lord; nor
among men, who, however grievously they may have
erred, do still in substance hold the faith.  He cometh not that way. But look for him in the schools
of an ungodly speculation; in the labyrinths of independent thought; in the pulpits where is preached
the self-glorification of man. That is the road
whereby he comes. And when, according to prophecy, the night sets in, that night of falsehood and
error with which he shall obscure the knowledge
of God, the Lord shall save us, if we cling to the
faith once delivered to the saints, utterly refusing
to have any other creed than that of ancient time.
And so shall we be in peace; and we, the Israel of
God, shall have light in our dwellings; while beyond there shall not be an house where there is not
one dead. 
PANTHEISM IL ITS THEORETIC FORM.   1
LECTURE II.
PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.
IN the opening lecture of this course, its general
subject was announced to be, a comparison between
the speculative theory known as Pantheism, and the
Christian faith as contained in the Creed. It is now
proposed to present, in its scientific form, the theory
referred to, and to show what is the pantheistic conception of God.   The word has an ill-starred sound;
to place it in conjunction with the symbol of the
Catholic faith is to set death and life in contrast.
But perhaps the term would be less appalling if better understood.   Regarded at a distance, the spectre
looms before us with formidable mien; but it might
yield to a vigorous blow, or even melt in the ray of
a light held full in front. To those who are bewitched by Pantheism it is, indeed, as fatal an adversary as a man could encounter on his pathway. But
there is actually no reason why any one should be
led off by it. For it is marked by that weakness
which belongs to the illogical and the absurd.  It
is repulsive, it is cold.  It has grandeur, but that
grandeur  is the grandeur of obscurity.  Its language is impressive, but this results from a profit
15 
16  PANTHEISM. IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.
less mysticism. This evening we will consider the
theory in its simple and abstract form. Afterwards,
its application will be pointed out, and its falseness
exposed.   In all this, may that blessed Spirit be our
guide whose aid we still invoke!
A distinction has already been drawn between the
Church and the School of Philosophy. The Church
is that divinely appointed institution in and by which
the simple and unalterable revelation of God is preserved in the world and everywhere presented to mankind. The Philosophic School, on the other hand,
is an invention of human origin, where changeful
and complex opinions are ventilated and discussed.
Now, the first question in philosophy is that which
touches the existence of God, and the second concerns His nature. And since the Church and the
School differ mainly in this, that the latter perpetually asks questions while the former constantly instructs, the first article of the Christian faith is
that which declares the existence of the Almighty,
and the next is that which tells us who and what He
is, and what He has done.
Philosophy, however, (and by this I mean the human reason speculating freely without reference to
revelation,) admits at the outset that there is a God.
To do this is doubtless unavoidable; for atheism is
moral, intellectual, and spiritual death, and genuine
atheists are, and always have been, and always must
be, very few and very far between.   Philosophy, 
PANTIIEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.   17
therefore, repels with virtuous indignation the charge
of denying the existence of a Deity. It has ever been
so. The ancient schools and the modern were alike
in this point. The epicureans and the stoics whom
St. Paul encountered on Mars' Hill, acknowledged,
after their own fashion, the gods.   The  rationalists
of to-day, be they German, French, English, or
American, admit the term and employ the sacred
name; and among the leading heresiarchs might be
mentioned some who have expended much power in
framing ingenious demonstrations of a religious
character to show that there is a Supreme Being,
and to clear up the mystery of His nature.
It is not, therefore, on the question whether there
be a God that the Church and the Philosophers join
issue. So far they agree. But when they go on to
speak of His nature they differ. When it is asked,
" What is God? " the systems part, never' to meet
again.
The ground of this divergence is the total antagonism in views respecting the personality of the
Deity. Does God exist as an impersonal substance,
like air, or water? or has He a true personality, like
men.  This question is met by opposite replies.
The Church declares a personality in the Deity; a
personality in the highest and fullest sense of the
word. She teaches her children to believe, that as
each one of them has a true, distinct, practical personality, so likewise is it with the God who made
2 
18 PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.
them all.  Nay; she does not merely say that what
is true of them is true of Him; she implies that it
is true of Him in a higher sense, in a completed
sense. So that, whatever may be the elements of
proper personality, they exist in us but imperfectly,
in Him with absolute fulness.  This is the Catholic
faith. Philosophy, on the other hand, opines that
God has no personality; that He is an absolute, omnipresent, and impersonal substance; as it were, all
atmosphere in which everything lives; a heat diffused
in which everything is kept warm; an element in
which everything swims. In that sense philosophy
considers that there is a God, and admits that God
to be eternal.
The personality of Almighty God is either in
terms or by implication, incessantly denied, even by
those who admit their belief in His existence.  This
is a phenomenon so strange as to invite to investigation. To us Christians there seems to be a contradiction here, and, although the persons to whom
we refer may not be aware of the true state of the
case, we cannot but conjecture that there is something behind to account for their position.  The
human reason, when acting in pure independence,
is the least logical, the most unreasonable agent that
can be named. Still, we ought not to ascribe so
singular a phenomenon as that under consideration
to mere caprice, unless it can be accounted for in no
other way. To admit that there is a God, and yet 
PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.   19
to say that He has no personal qualities or attributes,
sounds indeed, to Christian ears, like trifling; it
seems as much as to say, with one breath, that God
is, and with the next, that He is not. But may
there not be something behind and beyond - something to account for this apparent contradiction, to
harmonize this seeming discrepancy. May we not
guess at a basis of some sort on which these statemenits rest, and may there not be some baleful light
in which, if viewed, they will assume a horrible consistency? I think and hope to show that this is the
case; that the apparently flippant denials of God's
providence, and power, and active interest and interference in our affairs, are all cognate to a philosophic
scheme of great gravity and importance; that these
assertions are not the assertions of levity, but the
postulates of intellectual rebellion against the truth;
that these opinions are not mere heterogeneous notions
thrown carelessly together, or uttered just as they
chance to rise to the surface in the seething-pot of
this uneasy, bubbling, frothy mind of ours, but part
and parcel of a well-conceived and carefully digested
theory.  By that theory only can they be explained.
That theory is the theory of Pantheism. So that if
one should ask what the popular language of the day
means, and why any one should refuse to admit a
personality in Almighty God, why any man should
think conicerning Him, not as we Christian believers
think, but as if He were like unto an aeriform fluid, 
20   PANTHEISM INLV ITS THEORETIC FORM.
a gas, a force, an element, the true answer would be
that the explanation of these strange notions must
be sought in the theory of Pantheism. It is not,
of course, intended to say that all who hold the loose
speech so often heard about us accept and profess
the system to which that kind of speech belongs;
but we affirm that the connection between the system and the language is direct./ The pantheistic
theory is the proper and natural theory of intellectual philosophy regarded as independent of revelation; and by it only can these conceptions, which
otherwise were mere fantastic crudities, be explained.
Hence may be inferred the vast importance of an
acquaintance with that execrable system; for, when
once a man has mastered it he will know the real
meaning of what he hears, and he shall never again
be at a loss to explain these false, delusive dreams
about Almighty God. For the whole system is one
vast dream, one shapeless sea of gloom and woe,
without light, without life, cold, remorseless, devouring- an abyss in which all honest conviction is engulfed, all manly belief buried- and the opinions to
which we have referred are but the vapors of the
surface of that waste, the steam from its unwholesome face.
Let us then, without delay, proceed to consider
the theory of Pantheism in its abstract and philosophic form, that having measured the depth thereof,
and having learned, by lead and plummet, the foul 
PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.  21
ness of the slime below, we may forever abhor the
system as it deserves to be abhorred, and denounce
it as it ought to be denounced.
/The theory of Pantheism may be thus expressed:
t asserts the unity and identity of substance, and
denies to the finite any real existence apart from the
infinite. I hasten, however, to present these thoughts
in more popular terms. It is held by the maintainers of the system now under consideration that
there is only one substance throughout the universe.
Of that substance everything is formed. The sea
and the dry land, the mountain and the river, the
bird and the beast, the flowers and the trees, the
bodies and souls of men, the skies, the stars, the
suns, the world, the universe throughout, all are of
one and the selfsame substance.   It matters not
what differences or what varieties there be in form,
figure, properties, or uses; all things at last are essentially one and the same.  " Unity and identity of
substance." This is the pantheistic principle. Earth,
air, fire, water, all at last, one.   The ground on
which you walk is substantially the same as you that
walk on it. The book in which you read is of the
same substance as your mind which comprehends it.
This pulpit in which I preach is of the same substance as I. All things one and the same. But
where is God? you ask. Ah, brethren, this one
substance is God also. This substance is the only
God. 
2    PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.
But how did the world, in its present state, come
into existence?   That is the question which the
philosophers profess to answer. They speak with
contempt of the Catholic dogma of creation, styling
it "The Manufacture Theory."  They find it impossible to conceive of a Deity who is able to cause
anything to be which was not before; and they propose to give us in place of the ridiculous idea of a
production, by manufacture, as they term it, a rational, intelligible, and satisfactory explanation of
the origin of the universe.  Let us hear this explanation and consider how charmingly it smoothes
the way before us, and how admirably it is fitted to
satisfy the religious and candid mnind.
The universe was not created; it came by development or emanation.  Does any one comprehend
what that means?
If it means anything intelligible, or if we may
gather its meaning by study of the whole tenor of
their thoughts, that meaning would seem to be as
follows:  There is but one single substance throughout the
universe.  That substance is eternal; there never
was a time before which it was not. So existing
from eternity, it had no personality nor any qualities, attributes, or powers, such as we understand to
belong to persons and to constitute them such.  It
was without consciousness, without knowledge, without activity.  It WAS;  no more.  The idea thus 
PANTHEISMI IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.  28
presented to us is that of a vast, illimitable flood;
of a great, unfathomable deep; of a hollow silence,
a heave unconsciousness, a condition, mute, speechless, thoughtless. Imagine, if you can, this indescribable, this immense condition, or mass, or state,
(or by whatever name you may choose to call it,) and
you have before you the only eternal being. Let us
apply to it, for the sake of convenience, the term
God.
Such, then, from eternity; still, sombre, vast,
infinite; without knowledge, or thought, or action,
or result; such would this substance ever have remained but for an agency within itself. That agency
was a kind of inner movement. The mass so indescribable, so incomprehensible, was agitated from
within by an equally indescribable and incomprehensible motion. There was, from within, a tendency
toward the surface. The great belly of blackness
and unconscious horror, rumbled as it were, and the
abyss, for it seems no better, was in labor and would
bring forth. The result of this movement was seen
in the uprising of certain definite forms and shapes.
The substance, working from within, threw itself out
into visible phenomena. Thus, there came forth a
sky; and thus by aggregation stole forth the planets
and the stars.  And thus, to limit ourselves to this
mundane sphere, the round world resulted from that
inner force.   The earth was then a part of that
eternal substance, localized; a finite form of that 
24   PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.
infinite. And since that substance was God, therefore the earth was God. It was God made visible
in the form of ground, and seas, and hills, and plains.
The same is affirmed of il the animals.   They
were forms thrown out from that inner germination,
all of the same substance, and all parts of God, or
realizations of God.
We have next to hear the pantheistic explanation
of the existence of mankind.  It has been remarked
that the eternal substance now spoken of and which
the pantheists call God, had, at first, no knowledge
and no consciousness. When, agitated by the inner
motive force, it threw itself out into visible forms,
as described, each of those forms expressed some
tendency, some capability of this eternal substance.
But as yet it had no consciousness, there was nought
but a blind appetency, and a pushing forth on every
hand, and a groping in and through the gloom. At
length, however, the time arrived at which a higher
development should take place. For out of these
unconscious efforts there was at length evolved a
higher form thaii any which had yet occurred. This
new phenomenon, so thrust upward as from the inner
heave and surge of the vast womb, in some manner
not explained, suddenly advanced to the perception
of its own existence.  This fraction of the eternal
substance suddenly perceived the fact expressed in
the words, "I exist, I am."   It saw that it was.
It beheld in front of it the universe; it perceived
;1 
PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.,5
itself to be therewith, face to face. It was conscious
at length; the infinite substance thought and reasoned and took counsel with itself at last.  This
was, of course, God. It was God arriving at a
higher development than any yet reached. It was
God coming to the consciousness of Himself. When
God was only that great illimitable waste, God had
no knowledge of His own existence, no personality, no power.   When God developed into stars,
and suns, and an earth, there was as yet no personality, because they are not persons but things, and
they were but the substance, -God realized in forms.
When God developed into trees and animals, there
were motion, and force, and appetite, and iniistinct,
but no more. When, however, at the last, God took
this higher form and passed to consciousness, then,
for the first time, God saw Himnself; God became
fully aware of His own existence; God arrived at
the knowledge of God  in becoming  man.   Man
is a developed form of the Eternal Being; he is
that being reasoning, thinking, perceiving, knowing, speaking.   That substance never reasoned, nor
thought, nor perceived, nor knew, nor spake, before.
And that substance is eternal and is the only God;
and, therefore, God perceives not, nor knows, nor
reasons, nor thinks, nor speaks, but in man. There
is the sequence, the clear, necessary conclusion from
the premises. Man is God come to consciousness
of Himself; and God has no personality, and no
consciousness but in man. 
26   PANTHEISMf IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.
This, my hearers, is the philosophic theory which
underlies the speculative infidelity of the present age
and the present generation.   I leave to another lecture the work of tracing in its indications a view too
monstrous, too forbidding, to be openly and boldly
taught, and would therefore limit the remainder of this
evening's observations to reflection on the prospect
to which that theory would invite us. Look about
you, then, and consider how, according to that system, you must interpret, and how understand, the phenomnena which meet your eyes. All that you behold
is the one eternal substance in divers forms.  There
is nothing eternal but that substance. The forms
are not eternal; that only is eternal of which they
are made up.  So that all which you see is part
and parcel of God. There never was a creation.
