We observe that motion is caused by body, and apart from body no one can conceive the idea of motion. Local motion may, but general motion cannot be accounted for. The Shepherd contends there is nothing more mysterious than motion. There he is right; and had he said nothing is less mysterious than motion he would have been equally so.

For telling these unpalatable truths the Atheist is bitterly detested. 'The Shepherd' is a most unorthodox kind of Pantheist; yet even he does not scruple to swell the senseless cry against 'Godless infidels,' whom he calls an almost infinite variety of bad names, and among other shocking crimes accuses them of propounding a 'dead philosophy.' Yet the difference between his Pantheism and our Atheism is only perceptible to the microscopic eye of super-sublimated spiritualism. The subjoined is offered to the reader's notice as a sample of Pantheism so closely resembling Atheism, that, like the two Sosias in the play, to distinguish them is difficult:

'What Coleridge meant by the motto (all Theology depends on mastering the term nature) concerns us not. We appropriate the motto, but we do not profess to appropriate it in the same sense as Coleridge appropriated it. Every man must appropriate it for himself. Coleridge perceived what every thinking mind has perceived—the difficulty of believing in two self-determining powers, viz., God and Nature, as also the consequences of regarding them as identical. If Nature be one power and God another power, and if God be not responsible for what Nature does, then Nature is a self-subsisting God. If God and Nature be esteemed one universal existence, this is Pantheism, which is denominated an accursed doctrine by the disciples of Sectarianism, and formed no part of the creed, of the great dialectician of modern times. The attempt to separate God from Nature will mistify the clearest head: not even Coleridge could wade the depths of this vulgar Theology. Is there any man who can rest satisfied in the faith of two independent powers who exist together in any other sense than the two polar energies of a magnet, which are really one? No: and men are afraid to regard them as one. On the one hand they are puzzled to understand an unintelligible absurdity, and on the other, they are afraid to admit a simple truism which leads to the abolition of all ceremonial forms, and lip professions of religion, and is execrated by priests and their accomplices on this very account. We do not pretend to understand anything. Every subject whatsoever is too high, too deep, and too broad for us. But coming into a world where men act upon certain modes of reasoning, which are unsatisfactory to our minds, we battle immediately with these men, like an animalcule thrown into a glass of water amongst other animalcules of opposite principles, and in doing so we act from the impulse within which is our sole authority—that impulse within is the preference we give to a mode of reasoning which begins by regarding the existing of every kind and, degree as a 'perfect unity,' and making the unity, responsible for every mode—the cause of every mode.' [49:1] That is to say, dealing with it as what it is, the only existence; the one, or all and in all. Can Atheists object to that? No, surely, for they uniformly thus reason with respect to Nature; and unless traitors to their own principles, cannot object to Pantheistical philosophy as here laid down. Atheists say, Nature never had an Author—so do Pantheists of the 'Shepherd' school. Atheists say Nature is at once the womb and grave and cause and effect of all phenomena—so do they. Atheists say 'death is nothing, and nothing death;' all matter breathing the breath of life—so do they. Indeed, notwithstanding their talk about God and Devil, they think Nature both, which amounts to denying both. Can Atheists do more? or can Pantheists do so much without themselves being Atheists?

But the Rev. Mr. Smith is no Atheist; at least he makes no profession of Atheism. Au contraire, he makes fine sport with those who do. Himself a Pantheist of the all-God school, he took to calling Atheists 'ugly names,' as if quite innocent that no 'thinking mind' can fail to perceive the downright lunacy, or something worse, of supposing a pin to choose on the score of piety, between universal Deity and no Deity at all. The 'Shepherd' of a new philosophic flock should have known better than to attempt the reform of 'vulgar theology' by setting forth the mystical nonsense of 'vulgar' Pantheism. All falsehood is 'vulgar'; but the most 'vulgar' of falsehood is that which assumes the convenient garb of transcendentalism, with a view to throw dust in the eyes of 'vulgar' lookers-on. If Pantheists of this reverend gentleman's school are neither sophists nor simpletons, Materialism is neither true nor false. They do not plainly write down philosophy of so strangely negative a kind; that would be too ridiculous; but every reader of the 'Shepherd' knows that, in their way, they cleverly demonstrate all doctrine—their own of course excepted—true and false, which, no one need mount a pair of 'universal' spectacles to see, comes to neither true nor false. Spiritualism receives at their hands no better treatment than Materialism, nor Southcottianism than either. Southcottianism (they say) is true and false; Materialism is true and false; Spiritualism is true and false: in brief, all doctrine, positive or negative, faithful or unfaithful, is true and false, except the doctrine of Pantheism alias Universalism, which is, bye and bye, to supersede every other. According to this mystically wise, but rather inconsistent