The story in Genesis about the six days is but a
fable.  There is no Creator, and therefore nothing
was made.   All things have come to be what they
are in their own times and seasons by development,
without a plan, without a purpose, without the guidance and direction of a mind. An impersonal and
eternal substance is the only God.   These outward
shapes on which we look are the figures which that
impersonal essence has taken, without consciousness
and without method.   All visible phenomena  are
God; God under certain conditions of size, of color,
of property.   Look at the dull, inert stones of the
wilderness; it is God sleeping. Look at the brutes
endowed with instinct, but without intellect; that is 
PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.  27
God dreaming. Look at the thing which we call
man;  that is God  thinking, reasoning, desiring,
willing. The sky spread over all in its vaporous,
palpitating blue; that is the eternal substance spreading itself forth as a firmament above.   The seas
slow heaving to the sunlight, or dark below the nocturnal shade; they are the same eternal substance,
moaning through zone and hemisphere in blind pursuit of higher realizations.   The mountain ranges,
those spinal columns of this earthly frame, they are
but God, the eternal substance, consolidated in progressive development. Nor may the survey cease
at this point. As with material nature so with spiritual; they are one.   The  mind of man  is substantially one with his body.   The spirit, the soul,
the affections, have no real existence apart from the
corruptible frame in which they dwell. They are
but higher manifestations of the same eternal substance, the highest to which, by inward movement,
it has yet attained.* And as for all and each of
these, material and immaterial, corporeal and spiritual alike, no one of them has promise or prospect
of permanence, for nothing is eternal but that one
universal substance, and no mind guides its development; therefore, there can be no foretelling
its future directions. / The skies, the seas, the hills,
may all pass away, and other formations take their
place. A few years and there may be left no insect,
no bird, no gentle beast.   A  few ages and there
* See Note A. 
28  PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.
may exist no trace of man.   The substance which
now shows itself in these present forms is ever agitated from below and from within; and not one form
is permanent; not the earth, not man, not the soul.
All came forth by unconscious and unintelligent development. All is moving on and passing away.
The finite has no real existence. Man himself is
but a transient phenomenon, - a shadow,- and all
his works are dreams rather than realities.  Before
this world was evolved there was no personal agent
to determine what should be; and now that it exists there is no reason why it should remain; no will
orders its continuance, no intelligent power keeps it
in. being. There is not a form that hath permanency;
there is nothing visible or invisible that can last.
The material of yonder columns is fully as durable
as your souls; the whole thing is but a passing
show. All came forth out of darkness; all is drawn
in perpetually and swallowed up. Everything perishes but the one substance; that does not perish,
for that is God.
To revolt with horror from this appalling theory,
to cry aloud against it, to stop the ear to its merciless, its diabolical utterances, this must surely be the
course of every healthy mind. In its naked form,
as now presented, it might be almost universally repelled and rejected.  But I maintain that this is the
system on which all the speculative infidelity of our
age does actually rest, and that it contains the only 
PANTHEISM IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.   29
logical explanation of the popular heresies touching
the impersonality of the Divine Being. This consanguinity it will be my design in the next lecture to
display so clearly that even the unlearned must recognize it.  And, to approach the conclusion of the
present remarks, let no one flatter himself with the
idea that a system such as this could never attain a
hold upon the public mind.   Why  might it not.
What should restrain its growth were it not resisted
and kept under by the word and sacramental power
of the Holy Ghost? There are parts of the globe
to-day wherein this system flourishes as the basis of
the popular religion; and even here, where we hold
high conceptions of our intelligence, there are writers and teachers whose thoughts are steeped in this
poisonous colnpound, and who, notwithstanding, are
esteemed and eulogized as the wisest and most judicious of men. But while we admit with shame
that this is the case, we are glad to remember the
history of the past and to observe how certainly the
truth reasserts itself, though for the time depressed.
Wherever they have thrown away the glorious faith
in the living God and have lain them down in pantheistic dreams, the race has declined, men have
fallen into degradation and intellectual torpor, and
the way for the inevitable reaction has been prepared.
In time the truth avenges itself. It did so memorably in the seventh century.   About the year of our
Lord 600, when the East lay sleeping and buried in 
30   PANTHEISMIL IN ITS THEORETIC FORM.
the philosophic stupor, its limbs relaxed, its energies
gone, on a sudden, and in the dead midnight, the
avenger came. There arose in Arabia a man mighty
in word and deed, whose mission seemned to be (and
I doubt not that he had a mission) to revive that
grand, that sacred truth, the personality and unity
of God. Mohammed did not live in vain. Infidel
though he was, impostor though he was, he yet
spake truth when he denied the pantheistic lie, whenl
he asserted a God creator of heaven and earth, when
he affirmed that God alone is from eternlity, that all
things were made by His mind, His hand, His will,
that He and His universe are in substance distinct.
That was the creed of Mohammed. In that name
the scimitars flashed to the light.   In that name
those scimitars swept the rank fields like the sickles
through the standing grain.  In that name his followeirs overran the East, the Persian empire and old
Assyria, the African wilds, the far Cathay, the shores
of Indus and the Ganges. It was but one word of
truth against the brood, voluminous and interminable, of philosophy.   One word of truth, but that
word enough, the truth that God is God.   Before
the Saracens everything fell, simply because there
was life in their creed, and because the countries that
they overran were morally, intellectually, spiritually,
physically dead.   Before the Saracens everything
fell. Everything, for a time, but not forever. Everything, till they were met, at the West, by the soldiers 
PANTHEISM ILV ITS THEORETIC FORM.   81
of the cross; by men who had a higher faith, a
fuller knowledge, even the faith in the high and undivided Trinity, sublimest of all truths, the faith in
Jesus Christ and Him crucified, grandest and most
consoling of all that the mind of man hath received.
There, against the cross-hilted swords of the good
kInights, was the scimitar broken.   But elsewhere
it did its work and well. Remember now for your
comIfort, that its main strength lay in its proclamation of one personal and living God to people who
denied that personality and who confounded the Creator and His works. And I would ask, in conclusion, if this were the case when human agents alone
were visibly engaged, - if the mere idea of the existence of such a being could so transform, strengthen,
nerve the men who held it,- if the absence of that
idea could so have demoralized and degraded the
men who had lost it, - what should be the effect of
the appearance among us of that very Being himself?
He cometh now, He cometh at the last.  Oh that it
be not in burning wrath against the falsehoods of
mankind! Oh that it be not in judgment, but in
mercy! But be it as it may, cease we not our
confession of Him as He is revealed unto us in the
Church's Creed; and as for the theories of the schools
of the day, let them be to us as the accursed thing
wherein the children of the Lord will have no dealings whatever, lest they commit folly in Israel and
be consumed at the last and awful account. 
82    PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIO.NS.
LECTURE III.
PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
IT was our object, in the preceding lecture, to
present the system commonly known by the name
of Pantheism, in its correct, scientific form. You
are now aware that the word is not a mere vague
term, nor one which may be loosely applied to
almost any error against which the controversialist
may desire to protest; but that it is the distinctive
appellation of a theory as clear, as consistent, as intelligible as any that the mind of man or devil ever
framed to hide the truth of God.
Having displayed the scheme in its crude form
and in its technical expression, our next step must
be to trace it in its practical applications.   The
system has a history of its own.*   It is first encountered by the student when he investigates the
Brahminism of India; and it formed the basis of
the Egyptian and Chaldean religions, and of the
philosophy of Greece. It was revived by the Alexandrine school, in the vain attempt to resist and
oppose the advancing power of the faith of Jesus
Christ. In the Middle Ages it again appeared;
* See Note B. 
PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONVS.
and after some preludes and preparatory motions, it
burst forth once more, full formed, in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries.   In modern times it has
been taught with assiduity by the French and German metaphysicians, who have accurately reproduced
the principles of the ancient paganism; and front
these new sources its leading ideas have been once
more  diffused throughout the province of human
thought, in all their traditional antagonism to natural
and revealed religion.
You must, therefore, observe that there has been
in the world from very ancient times a vast metaphysical and historic doctrine, invented by men, and
displacing the revelations made to them from time
to time by our heavenly Father. Towards this
scheme the mind naturally gravitates the instant it
throws away the ideas of submission and obedience,
and enters upon the path of free and licentious
speculation.* This theory is now alive and active;
and it forms the secret inspiration of the rationalistic
systems of the day.   We do not assert that it is
held, to any considerable extent, in the shape in
which it was exhibited in the preceding lecture.
Few writers or speakers in this community would
openly profess the pantheistic creed in the terms in
which it has been formalized abroad. But we claim
that the system has attained to an influence unsuspected by those who have not looked into this
* See Note C.
3
38 
84    PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
subject with attention. The historic, ethical, and
psychological schemes of the "liberal" writers of
the day have been framed alongside of this great
heresy; and the popular idea of progress, apart
from Christianity, and independent of religion and
revelation, is but an application of its fatal principles. The doctrine of which we speak is everywhere and in everything.   Its signs may be traced
ill quarters where the word "Pantheism" is repudiated.  Its presence may be discovered in the very
midst of those who know it not by name. Its
secret workings are betrayed in speculations accounted harmless by the characteristic indifference
of the day. If this be so, and if the age be full of
pantheistic tendencies, if the metaphysical, moral,
and social sciences be infected with them, though
their maintainers and teachers ignore or conceal the
fact, then must it be a matter of prime importance
to trace the influence and operations of the system
wherever they may be discerned, and to show how
men may be tempted, seduced, tainted, poisoned by
it almnost at unawares.
But let me dwell for a moment on the fact that
a system may exercise great power even where in
its theoretic shape it is not understood.   A  man
needs not to have an intelligent- or, so to express
it, a philosophical - knowledge of a system, in order
to be influenced or governed by it.  Although quite
ignorant of it, he may notwithstanding be wholly in 
PANTHEiSM IN ITS APPLICATIONVS.
its power. Much of our action, physical and moral,
is involuntary action. Take, for example, Christians
in general, how few there are who have a thorough
and what we should call a scientific knowledge of all
the articles of the Creed!  It is not necessary that
they should.   The scientific knowledge of the faith
is what we term the "Science of Theology."   But
theology is the study of a very limited number.   It
is not necessary that every Christian should be a
theologian; it is neither necessary nor possible. To
hold the Creed, to live thereafter, to be moulded by
Church principles, to be thus fitted for heaven, all
this may be without any scientific theological acquaintance with the dogmas of religion.   Nor is
this true alone of things ethical and spiritual; it is
true of things physical as well.  How little is ordinarily known of the science of common things!
What a world of wisdom  and wonder is there all
about us, and yet how little is it understood! But
such scientific acquaintance with the material world
is, for the masses of the community, unnecessary
and unattainable. A knowledge of the science of
anatomy is not indispensable to enable one to walk.
He who is ignorant of even the rudiments of physiology digests and breathes as well as the profoundest student of that branch of knowledge. The soldier fights well and wins the victory though he have
no conception of the plan of the battle. But what
is true of the good is just as true of the evil. What
85 
86    PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
is true of Catholic theology is just as true of heresy.
As, on the one hand, a man may guide his way by
holy principles with which  he has no formal acquaintance, and may beautifully exemplify in his life
the power of a system which he would be utterly at
a loss to comment on or to explain, so on the other
hand may a man be holding and acting on principles
subversive of revelation, while he is without a suspicionI of their origin, their connections, their coinsequences. The very man who would revolt at the
theory of Pantheism nakedly stated, may yet be holding the essentials of that system.   He may be advocating pure pantheistic principles, though he knows
nought of the scientific form of that monstrous
scheme.  Two things, therefore, are necessary:  First,
to see the thing itself just as it is, to discern its form
and features, to visit the lair and to look at the monster in the remote retired places of its retreat; and
secondly, to trace its footprints outside, to show
where it has been and how it has wrought, though
itself unseen, to convince men in a word that they
may be its bond-slaves, though they have never looked
on the face of their tyrant.   The former of these
necessary works was performed in the preceding
lecture.   To the latter will this present lecture be
devoted.
What, then, are the offspring of this most repulsive parent? and what the brood which comes forth
from this abominable womb?   Let us consider.
1 
PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
The crime of Pantheism is this: that it removes
God entirely from the scheme of the universe. It
leaves no place, no work for God. It is a theory
with which the idea of a personal, an intelligent, a
living, thinking, speaking, acting God is wholly incompatible.   Although it admit the terms "God"
and "the Deity," yet it does so merely for coInvenience or as a concession to the popular belief.
But the personal God, the eternal God, the creator,
the ruler, the redeemer, the judge, the God who is
infinitely distinct from his works, this God has no
place in the pantheistic scheme.
Tile leading principles of the scheme are these:
Firstly, that the universe is substantially eternal.
Secondly, that things are what they are, not by
creation, but by emanation and development.
Thirdly, that the order of events is not determined
by a mind outside the world, but is a sequence from
laws within it.
Pourthly, that all movement and advance and accession are from within and not from without.
It may therefore be stated as probable or certain
that all prepositions, all theories, all views which
suppose or imply the absence of a personal God, and
attach a quality of digrity, sufficiency, divinity, to
finite things, are logically connected with the dark
and hopeless system of which we are treating, and
ought to be referred to it as to their genealogical
tree. I propose to illustrate this proposition by
reference to these six tendencies of our day.
87 
88    PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
Firstly, the tendency to assign to the world a very
high antiquity.
Secondly, the tendency to make of history a fatuitous and fatal sequence of events.
Thirdly, the tendency to represent mankind as
having been originally a set of barbarians but little
if at all above the brutes.
Fourthly, the tendency to exalt the human reason
above revelation.
Fifth]y, the tendency to affect an ignorance about
God.
And sixthly, the tendency to deny all and any objective truth.
There are many developments of Pantheism besides these, but to the consideration of these will
our present remarks be limited.
And first. We often hear the Mosaic account of
the creation impugned on the ground that the world
must be much older than that account would seem
to make it.  We are told that the earth must have
existed in its present state very much longer than
the account in Genesis would lead us to suppose,
and we are informed that there are grounds for assigning a very great antiquity to the human race.
It is asserted that in ancient geological formations
there have been found the remains of implements
which must have been made by men, or bones which
must have belonged to human beings; and that their
presence in such positions proves the existence here
on earth of men long before the times of Adam and
I
I
1, 
PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
Eve. Now it is not designed to discuss these points,
but simply to trace the relationship of particular
views and opinions. And all these theories,- of
the very great age of this globe, in its present form,
of the very remote antiquity of the human race,these we hold to be but tendencies toward the pantheistic position of the eternity of matter.   Men
do not like to say so; they would not admit it; but
the appetency is that way.   They long to get rid
of the Mosaic history simply because it is the history of a creation by God. Indulge them in this
desire, permit them to date back the origin of this
present order of things, say sixty thousand years,
and they will next insist on carrying it back six
hundred thousand; they will look farther and farther backward for its origin toward the eternity
which at length they would demand.   Whenever
you hear these views expressed, ascribe them to their
proper place. To claim that the earth and man, as
now existing, are of very great and vast antiquity,
is hesitatingly to move towards the assertion that all
matter and all substance are eternal.  It is, to feel
that way, to try you whether you will follow, to invite you toward the brink of that gulf. Such opinions are advanced, for the most part, by those who
give themselves to scientific study, and neglect or
decline to hear the word of God, by such as deal
exclusively or mainly in physical science, by such as
hold the modern forms of science to be completed
89 
40    PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
and perfect, rather than what they are, conjectural
shapes which another century's discoveries and
growth may revolutionize and wholly change.
And secondly, you find persons at this day who
would make of history a fortuitous or fatal sequence
of events.   This is of the essence of Pantheism.
Whenever any one speaks of the history, whether
of the world at large or of any particular tribe or
family or nation, as if some finite agents controlled,
some finite power directed it, you are ignorant, indeed, if you know not precisely what this means and
implies.   As, in the pantheistic scheme, there is no
place for a Creator, so there is none for a Governor.
" O Lord, our Governor, how excellent is Thy name
in all the world!" This is the language of the
Church. But such language cannot be uttered by
philosophy. On the other hand, you hear such propositions as these: - that history is but the result of
the development of the human mind; that the eras
and epochs of history are times at which some idea
prevails so powerfully as to rule and guide the course
of affairs; that the careers of nations are but the
steps and pathway of successive dominant thoughts;
that at each epoch constitutions and governments,
art and letters, religion and morals, are determined
as to their quality or character by a common motive
principle, the spirit of the age; that the development of the absolute essence, that eternal substance
of which we spoke, is always taking increasingly 
PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
perfect manifestations.   The basis of these and all
similar statements is one and the same,- the denial
that God bears any active and intelligent part in the
regulation and direction of the affairs of nations or
men. He who makes that denial may perhaps acknowledge that a God exists. But what and who
is a God who is nowhere efficiently, and who does
and knows and sees nothing?  It is a mere delusion.
If you separate God from the historical course of
this world, you thereby play into the hands of those
who, in their impious theory, would remove Him not
from history alone, but from the universe, and from
our very thoughts.   The idea that history is but a
fatal sequence of events is an idea of Pantheism,
and as near to it as a rib taken from its very side.
But thirdly, you will hear it often said that men
in their original state were rude barbarians and
grovelling degraded savages.   It is asserted that
the first men went on all-fours; that they had no
intelligible language; that they lived on roots; that
they were but a step above the beasts of t*he field:
then that they advanced by degrees to their present
state; that they invented language; that they formed
themselves into society; that they arrived by degrees
at the possession of laws, arts, religion. Now what
does all this mean, and with what theory is it allied?
With none save that theory of development which
is part and parcel of the pantheistic scheme, and has
no logical relation to any other philosophy under
41 
42     PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
heaven. When you hear any one talk of a supposed
original brute-like condition of mankind, - when you
hear the assertion that language is the invention of
man and not the gift of God to us, - when you hear
of the successive acquirements of our race, and of
their actual position as far superior to any enjoyed
by them heretofore, - mistrust the speaker, or rather
be sure that he too is anchored fast, though he perchance may not know it, to the pantheistic platform.
For, according to that theory, there was no God to
make man, no God to teach him, no God to enlighten him; therefore, he developed by degrees to
what he is become. And back of all this miserable
trifling about a primitive state of utter barbarism,
and about a language of growls or grunts slowly
working up to the fulness of such a system as the
English tongue,- back of all this lie the less conspicuous but not worse downfalls of the doctrine
that man was a brute before he became a man, and
before that a fish, and before that a gluten, and before that'an infusorial point.  It is all part and parcel of one and the same falsehood, that things are
what they are, not because God made them so, but
because the eternal substance developed blindly into
these forms.   And  that is the tenet of Pantheism.
In the fourth place, brethren, I call your attention
to the evident vestiges and foot-tracks of this heresy
in all that you hear so often and so boastfully said
of the sufficiency of the human reason to itself, and 
PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
of its power of independent  and salutary action
apart from the revelation of God.   If there be no
God whose mind made known to it shall constitute
the law of human thought, then indeed must the
reason be regarded as adequate to itself.  But to
say that it is thus adequate is to imply that there is
no God. All, therefore, that we hear of the native
powers of man, of the sufficiency of the human
mind, of our ability to formalize all faith, all works,
all belief, all duty, after our own will, all that men
claim as a kind of royal prerogative and birthright
in this behalf, smells of the system under discussion.
Reflect, again, my hearers, that under that system
there is really no God distinct from the common
substance of which we all are parts; that the human
mind is that substance, or a portion of it; that the
human consciousness is that substance recognizing
and comprehending itself.   This  tenet, although
blasphemous, is in fact the real ground and source
of all the high claims in behalf of the reason of man;
it is associated with them, and they are affiliated
with it. Why should we be bidden to rely upon
)ur native powers alone, except that they who so
exhort us doubt the existence of any other powers
in which to rest? If there be no God, the reason
must be sufficient to itself; and if you claim for it
such sufficiency, you are practically denying the need
of a God.   I point you, therefore, to all these statements and to all these claims made and set up by
48 
44    PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
men in the pride and naughtiness of their hearts,
and affirm that however they may be smoothed over
or toned down, or qualified for decenicy's sake, or
through fear of pushing matters to extremes, there
is underneath, notwithstanding, the same rank poison.  No  man  can serve two  masters.   If you
make of intellect a God, you dethrone the true God,
and cast Him out.  There is but one choice for the
mind, - to submit to God, or to curse Him and die.
And fifthly, the presence of pantheistic error may
be detected in another direction; as when any one is
found affecting an ignorance of God, which he ascribes to the extreme difficulty of knowing Him.
This sometimes sounds like a sheer affectation, and
it seems to be fashionable and is thought to be impressive, especially among the poets.   But there is
something beneath. It is a sole-mn trifling with the
hope of the world. In knowledge of God standeth
our eternal life. In knowledge of Him and of His
word modern civilization has been built up. What
were man if he knew not God at all?  And  how
much below his rightful place if he know Him but
imperfectly? Therefore, to say that there is any supreme difficulty about knowing God, or learning of
God, or coming to Him, is to imperil the very bond
of all our strength, the very spring of all our hopes.
Yet this is just what men do: affected men, conceited men, who stop their ears to His voice, and
then -complain that they can hear nothing; who turn 
PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
their faces away, and then morbidly lament their misfortune in not enjoying the sight of Him. Distrust
all this fashionable, this modern, this poetical cant
(for you find it full often in our nineteenth-century
poets) about the dimness of all the future and the
dread uncertainties of our position, and the sadness
of our lot in being forced to dwell with doubtfulness
and uncertainty for our constant companions.  Not
half, not a quarter of this is genuine. In a Christian
land like ours, in any land where there flourishes a
branch of Christ's Church, there is no real difficulty
in knowing God. We all know Him well enough for
practical purposes. We all know Him well enough
for our eternal salvation, and there are those who
know Him too well for their soul's peace.   Whenever you hear this disavowed, - whenever you hear
loose, vague talk about God, as though it were next
to impossible to satisfy one's self who He is, or what
He is, or where He is, how He exists, how He has
acted, or is acting now, whether He be or be not a
person as we are persons, - then mistrust the words
and look beneath for the scales, and the cloven feet,
and the slime of the vast heresy of the ages. Pantheism has for her office to obscure all clearness of
view, to destroy the power of lucid thought about
the Deity, - making of Him, not a person, but an
abstraction; not a being, but an influence or impression; not a reality, but a shadowy intangibility; not
a Creator and Governor distinct from that world
45 
46    PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONVS.
which He governs and created, but a kind of chemical base of the world; not a Lord upon the throne
of the universe, but an all-pervading substance, without concentration, intelligence, power, force, or will.
Such a God is utterly inconceivable, utterly unimaginable; a fleeting phantom to mock the weary
sight, the stumbling foot, the empty hand. And the
loose, discursive speech about the difficulty of knowing Him is true alone on the hypothesis that He is
such a nonentity as has been described.
And sixthly, and finally, you may rest assured of
the presence of pantheistic error in every case of denial of objective truth, of truth apart from him who
holds it to be true.   For there are those who tell
us that all is true to him which any man thinks to
be true.  This is to say that the truth is in us, in
our consciousness and in our thoughts.   And there
are those who say that every man may believe just
as he chooses to believe, - as much, as little. This
is to say that there is nothing which any of us ought
to believe to his soul's health. Down these chasms
the truth slides helplessly away, - for they are
chasms, and below are spread the black, deep waters
of the same heresy, the limbus of the lost, -for
these denials of a truth outside of us, apart from us,
independent of us, are based upon the assumption
that all is one and the same substance, and that all
things which we see are but transient and temporary
modifications thereof. In face of such a principle 
PANTHEISM IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
no doctrine, no fact, no article of faith, could for one
moment live.   When men say that what any one
thinks to be true is true for him; that for truth we
must look within; that every one of us is, in his
sphere, the judge of truth; that each man's mind
shall dictate or determine his belief, and that each
man's feelings do witness infallibly to his true condition; - when they say these things, they do but flatter with their lips and dissemble in their double heart.
For it is to say, that there is no truth; nothing
outside; all within. This is the pantheistic dogma.
Nothing outside this world; nothing greater, wiser,
better, nobler than the human mind; no evidence
so good as internal evidence; no test of use against
a man's deliberate  convictions.   And  in such  a
scheme there can be nothing but truth; there can
be no error and no falsehood, no wrong, no evil; all
is good, and true, and right, and excellent; for all is
God. I care not what schools of theology this may
touch, what man's views it may impugn; but let it
be affirmed, that he who says that you may repose
secure in any Creed, if conscientious, - that you
should rest, not in outward forms and agencies, but
on inward feelings and conviction,- this man is playing into the hands of Pantheism, is helping on the
work of those who would bind you and give you
over to the monster, hand and foot.
Brethren, there is no proof that the earth in its
present state has that high antiquity which the phi
47 
48     PANTHEISMI IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
losophers claim. And man was not at first a semibrute; but God made him perfect, and saw the work
that it was very good. And history is not a play
of chance or fate, but a drama conducted by God
in person. And God is not far off; and hard to
know, but close to us and easy of access; nor hath
He ever left Himself without a witness among His
creatures. And the human mind is not sufficien+
to itself, but is without His revelation just where
the eye is without light. And truth is not variable,
but constant; not within us, but without, for us to
make it ours, by reaching forth to it from out ourselves. And the Catholic religion, which thus conrects all falsehoods, is the only teacher under God
whom we may safely follow; and the school of heresy, in which not merely the hard, gaunt theory is
taught, but all its ingenious applications are made,
that school is the council-room of confusion, and the
entrance of ruin for the mind and soul and heart of
all those who abide and continue therein. 
OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 49
LECTURE IV.
OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY.
IN the previous lectures of this course I have
endeavored, with what success yourselves must
judge, to show the scheme of Pantheism, first, ini
its theoretic form, and secondly, in its practical applications.  Such a division of the subject was rendered necessary by the fact that the system, in its
unshorn deformity, is to be found only in the works
of those scientific writers (especially of the French*
and German schools) who logically carry out their
principles and accept and avow the consequences,
while it is commonly presented to us in the shape
of dilutions more or less strong. Thus qualified and
mitigated, however, it is encountered everywhere,
in theology, in philosophy, in history, in poetry, in
the drama, and in the trashy literature of the day.
To be able to recognize it in its disguised forms,
one must know it in its natural shape; through
such knowledge only can the identity between the
theory and its applications be exhibited.
I now proceed, in continuation of this subject, to
speak, first, of the way in which the Pantheists en                   * See Note D.
4 
O50 OBJECTIONVS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY
deavor to establish their conclusions; secondly, of
the character of their alleged proofs; thirdly, of the
objections which lie against the whole system in the
consequences resulting therefrom.
And first, it is to be remarked that the Pantheist,
in endeavoring to establish his principles, depends
on certain definitions which he assumes to be correct,
concerning the infinite and the finite, concerning substance and being.   He also rests upon a very subtle
system of the most abstract notions of metaphysics.
All his philosophy is built on these primary definitions.   My  reference is chiefly to the speculative
writers of the French and German schools. To
endeavor to understand the language of their systems is an almost hopeless task, and yet it is evident
that the main strength of those systems lies in this
scientific jargon, and that they depend upon it for
the success of their so-called demonstrations.  But
it is not from their positive methods only that the
real position of these philosophers, relatively to the
rest of mankind, may be inferred: nothing can be
more significant than the care with which they avoid
certain lines of argument to which we should expect
a school aiming at wide influence to resort. For
example, we never find one of these philosophers
appealing to that grand old test, the common sense
of men.   WVe never discern in his writings a disposition to hear and abide by the verdict of the consent and concurrence of mankind. As to the tra 
OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY  51
ditional knowledge and faith of our race, he is dumb.
To the received opinions, to the universal convictions
of his fellow-beings, he dares not refer.   All these
directions he avoids with a sedulous care which cannot be mistaken, for he knows that these things
are against him.   The voice of common sense, the
traditions that have come down through all time and
among all nations, the convictions of the wise and
pious all over the world, the facts of the existence
of the visible Church of Christ, and the influence of
the Holy Scriptures, -all these are against the Pantheist.   He dares not face these witnesses; he cannot meet them on common ground.   He invents his
subtle system of metaphysics as a necessity of his
position, because a special and peculiar set of arms,
offensive and defensive, is required by the man who
is to appear in conflict with history, and testimony,
and( consent, and experience, and the judgment and
common sense of all our race.   His battle is against
the mind, the logic, the intelligence, the heart, the
soul, of the universal human family.
To speak, in the second place, though briefly, of
the character of these alleged proofs. Already laborinf, from the very first, under the disadvantage of
contradiction by every reliable voice to which an appeal can reasonably be made, they stand convicted of
weakness in this behalf, - that they are arbitrary in
themselves, and therefore powerless in result. Each
science has its language. But the science of Panthe 
5, OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY
ism is a mere speculative cloud. It has its language
and its proper terms, and in them lies its strength.
Yet no10 man need admit the exactness of its definitions, nor is it possible for the masters of this science
to show cause why the world should accept the peculiar nomenclature which they employ.  Unless this
be done, however, the argument which lives in those
special definitions must fail. The characteristic lainguage of the school respecting substance, personality,
unity, the finite and the infinite, matter, spirit, soul,
truth, certitude, and the like, we Christians may reject; and we may demand that the terms to be used
in all questions touching the existence and nature of
the Almighty, the being and powers of man, and
similar topics, shall be such ternts as have been familiarly known and used in the Church, and  may
be understood of ordinary mninds.   We may require,
as a preliminary, that this unintelligible jargon of
the Rationalists shall cease, and that, in subjects eminently practical, we shall be pernmitted to know just
what these teachers mean and whither they would
lead us. If this be done, the power of the system is
brokea. Opposed by common sense, ignoring the
realities of our situation, admitting no fact as historic, explaining no mystery, leaving behind it difficulties more formidable than those of which it complained and which it proposed to remove, the tongue
of this philosophy ceases, and the knowledge thereof vanishes away. 
OBJECTIONS TO TIHE PANTHE1SISC THEORY. 53
I proceed to speak, thirdly, of the objections to
this philosophy in respect to the consequences which
it involves. And since this is by far the most important branch of the subject, it is to its full treatment
that the remainder of this lecture will be devoted.
The first consequence from the Pantheistic philosophly to which I shall advert is this: that, according
to its principles, the world and man do of necessity
exist, and that they are part of God Himself.  From
eternity has there been this so-called universal substance.  But the being which is from eternity is not
contingent and relative, but absolute and necessary.
The world, however, is but that substance realized
in certain visible forms, and man is that substance
arrived at its highest manifestation thus far; and
therefore the world and man have, as to their substance, a necessary existence. Again, that substance,
in its entirety, is God, and the world and man are
parts of that substance, and therefore the world and
man do not merely exist of necessity, but the world
and man are parts of God.   As to this conclusion,
Pantheism hesitates not to avow it; nay, it glories
in it as its most valuable discovery; and that blasphlemous idea, at which the Christian shudders, is
the first of the inestimable boons bestowed by this
infidel philosophy on mankind.
But, secondly, it follows not less clearly, from the
principles now under consideration, that God is ab solutely dependent on the world, and absolutely de 
54 OBJECTIONS TO THLE PANTHEISTIC THEORY.
pendent upon man. We have been trained in the
Church to think of God as the sovereign Lord of
all; but the God of Pantheism is weak, and speechless, and unconscious, and powerless, without  the
universe and without us. For consider, brethren,
that, according to this philosophy, the eternal substance has in itself no10 shape, no mind, no will, no
sight, no consciousness; it attains to these in developing upward, and in taking the successive forms of
the universe. Until it thundered, God had no voice.
Until there were mountains and hills, and suns and
moons and stars, God had no definite life. Until
there were planetary orbits, God had no orderly motioil. Until there were brutes, God had no instincts,
no desires, 1no feeling. Until there were men, God
had no consciousness, no perception of Himself, no
will, no thought. Thus He depends on us. It is
He who lives in us, rather than we ill Him. WVithout the universe, without what we mistakilgly call
His works, He is quite imperfect and incomplete;
for it is only through the universe that this poor,
blind, unformed, anomalous being can express itself
or assert itself.  This conclusion inevitably follows
fiom the principles of the system; and this degraded
and emasculted conception is that which Palltheism, with ghastly leer, offers us as a substitute for
the Father, the Redeemer, the Governor, in whom
thus far the world has trusted itself, and on whom
we suppose that we depend. 
OBJECTIONAS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 55
And thirdly, it is a consequence of this philosophic
theory that it obliterates those distinctions on the
existence and realization of which all social, moral,
and intellectual life and progress depend.   There is,
according to the Pantheistic tenet, no distinction at
all between the finite and the infinite, all things that
we see and perceive and know being but parts of
the one infinite and universal substance.   But to
maintain this principle, to say, as they do whose
views we are now examining, that the finite has 1no
true and separate existence of its own apart from
the infinite, is to kill the finite by this tremendous,
this fatal juxtaposition.   It results from this idea, (to
look to that which most nearly concerns ourselves,)
that men have no real existence of their own, that we
are but phantoms, that our acts are but imaginary,
that our lives (as we call them) are but dreams; for
we are parts or fragments of that ever-developing
infinite, that ever-progressing infinite, which alone
has any and all reality. And thus, in like manner,
the Pantheistic theory destroys effectually all distinction between the human reason and the divine, all
distinction between the life of creatures and the life 
of God. All boundary lines are swept away, all differences disappear, all life, all thought, all reason, all
existence, are struck and heaped and massed together
in one monstrous lump, one inconceivable aggregate. There is a complete identification, or, which is
the same thing, there remains but one appalling chaos. 
56 OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY.
And fourthly, you perceive, brethren, that in this
system the Personal God disappears utterly from
view. That grand and beneficent figure, the form
of the Father of all, is dethroned. As we comprehend the sacred term, there is left no God. A substance, impersonal, there is; but we cannot imagine
that unintelligible, unreasoning, unthinking, unloving
state of impotence as our Father, our Creator, our
Redeemer, our Sanctifier, our Friend.  Tile God in
whom we have believed is gone.   In the following
lecture of this course it is proposed to state, (and
how refreshing will be the task after this wading
through the Pantheistic slough!) the full, the true,
the dear, the blessed conception of the Almighty
which we have received ill the Church and find in
the sacred Scriptures.   Let it be sufficient here to
remark that such a conception, in connection with
the system vwhose tenets are an identity of substance
throughout the universe and a principle of spolntaneous development as the only law of life and progress, is merely and absolutelyimpossible.  The God
of Pantheism is inot a person, exists not personally, has no personal attributes; it is merely a kind
of substratum on which everything is founde(l, a
kind of material out of which everything is built,
a kind of great sum total of all things, an enormous
vortex inI which its own concretions whirl round and
round forever.  Oh, what a black and damnable outrage is that which Pantheism attempts to perpetrate! 
OBJECTIONS TO THE PANVTHEISTIC THEORY 57
It would rob the creation of its Maker, the world of
its Governor, time of its Providential Arbiter, man
of his Father and Friend! What greater crime than
to try this gigantic fraud and to leave us nothing in
His place.
Ah, brethren, those last words were not correct.
Pantheism does not leave us destitute.  It takes
away God, but it does not leave His place empty.
Had it done so, our charge against it were not so
heavy and the wrong were less; for that is what
Atheism does, and therefore Atheism is less to be
feared. For Atheism, denying that there is any God,
and not undertaking to fill the place which it has
thus proclaimed to be vacant, leaves behind it a void,
the void of that negation, a void which cries out to
be filled, which calls to its object, which craves incessantly in the torments of hungry despair.  The
void which Atheism thus makes in the universe protests against the process by which it was formed; it
cries aloud; accuses the folly of the man who hath
said there is no  God;  it denies the very denial,
and leaves the victim no refuge but in an utter brutalization, in a completed degradation from which
he must escape, and from which he cannot escape
save by coming back to faith. But Pantheism eschews that error.  Pantheism is the last device of
the devil, and by far the subtlest.  Atheism is simple and blunt; but Pantheism is crafty and sly.
Atheism is honest in its way, and by its very honesty defeats its end. But Pantheism profits by ob 
58 OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY.
servation of the error of its predecessor.  It strikes
out God from the universe; but it leaves no void,    no void to ache and protest and demand mercy. It
fills the void with a calculating coolness; it fills it by
deifying the world and man.
This is our fifth allegation against the system:
that it confounds God and the universe in such a
way as to make of them but one. That it con    founds God and man, the divine nature and the
human, in such wise as to identify them.  It de    thrones God, but not so as to leave His throne
empty.   It dethrones God, but it sets up man in
His place.  "He, as God, sitteth in the temple of
God, showing himself that he is God." It trans    ports the divine personality into main; it affirms
that in man God bathl consciousness, affection, will,
personal existence.  It subjects and satisfies the idea
,-    of the greatness, the majesty, the worthiness of mall;
it makes of him the real, the only deity: and thus
the void is filled by the sovereign pride, the end    less ambition, the supreme self-confidence of the
human  heart.   This thing is worse by far than
aught that Atheism ever attempted.  It is crafty, it
is malignant, it is immense in audacity; and yet it
is literally the very thing which the Pantheists have
done, the last and highest conclusion of their ap    proved(  writers, in whose printed works may these
atrocious blasphemies be found, line upon line, and
statement upon statement, until the very hairs of our
head should stand on end as we read. 
OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 59
Think then, brethren, in the sixth place, of the
bearings of this view on certain questions vital to
us as a race.  There follows, as a consequence, the
reduction of certainty to uncertainty throughout the
province of thought; the obliteration of all distinction between good and evil, between right and wrong,
between virtue and vice, in the sphere of morality;
for according to the Pantheistic scheme there is no
divine mind, no divine thought, until the infinite and
universal substance has developed up to man.   In
man, therefore, that substance first has consciousness; in man that substance first thinks.   But that
substance is God; therefore the thought of man is
the thought of God, the mind of man the mind of
God, the speech, the voice of man, are the speech
and voice of God. Now what does all this mean?
This, and no less, - that all the thoughts of any individual mind are divine thoughts; that all the imaginings, the opinions, the views of any mind, of
every mind, are divine; that every wish of your
heart, that every appetite of your soul, that every
consideration of your intelligent understanding are
together and alike divine. But, you will say, men
do not think alike, do not judge alike, do not desire
alike. It is so. And thus all ideas of any fixed
and settled permanent quality in thought are lost.
It follows that there can be no such thing as abso lute and immutable truth: all truth is mobile and
progressive; all thoughts are right and true in their 
60 OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY
way.   No  thought of any  human  mind  can  be
wrong: it may be incomplete, but that is all; and
as the idea of an absolute and unchanging truth independent of our minds is thus removed, so there
doth perish in like manner to its merest vestiges the
idea of a moral law, and of a distinction between
right and wrong, good and evil, vice and virtue.
For if man be God  thinking and acting, then, as
all man's thoughts are divine, so must be his acts:
pride, pleasure, passion, cruelty, ambition, lust, are
but the necessary development of moral tendencies
in the original substance.   That substance, though
it have no personality, is supposed to have and to
hold all possible, all conceivable tendencies within
itself, and these are developed and evolved in human
thought, in humaii desire.   All our thloughts are
divine thoughts,'all our desires are divine desires.
This is what the New England  transcendentalists
have meant all along, in using the pernicious language, that what we call error is only iniicomnplete
truth, and that what we  call evil is only iiicomp'lete
good,-which means, at bottom, that there is no such
thing as an absolute good and evil, an absolute right
and wrong. In New England they are cautious
what they say and how they express themselves; but
the Pantheists abroad are more straightforward.
They stick not at the last conclusion, from the mere
expression of which one shrinks appalled; but it
must be said, it shall be said, to let you look for once 
OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY. 61
over the edge and far down into the deep,- they
have affirmed that the development of man is the development of God too; that as the primal substance
is advancing it is God who advances; that He, far
fromn being unchangeable, is always improving and
goingr forward to what He was not before; * that
we cannot conjecture what God may become;  that
whatsoever appears to be evil is only in appearance
evil, but, in reality, imperfect good; that whatever
appears to be error is not really error, but only imperfect truth; and since all, in thought or act,
which we call error, evil, vice, is but part of the one
grand and( perpetual progression and development,
therefore that God is not merely good, truth, and
virtue, but that He is error, vice, and evil! So wrote
a pantheistic philosopher in France; t and when he
penned those words and spoke them abroad, if there
be ears and eyes in hell to hear and see, that place
must have rung with applause, and shouts of approval must have stormed round all the sides of
the infernal pit.
And, brethren, I will detain you with but one
more of these pictured consequences of this message
and burden of woe and death. It is the pantheistic
view of history,-of the history of the ages and of
nations and of men. History, according to these
writers, is not ordered by God;  nations are not
* See Note E.
t Proudhon: Systeme des Contradictions gconomiques. 
62 OBJECTIONVS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY.
ruled by God; individual life is not overlooked by
God: but history is merely the continued development of humanity. It is supposed by this philosophy to be divided into epochs. Each of those epochs
is regarded as a time of the domination of some
one element of the mind.  Nations are the repreresentatives of ideas, and it is the mission of each
nation to manifest the special idea with which its
existence is allied; therefore the part which each
nation is to play is fixed by a prior necessity, by an
absolute fate. The idea to be represented by each natioii has connection with the part of the globe which
the nation occupies, - with climate, physical circumstances, temperature,- with commercial advantages, with natural resources, with the productions
of the soil.  The pantheistic Philosophy supposes
two things (in its applications to the history of the
world): first, a law of progress which is not the will
of God, but an inflexible and inevitable necessity of
sequence; and secondly, a necessary and absolute
inspiration in humanity. The ideas of which we
have spoken are all, in their way, divine; divine, but
incomplete. They are developed one by one. Each,
being but a partial view of truth, must, in its turn,
yield and disappear.   History is the record of these
mutations and transitions, as embodied in the nations
of the earth; but at all times and in every age, constitutions, governments, arts, sciences, religion, have
but one common root," the spirit of the age." There 
OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHIEISTIC THEORY. 6,3
can be no such thing as national crimes, as national
injustice, as national wrong. The whole development is good. Through war, rebellion, revolution,
- through oppression and tyranny and misgovernment,- through empire, kingdom, democracy,-it
is all good, it is all well. Call nothing a crime if it
aiccord(s with the spirit of the age.  Count nothing
a virtue if it departs from the spirit of the age.
Away with the unmeaning terms of law, order, justice, liberty, right, wrong, national honor and glory,
national shame and reproach. These are but empty
names; for all is but one progression, one development of the infinite substance, and the shadow which
you call a nation is as hollow as the spectre which
you call a hero, a patriot, a traitor, a demi-god. Nations represent ideas; and when the idea has been
expressed, the part of the nation is played.  And
great men are the priests and missionaries of ideas,
and their careers are valuable for study only in that
respect.  But all moral distinctions, whether as to
the nation's course or the individual's character, are
futile and vain.   It is but the march of a great
spirit, -the spirit of the age.
Here let us pause and draw a long breath of relief, and stop; for the work which was proposed is
done so far as its first object extends.   Enough has
been said of this dreadful heresy. Hereafter we
shall be refreshed by the consolations of the Gospel,
and by the blessed message concerningi  the " One 
64 OBJECTIONS TO THE PANTHEISTIC THEORY
God and Father of all," the "One Lord Jesus
Christ," the Holy Ghost, the Lord and the Lifegiver, whom we know in the peaceful ways of the
faith. Referring, therefore, to the next evening the
examination of the truth, let us, finally, turn the fatal page of the Philosophy of this world and leave
its sentences to their proper dust and darkness, with
thanksgiving unto Him who hath delivered us and
the human race out of the power of that darkness,
and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear
Son. 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD. 65
LECTURE V.
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD.
THE time has arrived at which the character of
these lectures must be changed, and none can be so
glad of this as he who has undertaken to prepare
them. It might indeed appear as though some apology were due for having led you so far and so long
in the paths of an heretical labyrinth, perhaps more
cunningly contrived than any other that Satan ever
made to ensnare and destroy the human soul.  But
still it was necessary to show the disease in full;
to probe the wound far down; to trace, as we have
done, the whole pantheistic malady, first in its real
nature, and then in some of its more evident symptonms; to follow it out to its consequences; and to
bring to the light its last and ruinous results.   But
that portion of our work is done. The pantheistic
conception of God has been distinctly presented;
that parody of truth, that destroyer of our hope,
that contradiction of every positive statement, of
every assured conviction, has been laid before you
in the immobility of its fatalism, in the rigidness of
its monotonous despair. From that dark specimen
of intellectual aberration may we now right gladly
5 
66 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD.
turn, betaking us to our home in the Church of God,
reading in her sacred books the word of truth, and
contrasting the Almighty as He really is with this
void and irrational phantom to which a false philosophy has dared to apply His sacred name.
"I believe in one God, the Father Almightty,
3[aker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible."  In this sublime affirmation does
the Church begin to teach us what to think of the
Lord Most High.
When the Church thus speaks to us of Almighty
God, she speaks:
First, of One who hath a proper personal exist
ence.
Secondly, of One who is distinct from the works
of His hands.
Thirdly, of One who is most closely connected
with the world.
And fourthly, of One who cannot vary or change.
These are her declarations as against the pantheistic scheme; and it will be the object of this lecture
to develop each of these statements in order, and to
show, as far as the limited time will allow, what each
one of them implies.
And first, Almighty God is one who hath, eternally and essentially, a full, a real, a proper personal
existence. You all know, brethren, though some
of you might be at a loss to define in scientific mode,
what is meant by a person. You all know what is 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD.  67
intended when we speak of persons as contradistinguished from things. You all know that a stone
or a tree is not a person; and that a man or a woman or a child is.  Now, whatever you understand
to be expressed, or whatever plain, simple-minded
folk commonly understand to be expressed, by the
term "a personal existence," such an existence has
Almighty God.    Onily that in Him  personality
must have a perfection which it never could have in
creatures; because He is every way so incomparably
greater and  better than they.   Your dictionaries
will tell you, if you refer to them, that personality
is constituted by certain capacities, and particularly
by the power of conscious thought.  A  thinking, intelligent being; a being whocain contrive and direct;
who acts knowingly and understandingly; - that is
a person.   These brief, popular definitions are sufficient for our purpose, without entering into the
profounder explanations which theology and philosophy afford.  But observe, that if to think, to
perceive, to have intelligence, to enjoy and use the
power of conscious thought, -if this be to have
personality,-then when we say that Almighty God
is a person, we mean that He is one who thinks and
knows and perceives, not merely as we do, but far
more perfectly in every respect; who has consciousness, but a consciousness so fill that ours compared
to His is less than the vague perception of infancy
as compared to the luminous vision of manhood; 
68 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIIGHTY GOD.
who thinks, but with a power and range and scope
of thought so great that our thoughts are, in conmparison to His, what folly is to wisdom; who has,
forever and essentially, every personal quality and
attribute which we can trace in ourselves, and by
which we establish our difference from mere inanimate things, but in infinite perfection. Personality
has many degrees.   The lower a creature may be,
or the higher, in the scale of life, the narrower, or
the fuller will be the attribute in question. A stone,
a tree, a hill, a river, the clouds, the elements, the
mechanical and chemical forces, -these are in no
sense personal beings. But all animals have personality; all that have the power of motion, together
with a will; all that are conscious of pleasure, of
pain, of want; all that have a logical faculty: all
these are persons. Above the rest stands manl,above and far beyond the rest in this endowment.
But God is greater still. In Him this quality of
personal existence is found in final and supreme perfection. Settle it in your minds what you will understand by the term, and then add to it an infinity
of excellence: God is all that you have thought of,
and infinitely more.
] And, secondly, Almighty God, as Christianity proclaims Him, is one who is distinct from all the works
of His hands. In His substance He is eternal; and
there is no eternal substance besides.  And  not at
any time, or in any manner, hath aught of that di 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD.  69
vine and eternal substance been communicated to
any creature.  It cannot be shared with creatures.
It cannot be parted among  creatures.  It cannot
flow away into works or forms.  It is the indivisible, the inseparable, the essential nature and substance of Almighty God.   He cannot be divided,
nor cut up into parts, nor transformed, now into
one shape, and aiion into another; for He is from
eternity to eternity the same.   He made all things.
But He made nothing out of His own substance as
out of a material; to assert that would be sheer
blasphemy. He made, at first, and by His omnipotent word brought into being, a material which had
no existence before; this He created before aught
else, and of this He made and framed the worlds.
But that substance, that building-material, was not
Himself.  It was brought into being in time, by
Him who is eternal.  It was not, in any wise, until
He caused it to be.   And thus the universe, which
was made of material not previously existing, is
infinitely distinct from God. No part of His substance hath ever passed over, or flowed into, or become amalgamated with the world, or with any por tion thereof. There is not, as Pantheism says, one
universal substance. The substance of things creat ed is finite, limited, temporary, contingent, variable;
the infinite and eternal substance is, in one word,
God. There it is that Pantheism and Christianity
part. The philosophic system confounds God and 
70 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMJIGHTY GOD.
nature. The holy faith divides them by the differ ence of infinity.*
The old philosophers agreed not together as to the
manner in which God and the world were one. It
will repay us to consider, in passing, their wild theories; for the statement of those theories will bring
more clearly to light the Catholic faith.  They all
held the view that God and the world were of
one and the same substance; but they had four
different forms of the common theory, and they used
the words generation, emanation, limitation, and animatioii, as descriptive terms to mark the different
shades of their thoughts.   Some of them said that
God made the world out of His own substance, as the
parent begets the child of his owln blood; and this
was the theory of generation.   Others again supposed that all the creation has come forth from God,
just as light from the sun, or heat from flame, or
vapor from water; and this was the theory of enmanation.   A  third class considered that visible objects are but a modification, or a series of modifications, of a substance which never changes; and they
held that the universe is made of God, just as seas,
gulfs, bays, and straits are formed of tile same vast
ocean, in the indentations of enclosing shores; and
this was  the theory of limitationi.   And, finally,
there were those who thought that God was inside
of the universe and mixed up with it, a kind of
* See Note F. 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD. 71
soul, making everything alive and keeping it fresh
and sound, as the soul preserves the body in man;
and this was the theory of animation.
But all these views are false together, for one and
the same falsehood lies in them all, and back of them
all, - that falsehood about the identity of substance.*
Which falsehood is met in the statement of the
Catholic faith, that God and the works of God are
infinitely distinct.  they are inot the same.   He is
not a part of the universe; nor is the universe a
part of Him. He made all things; but that wherewith He wrought, and whereof He made them, was
inot before: it was created; it was not eternal.
None is eternal but He; and no substance is eternal
but His.   And since the world is not eternal, therefore it was not of His substance that the world was
made.
But in our holy religion, beloved brethren, there
is nothing one-sided, nothing incomplete. The mind
of the Church, as shown in her Creed and confessions, is large and wide as the mind of the Spirit
and of the Holy Ghost.   And, therefore, while we
are taught that Almighty God is infinitely distinct
from the universe, we must at the same time hold
fast the truth that He is most closely, most iiitimately connected with it.  For these articles of our
faith do act towards each other unto compensation;
either would be unsatisfying without the other, while
* See Note G. 
7  THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD.
both together leave nothing to be desired. Almighty
God is not distant from that world which He has
been pleased to call into being; on the contrary, He
is exceeding near. Nowhere is He the same as the
world; yet nowhere is He absent from it. These
two are essential truths. There can be no religion,
in the proper sense of the term, where they are not
confessed. His entire distinction from the universe,
and His closest union with it,- of these two points
must men be convinced, as indispensable conditions
to true belief and healthful thought.
But how shall we harmonize statements which
appear to conflict? By referring one of them to
the divine substance, and the other to the divine personality. As to His nature, Almighty God is infinitely distinct from the works of His hands; but as
to His personal attributes, He is inseparably united
to them. In His power, in His vision, in His will,
in His thought, in His sympathies, in His love,
He is nowhere far off, he is never absent. No occurrence can take place without His knowledge. No
creature can exist but by His command. No point
in all the universe can, though but for an instant, be
hidden from His sight. He knows all, He sees all,
He thinks of all, He feels for all, He loves all. He
is everywhere, as to His thought, His power, His
goodness. And yet, nowhere is there the least approach to confusion or commingling of substance.
These are the two grand truths on which our whole
I 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD.  78
religion is built, and in which all our hopes reside.
You cannot deny either without risking the loss of
all that we have most precious.   For to deny the
former, and to say that God and the universe are
not absolutely distinct, as to essence and substance,
is to admit the pantheistic tenet of unity of substance, with all the woe, and all the horror, and all
the hopelessness which we have seen to result from
that monstrous assumption.   While, on  the other
hand, to deny the second article of the faith, and to
say that God and the world are not most intimately
connected, is to reject the sweet truth that we have
a Father in heaven, and the consolatory assurance
that a wise and thoughtful Providence overrules the
course of affairs; it is to separate God from His
creation and from man; it is to suppose in Him a
being without sympathy and without care; to regard
the world as a system blindly led along by fate or
chance or unimpassioned law; to consider the human
race as beings without a father, a governor, a guide,
without a redeemer, a preserver, a ruler; as having
no one to pray to, and no one to trust to, and no10 one
to account to, nor any to encourage, to sustain, to
reward.  These are the results of denial of either
of those cardinal truths; Pantheism threatens on
the one side, Atheism on the other. And, to avoid
those extremes, we must, from the heart, embrace,
and ever hold fast, and ever firmly profess, the two
sister truths, that Almighty God, as to His eternal, 
74THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD.
His essential, His incommunicable substance, is infinitely and absolutely distinct from His creation and
from the whole frame of the vast universe; and
that the same Almighty God, as to His personal
life, His power, His will, His thought, His love, His
providence, His knowledge, His vision, is everywhere
present, and everywhere most intimately connected
with that same creation, with every creature, and
with everything, and with every part of that same
universe. These two affirmations are the columns
which hold up the sacred temple of the faith. Take
either of them away, and the edifice topples to its
utter destruction; and if it so go down, it must drag
the whole social system into the chasm.
There remains but one more of those statements,
to the unfolding of which this lecture was set apart.
Fourthly, therefore, Almighty God must be thought
of by us as a being who cannot alter or change.
You remember what horrid blasphemy the pantheist.
has uttered in respect of progress, and development,
and improvement in God, meaning, by God, that
eternal substance of which he wildly dreams. But
the God of Christianity and of the gospel is not
that image which the philosophers have set up. He
is one in whom there can be no variableness, neither
shadow of turning.  From eternity to eternity He
abides the same. God is the same in two respects:
first, as regards His essential being, in which no
alteration can occur; and secondly, as regards our 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD. 75
thoughts and conceptions of Him, which cannot in
the least degree affect His positive reality. In declaring that unchangeableness, therefore, we intend
that double reference; we mean to say, not only that
He is evermore the same God, yesterday, and to-day,
and forever, but also, that His independence of any
cogitations of ours concerning Him could by no possibility be more complete. All this is expressed in
that sublimest name that ever was uttered or conceived, that name which He announced as His own,
.Eyo St2) qui sun: "I amn thlzat I ace."  What marvellous power, what inflexibility of strength, what
calm majesty in that title: "I am that I am!"  The
same, the unchanging, the Lord, from age to age.
Not, "I am whatsoever you think me to be;" not,
"I am this to one man and that to another; " not,
"I am to you whatever you prefer that I should be,
whatever you, as you follow your self-willed thoughts,
consider that I ought to be, and feel confident that I
must be; but, I am that I am! I am He that was
from eternity, and is now, and is to come. I am
He that hath no dependence on the world, nor any
need of man; that taketh not counsel of creatures,
neither hlath learned from them the path of judgment.   I am the first and the last.   The Creator.
The Father. The Provident Ruler. The Maker
of man, the Redeemer of man, the Sanctifier of man.
Your Lord, your Rewarder, your Judge. O children of men, what avail your thoughts that ye 
76  THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMI3GHTY GOD.
should think by them to affect the absolute truth of
My being?   How  can ye dream this wild thing,
that I should change with any and with every imagination of your minds concerning Me? Can there
be named in all the range of human delusions one
so huge as this, that any man should suppose that
God is whatever he imagines God to be? Can there
be told, of all the duties of main, one more necessary
thani this, that he hold fast his belief in the absolute
perfection, in the entire self-sufficiency, of his Creator?  I am that I am.   Judge not of Me  by any
rule of your own, but judge by what I have declared.   Hear not men, but listen to My eternal
word. My Son, the only begotten, He hlath dedclared Me. Hear ye Him. For He only hath the
words of life. Learn of Him My great and glorious
name,-the name of one who is immutable, unalterable, beyond the reach of any and all agencies, in
the perfection of My eternal state and nature."
Thus, beloved brethren, has the attempt been made
to set forth to you the Christian idea of God; or
rather, to speak of God, not as men have thought
Him to be, but as in truth He is. You have heard
the declarations of the Church to all mankind, in
this behalf: -
First, that He is really a personal being, like
ourselves.
Secondly, that He is in no way confused or commingled with the works of His hands, but infinitely
distinct from them. 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIIGHTY GOD. 77
Thirdly, that He is most intimately connected with
the world and with all its inhabitants, with all that
therein is.
Fourthly, that He is what He is, positively and
absolutely, whatever our views or opinions concerning Him may be.
Take these first principles of our holy religion
as tests, amid the vagueness of modern thought.
Make these great truths the starting-point of your
faith, and the boundaries of every imagination of
your spirits concerning the Most High. When you
are presented with the theory of a God who has
evidently been fashioned and shaped by the subtle
wit of man to suit its own preconceptions, know
that this idea is a mere idol, and reject and denounce
it as a travesty of that high and lofty One whose
sublime existence is independent of aught beyond
itself.  When you hear men talk of a God who
cares not for this world, nor for us, nor for our affairs,- of a God who is supposed to have resigned
to arbitrary and unthinking law the order and direction of the course of this world, - reject that low
conception as an utter misrepresentation, as a shlameless parody of Him by whom the very hairs of our
heads are all numbered; without whom not even a
sparrow falleth to the ground; whose eye, whose
love, whose providence, whose power, are everywhere, searching the darkness and the light, and
never failing, in any instant of time, nor at any 
78 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD.
point of the immeasurable universe. As for a God
who is substantially one with his creatures; or
who dwells afar, careless of our concerns; or who
is destitute of thought, or sight, or consciousness;
who can work no miracle, who can speak no word
to our bodily ears, who cannot show Himself to our
bodily vision: there is no such being, save in the
brains of the deceiver and the deceived.   The real
God is indeed a reality; the God with whom we
have to do is not a creature of our miinds, but the
sovereign Lord of heaven and earth.  It is He that
made the world and all things therein; who giveth
to all life and breath and all things; who hath made
of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all
the face of the earth, and hath determined the times
before appointed and the bounds of their habitations;
who is not far from every one of us. This is the God
whom Paul preached, when he stood on Mars' Hill,
face to face with the epicureans and the stoics of ancient time. This is the God whom we must preach
face to face with the spiritualists, the transcendentalists, the philosophers of modern days. Nor doubt
the triumph of the faith in Him. Though these
false priests build up their altar of abomination, and
fashion their god and set him up thereon; though
they substitute the worship of a rationalistic deity
for the old, the only hope of all the ends of the
earth; though they cry from morning even till noon,
"0O  Baal, hear us!" though antichrist be thus re 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF ALMIGHTY GOD. 79
vealed as the latter days come nigh; and though this
false deity at length appear sitting in the temple of
God, and showing himself that he is God, even in
the temple of the deluded heart and mind which deifies its own opinion and bows before it: yet wait,
brethren, till the time of the evening sacrifice, till
the altars be rebuilt, till the true God appear in
glory for the salvation of His people; and then the
dream shall be over and the spell broken, and there
shall be heard a sound, as it were the voice of great
multitudes and of many waters; and as that awful
sound takes shape and volume, it shall ascend far to
the pealing dome above, proclaiming, "The Lord,
He is the God!  The Lord, He is the God!" 
80 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIOINS.
LECTURE VI.
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
IN the preceding lecture there was set forth,
though briefly and imperfectly, the true Catholic
faith concerning the existence and attributes of Almighty God. It now remains to draw our remarks
to a close. We have passed together through those
places in which, as in a synagogue of Satan, strange
doctrines are taught; we have heard the sound of
other systems; we have measured the length of
their separation from the everlasting truth, and have
gauged the depth of that abyss into which they are
capable of casting down the mind of him who yields
to their solicitations.   Emerging at length from
those forbidding regions of profane speculation, we
have considered in a general way, and with a view
to comparison, the leading principles of the Christian faith concerning Almighty God.   It is now
proposed, by way of a suitable conclusion of the
work, to dwell upon the idea of Him as that idea
is presented to us in the Church, and to show its
practical application in the order of our daily life.
How clear is that idea, and how full! how plain 
TIIE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS. 81
and accessible to the grasp of faith! how capable of
meeting all spiritual requirement and necessity!  A
home-like presence, a familiar neighborhood, a close
and true and real relationship.  " What shall a man
give in exchange for his soul  "  saith the Lord.
But of Him, and of the Father, may we exclaim,
using and applying His words, "What shall a man
give in exchange for  his God."  Surely, if bereaved of our simple faith in God,-  the Father, the
Son, the Holy Ghost,-  we could never rest content
with any of those loose and vague conceptions to
which the holy name has been applied. Tile phantom raised by Philosophy, the shadow evoked by
that witchcraft of the subtle understanding, by that
magic of the godless imagination, - this phantom,
this shadow, is not that in which we  have trusted,
nor is it He whom we do know.
Perhaps the readiest way of learning how precious, how satisfying is the idea of God, as He
hath revealed Himself to us through the Gospel,
would be to reflect how much and what we should
lose if that idea were lost, - how much of our daily
life must go, if that idea were gone.
Imagine, therefore, a state of things which may
perhaps arrive before the end of the world; and
suppose that the belief in the Holy Trinity, the
God of Christianity, had become, for the most part,
extinct in the breasts of men.   And suppose that
in its place there had become established (if aught
6 
82 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
so shapeless and anomalous can be spoken of as
established) the theory of a Universal-SubstanceDeity, and the idea of a self-development in that
substance as the only mode of life and advance, and
as the only assignable reason or explanation of
tilings as they occur and are. And, furthermore,
suppose some man, who should be the survivor
from a former age of faith, -one who had believed
once, but afterwards resigned and renounced his
earlier thoughts,-a man who, once a Christian, had
outlived his better days, to stand at last avowed a
philosophizer and a rationalist. To what should
such a man look back? And, as comparing his
former with his later self, what should he have
lost, and to what extent would his intelligent and
conscious existence have been affected by the
change?  Let us reflect.
And first, to speak of his personal and individual
life. From that sphere all idea of a Father, a Protector, a Guide, a Friend, would have utterly faded
away. The God of Pantheism is not a Providence
over us: it has no thought, no heart, no love, no
power.   All those conceptions, therefore, in respect
to the Deity, would have become extinct in the
mind of the man whose case we are considering.
In the morning light, as he opened his eyes to it,
there would be no sign of a Divine Protection, renewing the days of his life; and though the sun
arose never so brightly in the splendors of the east, 
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS. 88
there would be no logical ground for thankfulness
towards any Ruler of the Universe, for the gift of
that warm and clear shining.   So, too, the song
of nature, reviving at the dawn and in the beams
of the new day, must be no longer interpreted as
if it were a hymn of praise; but the crowing of
the cock, the matins of birds, the hum of joyous
life, all breaking forth together in full concert, must
be accounted but a series of fatalistic occurrences,
and not the response of a glad creation to that beneficent Creator firom whom it all hath birth. Our
Father would have been banished from the dawn
and early morning hour, and what was once, and
is now, to Christian ears, a cheerful anthem  of
praise in which it becomes man to bear his part by
devotion, thanksgiving, and prayer, would change
to a medley of sounds, without a purpose and without an object.  But again: this philosopher-religionist must go forth to the duties of the day,
nay, not to the duties, there can be no such thitg,
for where there is no relationship there can be
no duty, -he must go forth to his work, with no
sense of One who shall work with him; with no
invocation of a blessing from any quarter, for there
can be no blessing where there is none to speak it.
And so, through the twelve hours of the day, he
would pursue his course, so far as any power above
him might be regarded, alone. No eye to watch,
no ear to hear, no hand to show the path; not one 
81 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
in heaven to care for, to mark, to approve, to regard. To his view those heav ns must be utterly
empty: no angels there, no throne high and lifted
up, no paradise, no happy souls in light; nought
but a great concavity of self-forming, self-developing material, cold as the ice, pitiless as winter,
empty as his own heart. Thus going through the
day in solitude, he is overtaken at last by the fall
of night; and the night, so falling on that barren
day, is the fit and true symbol of the darkness of
a universe without a God distinct from itself.
Such must be, to the man whose position we
are tracing in imagination, the experience of any
common day of his life, when days run smoothly
by. But days do not always keep that even, measured beat.  There are emergencies  in life, times
of crisis, of doubtfulness, of sorrow.   There are
days when a man  needs counsel, and days when
he needs consolation.   But with the recession of a
faith such as Christianity bestows, the Comforter
retires and the Counsellor departs away.   So he
must find that all those fountains of wisdom at
which men  have been wont  to drink are dried,
and that all the springs of relief are frozen at the
source.   In  the  Substance-Deity of  Pantheism
there is no personality, and therefore there can be
no care, no compassion, no knowledge of our grief.
To look to that shapeless and anomalous mass for
any sympathy with suffering man, would be vainer 
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONVS. 85
than to talk to the electric fluid, or to invoke the
vaporous drift of the open sea.   Where tears fell
fast as rain, they must continue to fall unregarded.
Where sorrow bowed herself, scarce half-alive, upon
the face or the relics of the loved and lost, there
would she be suffered to stay, and there to harden
to insensibility or sink  in absolute despair.   In
time of doubt, no Counsellor; in time of trouble,
no Comforter; nor any explanation of the riddles
of life, nor any alleviation for its distresses.   No
sense of duty to constrain the rich; no trustful
faith, no devout resignation, to mitigate the adverse
lot of the poor.   And so-to  pass from private
affaitirs to those of a wider range - the common,
social life must remain in a state of confusion as
thorough as that of the individual career, so far as
any explanation of its course and intent and object
are concerned.   As for history, the man  who has
lost his creed and his faith must also give that up
forever.   Regarded  as an intelligent solution  of
successive events, history would no longer exist.
The world must be regarded as moving on without
superintendence: no thought could be less reason able, on this hypothesis, than that of an intelligent
agent distinct from the world  observing the drift
of human affairs, and carrying on good and grand
designs through the chances and changes of life.
Thus, with the loss of the true faith, and upon the
substitution for it of the weak philosophy and the
4k 
86 THIE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
vain traditions of men, there must ensue a gradual
but sure disappearance  of Almighty  God.   He
withdraws from the life of the individual, from the
life of the community, from the life of the nation,
from the life of human kind. He ceases, He departs, and men are left alone.   No  thought, no
care, no heart, no love, beyond ourselves. No law,
no duty, no crime, no good, no evil. No aim in
life, no joy, no hope for the future.   No one to be
grateful to, none to fear, none to offend.  No blessing to ask, no curse to escape. No reward in toil,
no fruit in labor; no hand to dry the tears, no ear
to hear the prayer.   No  mission for nations, no
honor for states, no object for citizens.  No pious
dedication of the infant, no creed to teach the child,
no blessing of strength and grace for the youth.
No  divine sanction for the marriage relation, no
obligations for hearth and home. No worship for
the liviing, no sacraments, no10 intercession for tilhe
sick, and for the dead no psalm of life and imnmortality.  No grace to say over the daily bread, no
invocation ere we lay us down to sleep, no word of
thanks for the dawn of another day. All gone.
All that speaks of God, - all that implies God,all that breathes of Himn, or refers to Him, or derives its signification from Him, - all gone forever,
like a dissolving dream.   No  Father, no personal
Friend, no10 providential Guide, no  Wonder-worker,
no Inspirer and Hearer of prayer: all lost at 
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONVS. 87
once, with the loss of faith in a God distinct from
the world, yet near to us; a spirit, yet personally
like ourselves; Himself unchanging, and near to
us all, as Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, - as the
most august, the most complete of all existences,
even as the Father, the Soni, and the Holy Ghost.
Alas! my brethren, where should we be left with
all this gone? And what would that be worth to
us which yet remained? Go it must, - all this to
which we have held fast, all this in which we have
trusted, - if philosophy should supplant faith.
There is no faith, save one,- the faith in the Most
High  and  undivided Trinity, " One  Lord,  One
Faith, One Baptism, One God and Father of all,
who is above all, and through all, and in tus all."
To Him, as to our stronghold, let us turn, and let
us clinig with firmer grasp to our traditional belief
in Him. God is no stranger here; and what we
hold and profess concerning Him is no uncertain
theory, no doubtful and hesitating experiment. We
know Him well; we know Him as we know each
other. It is He that hath made us, and not we
ourselves; that hath made us of the dust, that hath
fashioned us as the potter mouldeth the clay, so as
that we are no part of Himself, albeit He is not
far from every one of us, albeit He is through all,
and in us all. But He who created us, and in
whom we live and move and have our being, knows
us, and observes, and has intimate and familiar ac 
88 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
quaintance with everything about us, from first to
last. There is no humanii knowledge to be compared with His ill fulness; there is no discernment
to be named in the same breath with His for precision. His thought embraces us and all our concerns, and His eye follows and investigates our
every step.  He, moreover, is our true home, -the
One for whom we were made,- He whose glory is
the end of our existence, and without whom the
nations are as nothing, yea, less than nothing and
vanity.  All our strength  is in  Him, and from
Him is all our hope. When He thought good so
to do, He created us. And when we had fallen
He redeemed us. And now that Ile has made us
His own, He sanctifieth us.  There is nothing upon
earth so sure as the hallowed round of doctrine,
truth, and usage, known as His revelation.  It is
all authentic; it cannot change or fail.   While the
statute books of nations have become antiquated
and obsolete, the Holy Scriptures remain ever firesh
and ever new. While the nations perish and cease,
the Church still stands and renews her youth; for
God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not
be removed. He is no vague dream, no impersonal
substance. It was His Son, eternal like Himself,
who dwelt here among us, and was called Jesus
Christ; it was He who was nailed, ill ancient time,
upon a cross, and who died thereon; it was He
that was buried, that rose again of a Sunday 
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS. 89
morning in the sweet spring-time, and afterwards
ascended  to heaven.   In  the Redeemer  of men
there was, of course, a personality as perfect and
complete as there can be in men themselves; and
that personality was the same which was from the
beginning, is now, and ever shall be, the person of
the eternal Sonl of God, eternal as to all the past,
eternal as to the future. This is He whom we
have believed. And while we recognize Him, hour
by hour, in this mniortal life, as, with the Father and
the Holy Ghost, its Author, its Ruler, its Sustainer; so does this recognition ascend to a higher
pitch of marvel and joy than any tongue could avail
to express, when we contemplate the wonder of our
redemption. For us He died; for us He gave
Himself a sacrifice; and freely hath He thereupon
given us all things to make that redemption available, to make that sacrifice our acceptable ransom.
Ours is the whole system of grace, - a system
adapted to all people and to every place and time,
and bespeaking the Lord God in the most amiable and blessed of relationships, the Father, the
Friend,  the lover of His  creatures.   When  we
find comfort in the reception of the holy sacraments of the Church, it is because they are the links
between Him and our souls. When, at the reading of His Holy Word, our hearts do burn within
us, it is because His voice is speaking to our ears,
because His spirit is communing with our spirits, 
90 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
because our eyes are fastened on the very syllables
which His good hand hath penned. When, in the
sanctity of the first day of the week, there comes
refreshment to the weary spirits and bodies of those
who then may rest, it is because that day is the
everlasting prophecy to man of the Sabbath of
God's eternity.   When, seeking  the calm shelter
of the house of prayer, we forget, for a space, the
din of the world, it is because we feel that He is
there with whom it is good for man to be alone.
The relief of confession of sin; the sweetness of
acts of penitential discipline; the strength which
slides down from above into the soul and spirit, in
answer to humble, persevering prayer; the conscious
joy in acts of mercy and love; all these, and the
hundred more of such like emotions, are what
they are, simply because God is what He is, and because we believe what He has told us of Himself,
and because we know that He saith true. Ours,
then, in so far as we are Christians, is the undying
confidence in Him which alone can support us in
all dangers, and carry us through all temptations,
the realization of His presence, the experience of
His power, the thrilling, sensitive response to the
calls of His Holy Spirit, the trust in His strength,
the veneration for His wisdom, the rejoicing acquiescence in His will. We make of Him an acquaintance, we picture Him to ourselves as a friend,
we think of Him as of a neighbor; in Christ, He is 
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS. 91
become to us a wise, a good, a great, a glorious,
a perfect man. There can be no vagueness in such
a faith in God. There can be no wavering in principles such as these.  There can be little doubt as
to the future, -as little as there is of mistrust in
the present.   We know our calling.   We can see
ahead a long way.   We  look not to the future as
a blank.  It is an ocean, over which we have not
yet spread our sail; but the Bible is our chart, and
our faith is the compass, and we shall not fear as
we launch forth.
Beloved brethren, the words which have now
been said respecting that future towards which we
are hastening, recall the necessity of finding a conclusion for these studies and, perhaps, rambling
thoughts.    How,  then,  shall the  conclusion be
made?  By reflecting on the conclusion itself; on
the conclusion of any earthly career, as it must
appear upon the pantheistic hypothesis, or upon
the analogy of the Christian religion. We have
thought together of that dismal system which denies the personal God; which makes the universe
eternal; which views God and the universe as substantially one; which regards all visible things, and
man himself, as but evolvings of the primal substance, as but phenomena in a fated sequence of development. That system would be dismal when stud ied at every advantage,-by a man in full health,
and rich, and free from care and responsibility, and 
92 THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS.
at the hour of noontide, and amid scenes of outward
prosperity and peace. Even then, the system would
be almost oppressive in some yet uncomprehended
awe and mystery of prophetic fatilure. How, then,
must it appear, if all these circumstances slould be
reversed?  How  must these  teIets sound, when
spoken to the heart of poverty, of pain, of grief?
How, finally, must this cup of consolation taste,
wheni presented and offiered to the lips of the dying?
Go to the man whose hour is come that he should
depart out of this world, and speak to him, in the
namne of this philosophy, such message as it can
convey; and if there be a shadow darker than the
shadowv of death, these tender mercies of the pantheistic creed shall pour  that  hopeless shadow,
broad and still, upon his forehead and uponI his
soul. There is no light beneath that shade; there
can be no dawn beyond. Go to the man whose
hour is come, and tell him that all is over forevermore; that he has played his part in the fatal sequence, and now must disappear eternally; that he
was but a portion of the absolute substance, a manifestation for a moment, an evolution, and that the
gulf which vomited forth the atom is about to eiigorge it again. Tell him that his whole course
here on earth has been but a dream; that his consciousness was but the consciousness of a deepheaving matter; that whether that portion which
he calls himself shall ever appear again in realized 
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS. 93
form or conscious shape is utterly beyond the
power of prediction; that life and time are but
"an          everlasting shore, that tumbles in the godless
deep;" and that for him there now remains but
this,
"To drop, head-foremost, in the jaws
Of vacant darkness, and to cease; "
tell him all this, the gospel of Pantheism, and
then withdraw, lest the curse follow fast upon your
footsteps from the lips of despair and death.  Yet
not, perhaps, the curse; perhaps the blessijig,-yea,
the blessing upon you, who, in thus exhibiting the
last resources of Philosophy, in thus revealing in
the most critical time her utter incompetency as a
guide or a comfort, have been the means of awaking the soul from its delusion, and breaking the
spells of Satan, though at the eleventh hour of life.
Many a man who, through long and hardened
years, has had no better hope than such as this,
at the close of all hath yet, and, let us trust, not
too late, recoiled from the awful emptiness in the
face of which he had dwelt, and flung himself, in
mortal extremity, in anguish of spirit, at the throne
of the Father, and at the feet of the Great High
Priest.   Oh what peace and joy is there in believing!  What  perfect confidence  in the will and
power of the Christian's Saviour, of the Christian's
God!  And what calm triumph, in the final hour,
over any and all fears of death!  "Preciosa in 
9- THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ITS APPLICA4TIONS.
conspectu Domini mors sanctorurm ejus:" Precious
in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
For them, the past life is a dear, a sweet reality:
for there they walked with Him; there had they
experience of His power; there they learned to love
Him, and there they wvere made ready by grace for
all that is to come. Dear are the friends they met;
dear those whom  they leave;  nor is the parting
over-sorrowful for nature to support, since presently
they that are Christ's shall meet again.  And if the
past be real, (Oh very real and very sweet that past
of a Christian life!) what shall be said of the future l  No  "vacant darkness" there, but the full
and warm light of paradise. No awful emptiness,
but the house of many mansions resounding eternally with the voice of joy. The Father's house,the doors therein open, the pathway thither paved
with pure gold, and the angels of Heaven descending, and ascending thereon!  The Lord, standing
above, proclaiming to all salvation, and unto all
peace.   The children thronging thither to the feast
of eternal days. This is the vision of holy death.
All fear cast out in perfect love; all doubt dismissed in the filial confidence of the heart. Then
the comfort of the Holy Communion, the body and
blood of the Lord; the refreshment of prayer;
the hopeful "farewell," being but for a little time;
the commendation of the soul, made bv the minister of the gospel of Christ. And then the still 
THE CIRISI'AN FAITH IN ITS APPLICATIONS. 95
ness,- the stillness which is such on our side alone;
which, on the other, is no stillness, but the blending together of the praises of the rejoicing hosts on
high. And then the temporary sleep of the body
in the care of our Lord, who is the Resurrection
and the Life.*
O Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! high and
undivided Trinity!  To Thee, God in Three Persons, be ascribed all glory and praise! To Thee,
O Father, do we owe all praise, for that Thou hast
timade us!  To Thee, O Son, do we owe all praise,
for that Thou, when we were dead, did(Ist make us
to live again!  To Thee, O  Holy Spirit, do we owe
all praise, for that Thou dost convert us, and renew
us day by day!  InI that great name standeth evermore the hope of the world; in that great name
standeth our eternal life. And long after the prophecies have failed, and the tongues have ceased, and
the knowledge hath vanished away, shall be proclaimed, yea, forever and forevermore,
"Lo! this is our God!  We  have waited for
Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we
have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in
His salvation."
* See Note H.  
NOTES.
NOTE A.
MR. HERBERT SPENCER'S work on "Universal Progress,"
lately reprinted in this country, has appeared since these
lectures were written. I could not have desired a filller
illustration than that which it affords of the tone and results
of modern rationalistic thought. The term which best describes his system is "Mechanical Atheism."  It is the negation of a divine mind and will, and the explanation of the
origin and government or course of the world by matter and
movement, by purely mechanical laws, and by the blind
forces of nature. The pantheistic ideas of emanation and development appear in startling rigidity; the dogma of the
creation is contemptuously flouted; Christianity is accounted
for as a mere phase of feeling; and every vestige of religion,
as we understand it, vanishes. Lest these expressions should
seem too strong, I quote from a recent review of the work
by a writer not known to me, in order that my opinion may
be justified:  "' Universal Progress' is the title selected by the author
.... by universal progress he means a law of evolution
common to all beings and all phenomena, whether material or spiritual.  MIany even of the so-called powers and
forces of nature are developed by new combinations and conditions that have gone before.... the same doctrine is
applied to what we call mental powers. These are only
new and higher manifestations of what are usually called
the vital forces, when brought into activity under favoring
physical conditions; and these vital forces are but similar
7 
NOTES.
developments of chemical and mechanical powers, under
their appropriate excitants, when interposed at the proper
juncture."
No one can mistake the meaning of this who knows the
history of the pantheistic philosophy. Let us hear the results of this "Universal Progress" theory in its applications
to the grand and supreme questions of God, man, the soul,
time, and eternity: -
"Of the object of religious worship Mr. Spencer says
little more than we have hinted. In his' First Principles,'
he furnishes an elaborate argument, derived from his philosophy, to show that there is a one mysterious something, a
somewhat, the object of worship, whose being is manifested
in the universe, but whose nature and relations are utterly
unknown and unknowable. His nature is unknown, because
the nature of everything great or small is unknown, and is a
mystery. His relations are unknowable, because that such
a being should have relations is impossible from his very
nature as absolute and unrelated. That there is such a
being we know; but who or what he is we do not know,
nor can we ever learn. Like time, space, force, and motion, he is; but what he is cannot be conceived by human
thought. The apotheosis of his system is, to set apart and
consecrate the universe as an altar'to the unknown God,'
whom all men must worship, but all alike'ignorantly,'whom, therefore, no man can conceive or "declare" to another.
Before this altar each successive generation must prostrate
itself in blind devotion, evolving for itself a form of creed
and worship which the next generation must inevitably
abandon and outgrow."
Such are the results of the latest theory of rationalism,late in time, but in substance identical with the systems of
the old pagan schools. I spoke of this scheme as "Atheism."
But it is worse than Atheism in this, that, while it removes
the true God from view, it does not leave the place empty,
but puts in it a shadow and spectre of its own exorcising,
98 
NOTES.
a thing which means nothing, and serves no purpose except to
deceive the minds of the ignorant. In the name of all that
is fair and manly, we protest against this dissimulation; and
we affirm that if these men were honest they would say at
once what they really think, "There is no  God."   But
they cannot say that, because such a declaration would kill
their cause. Reason and revelation agree entirely in their
estimate of the man who takes that position,- -  "Dixit insipiens in corde suo, non est Deus," -and therefore our philosophers are wary, and feign this veneration for a "somewhat," to which they apply the sacred name, lest the people
should call them fools.
NOTE B.
Historical Sketch of Pantheism.
FOR the satisfaction of those who would pursue the subject
as careful students, I present a brief outline of the history of
this great system.
It offers itself to us under two aspects, that of a religious
dogma, and that of a speculative philosophy. The latter is
a development of the former. As a dogma it appears in the
religions of the ancient world; as a speculation it is dominant among the philosophies of later days. Under each aspect it has been the persistent adversary of revelation: in
antiquity it filled, or tried to fill, the void left by the loss or
defacement of the primitive tradition; while in modern times
it has constantly opposed the religion of Christ.
Beginning with the earliest days, we find this heresy in
India. The system of emanation, as opposed to the idea of
creation, is the fundamental principle in the Indian theology.
Brahma is not a creator, but all things emanated from him.
The theological system of the Brahmins represents the
universe as evolved from Brahma, and as reentering into him
again; he is the first and infinite substance, the cosmic
::.- e:
~: eG.f:f
99 
NOTES.
unity, and in the creation and destruction of successive
worlds consist his life and death. (See the Vedas, and the
Code of Manou.)
In the theology of Egypt we find the same idea of emanation, and we miss that of creation proper.  (The student
may refer to Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, Iamblichus, and Porphyry.)
From the Indian and Egyptian systems, thus standing
first, and exhibiting the pantheistic ideas in their more rigid
form, we pass to those of Chaldea and Persia, which exhibit modifications of the former principle.
In Chaldea, dualism appears, a supreme deity being recognized, and, at the same time, an eternal, incorruptible, and
uncreate matter.
In Persia the same dualistic idea presents itself, but the
two principles are regarded as in antagonism: Ormuzd and
Ahriman strive for the mastery amid ill-defined relationships.
We pass, in our survey, to the Greek religions. The subject is undoubtedly an obscure and mysterious one; and yet
the old Orphic doctrines seem to be but a reproduction of
the theory of emanation. But the older religious ideas,
whatever they may have been, were lost in the materialism
and humanitarianism which absorbed everything; and when
St. Paul preached at Athens, it is evident that the idea of
a God who created the world, and who governs it by His
providential power, was lost to that generation.
The school of Thales was founded on the idea of a dualistic cosmogony, like that of the Phoenician and Chaldaean
systems; while that of Pythagoras started with the theory
of emanation, and, running through the common course of
pantheistic principles, attained its full development in Timoeus of Locris and Ocellus of Lucania.
The Pythagoreans set out with the idea that all existences
are included in the Absolute Unity. Their teachings on the
subject of the production of things are indistinct; or, if they
teach at all, they seem to teach the system of emanation.
.....".    *. 
100 
NOTES.
Xenophanes took up the question of the production of
things, and, beginning with the denial of a creation ex nihilo,
concluded that the universe is eternal, that there is but one
substance, and that thought is the only immutable reality.
Parmenides adopted this principle, and pushed it into pure
idealism, denying any reality to the finite, and saying that
all things that we see are but an outward show, that there
is no reality in phenomena, and that the testimony of the
senses is but a delusion; he also maintained that thought
and the object of thought are identical.
From this extravagant idealism a reaction occurred. Leucippus and Democritus founded the materialistic school.
Heraclitus endeavored in vain to find a means of harmonizing the idealistic and materialistic systems of the day.
Then followed the reign of universal skepticism.
It was when the mind had reached that wretched position
that Socrates appeared, and reformed philosophy by confounding the sophists by his well-known mode of commonsense argument; by appealing to the love of truth and virtue which still remains, notwithstanding every disadvantage,
in men; and by leading them back toward intellectual life.
The movement given by him led to the rise of the great
schools of Plato, Epicurus, Aristotle, and Zeno; and rigid
Pantheism for a time disappeared from the scene.
But in the school of Alexandria the old heresy revived,
and by the Gnostics and Neo-Platonists it was formalized
once more.
The Gnostic philosophy had for its base the system of emanation. It had two branches, a unitarian and a dualistic.
The unitarian Gnostics held one principle, firom which all
spiritual and material substances emanated; while the dualistic Gnostics affirmed two eternal principles, spirit and mat ter, of one or the other of which all beings are developments.
The Neo-Platonists aimed at opposing Christianity and
staying its triumphant progress, by effecting a reconciliation
of all the philosophies and of the religious traditions of the
101 
.NOTES.
nations. It was an immense syncretism. They then proposed a theurgic system by which to place men in connection with the gods, and to reproduce, in a purified condition,
the beliefs and practices of the old polytheism.
There were three chief centres of this sect,- Alexandria,
Athens, and Rome. Its great exemplars and representative
men are Plotinus and Proclus. These authors drew from
the old Eastern sources; the system of emanation forms the
key to their whole philosophy; and in their doctrines may
be found the germs of the later and modern pantheistic theories. Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, the German transcendentalists, and the French eclectics, have but reproduced their
ideas. Together with their blended system of syncretistic
speculations there came a revival of polytheism, of the practice of magic, and of fancied communication with genii, gods,
and departed spirits, just as, in the nineteenth century, while
rationalistic principles have been gaining ground in the community, the practices and arts of the table-tippers, the rappers, the spiritualists, and the dealers with the dead, have
become familiar to the public. It is impossible to miss the
meaning of these correspondences.
Since the Neo-Platonistic school forms the connecting link
between the ancient and the modern pantheists, it seems best
to present the views of that school, in order that the genealogy may be clearly seen. Maret (to whose admirable and
exhaustive work I am indebted for this historic sketch) thus
sums up the philosophy of Proclus: -" There is only one
substance in the universe, always identical with itself; we
discover this essence in ourselves by the contemplation of
the Ego.  This substance is the Absolute Unity; it encloses
in itself the principles of multiplicity and of diversity. The
primitive unity, like a luminous mass, radiates from its eternal centre, and produces the infinite series of beings which
are one and manifold at once. These derived unities are
incessantly brought back to their centre by the same force
which flung them forth like sparks from the fire of eternal
102 
NOTES.
life. Thus the world is perfect. Matter is an eternal emanation from God. Evil is a mere negation; it is but the
inequality of souls."
Thus far of the Alexandrian school.
The triumph of Christianity brought with it a second decay and disappearance of Pantheism. It is not until the
time of Charlemagne that we trace it again. In the ninth
century Scotus Erigena revived it; and other writers of less
note exhibit in their works the predictions of its future appearance. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however,
the study of this philosophy was fully renewed, and schools
were formed, the pedigree of which may be traced at once
to the Neo-Platonists.
The appearance of Giordano Bruno and Spinoza upon the
scene marks the commencement of the pantheistic revival.
It is unnecessary to enter upon a full account of their tenets,
which are already too well known. To reconcile those tenets
with the Catholic faith would be impossible; their relation
with the anterior philosophies is close and full; in principles
and results they are the same.
Thus, descending the chronological scale, we arrive at the
recent epoch when Germany became the theatre of the full
development of the traditional heresy. Kant was the father
of the modern intellectual movement in that country. Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel followed in his steps, completing his
work. In Hegel Pantheism is once more presented, pure
and simple, to the world. The line, from the Brahmins of
India to these rationalistic philosophers, is visible, link after
link. The metaphysical systems of Germany are but the
old Pantheism clad in new forms. No essential progress has
been made. At bottom we find the same tenet of the unity
and identity of substance, the principle which was held by
the Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists, revived by Erigena,
repeated by Giordano Bruno, and made the central point in
the system of Spinoza.
As for ourselves, we are concerned, not so much with the
103 
NOTES.
system considered in its scientific form, as with its applications. These are numerous; as, for instance, to morals, history, social order, art, religion. It is in these applications
that we have to meet and deal with it; whether it present
itself in the shape of the historic theory of Buckle, who
strives to trace all events to physical causes, discarding the
idea of a superintending providence; or in the form of the
materialistic atheism of Spencer in his scheme of Universal
Progress; or in the socialistic experiments of Fourier and
his disciples; or in the rational religionism of those who dispense with creeds and sacraments and all the framework of
a visible and historic Catholicism, pretending to serve God
in individual seclusion without the mediation of rite or form
or consecrated priesthood; or in the dreamy and unreal
poetry and literature of the day; or in the feigned conferences, through mediums, with the spirits of another realm;
or in the mad attempts at advance and progress towards the
idolization of humanity. It seems impossible for any candid
man to read the history of human thought without perceiving that one and the same disease runs through it, and that
the course is ever in the same direction when the restraints
provided by Almighty God are thrown away. There is and
can be no new gospel; it would seem that there can be no
new heresy. These, which now assail the truth, have risen
up against it heretofore, and have been as often prostrated.
In like manner the reaction will presently come, and they
shall be cast away as abominable, and left to smoulder again
in the ashes of their burning.
NOTE C.
I USE the word "licentious" in the sense of" unrestrained
by law." It is strange that they who reprove lewdness in
the flesh and in the carnal passions, seem to feel no need of
restraining the mind from indulgence in speculation; for
104 
NOTES.
profligacy is one and the same thing, to the eye of God,
whether it be that of the body amid harlots, or that of the
intellect amid profane thinkers.
To the statement in the text that the mind gravitates naturally towards the pantheistic scheme, it may be objected
that this is to represent the reason as tending, in its ordinary
exercise, toward infidel solutions.   But this objection is
groundless. The reason, wrongly acting, must depart from
the truth; but the reason, under the conditions necessary to
its proper exercise, cannot go astray. For the reason is but
an eye; and without revelation it is where the bodily eye is
without light. It would be as great a misconception of our
thought to say that the intellect, acting naturally, must incline to error, as to imagine us asserting that the natural use
of the eye tends to blindness. The use of the eye under
false conditions, as with insufficient light, or on very fine
work, or in any way in which it was not intended to be
used, would indeed tend toward the destruction of that
organ. It is so with the reason, which, in divine and supernatural things, was not made to be used except under the
illumination of the light of God. When men speculate by
themselves, independently of that light, as shown to them in
historic and outward revelation, they are misusing the godlike faculty, and do but weaken and ultimately destroy it.
NOTE D.
THE French school of Philosophy traces its origin to Descartes; the principles advanced by him were perfected by
Malebranche, and it would not have been difficult, at that
stage, to have harmonized the system with theology and religion.
But the sensual school of Locke took its rise in England.
Its principles, adapted by Gassendi and Condillac, were
105 
NOTES.
thrown into the philosophical schools of France, which
rapidly sunk towards materialism and naturalism.
Then came the Revolution, which upturned society, and
shook the nation to its centre, drenching it in its own blood.
After that social convulsion the French philosophy revived, with a powerful reaction from the materialism of its
previous stage, -a reaction which was due to the rise and
influence of the German schools, idealistic and spiritual in
their tendencies. The result was seen in the establishment
of the modern eclectic school, of which Cousin was the
founder.
The eclectic school denies the charge of Pantheism: it is,
however, in its principles and results essentially pantheistic.
A comparison of the philosophy of Hegel (about the character of which there is no doubt) and that of the eclectics,
will show practical results of the same character. The historic systems, the moral systems, the psychological systems
of France have grown up together with the eclectic philosophy, and as a result of the movement and impulse which it
gave to human thought. The tendencies of those systems
are all in the same direction; the breach between philosophy
and religion is widening continually; and the minds of the
educated men of France at this hour would seem to be in
almost hopeless alienation from the faith. "The longer one
lives in this country," says a writer now resident in Paris,
"the more deeply does one become convinced of the hopeless
divorce between intellect and faith. The lay mind is totally
alienated from the Church and from revealed religion. There
is more external respect for the former, perhaps, than for the
latter, because'les convenances' exercise a very arbitrary
power in France, and it is considered correct for women and
children to be communicants. Educated men scarcely ever
are so; even those who profess a kind of lax reverence for the
Church and for religion tell you almost invariably that they
do not'pratiquer.'"  This is the recognized phrase, which
seems to be regarded as a matter of course, an almost satis
106 
NOTES.
factory equivalent for the service of God. When Madame
George Sand paints a young man, a Parisian, son of a philosopher, who is a deist like his father, and at the same time
pure and noble in his life and feelings, she gives us, I fear,
an ideal picture, little in accordance with the facts; and, indeed, elsewhere in the same book she shows young Frenchmen as generally scoffing against humanity and moral principle. But she does not exaggerate the strength of the
almost universal prejudice of the educated class against the
Christian faith.   I told you once before that one of the most
Christian-hearted Frenchmen known to me, a literary man
of note, told me not long ago that it was next to impossible
for an educated Frenchman to be a Christian; that the utmost he could do was to'aspire."'
NOTE E.
THIS idea of a progressive, advancing, and improving God,
blasphemously as it sounds to us, is among the most familiar
of the pantheistic notions. It is expressed in the well-known
formula of the Germans, " Gott ist in werden," Deus est injfieri. To show that the thought is not a strange one here
at home, I make the following extracts from an article in a
radical journal published in this city; the communication is
a reply to the questions, "What, Where, and How is God?"
The writer says  " God is the intelligent, vivifying  principle, pervading and developing all matter.....      Eternal
progress is one of the attributes of God, and is the coexistent fiundamental law of the universe.  All nature demonstrates this profound and all-pervading principle. God Himself cannot be exceptional to the universal law of which
Himself is the enactive and vitalizing principle. Therefore
God Himself progresses. God possesses sensation," &c., &c.
This writer has but copied the ideas of the German pantheists.:.M
107 
NOTES.
NOTE F.
THE Catholic dogma of the creation (using that word in
its proper sense of bringing into being what was not in any
way before) is, and must ever be, the test of all heresies
touching the origin of the world. The philosophers repel
the charge of Pantheism; they claim to believe in a God.
But they will not admit that God is a creator. If; however,
the dogma of the creation be denied, there remains no conceivable choice but between Dualism and Pantheism. Either
God created the world, or He did not. If He did not create
it, it is eternal. If eternal, it is either substantially distinct
from Him, or substantially identical with Him. To take
the former alternative is to admit two eternal substances;
to take the latter is to hold the unity and identity of substance. There is no logical, no possible position for him
who denies the Catholic dogma of the creation, save in Dualism, Pantheism, or skepticism.
NOTE G.
To the summary presented in the text it may be added
that the system, as now operative, divides itself into two
branches, materialistic Pantheism, and idealistic Pantheism.
The former is a gross sensualism and naturalism, which sees
in the universe nothing but matter and its modifications and
transformations. The latter is a more elevated and more
serious speculation. In the former, God is brought down
to and absorbed in the world; in the latter, the world is lifted
up and translated into God. But the grand and distinctive
features in each are the same,- the denial of the distinction
between the finite and the infinite, and the assertion of the
unity and identity of substance.
.......
108 
NOTES.
NOTE H.
DURING the season of Lent, in 1863, when I was delivering these lectures, I received from time to time, through the
mail, communications evidently written in great bitterness
of spirit, denouncing my work in unmeasured terms, and
especially reviling the dogma of the Holy Trinity. When
the lectures were announced for repetition last winter,
the attacks to which I have referred were renewed, and in
divers communications, for the most part anonymous or bearing false signatures, I was assailed as an enemy of the truth,
and the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity was aspersed, with
a malignity which could hardly have been surpassed, while
spiritual powers were appealed to and invoked as at hand to
silence my utterances. I record these facts to show to what
extent the simple enunciation of the truth may arouse the
fury of the enemy; and also that I may notice a circumstance which profoundly impressed me at the time, which
has been often referred to since its occurrence, and which, in
view of the foregoing particulars, (known only to myself at
the moment,) afforded, as I devoutly felt, a visible sign of
the neighborhood and approval of the Almighty. At the
instant of my uttering the words, " O Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost," the whole congregation, as though moved by a more
than human power, slowly arose, and so remained, with
heads bowed in adoration, during the utterance of that which
followed. Never did I feel God nearer than at that mo ment; and never did I feel more thrillingly the certainty of
the ultimate triumph of the eternal truths of the Catholic
Creed. It was as if a voice from heaven were crying aloud,
"Unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear,
saith the Lord."
THE END.
109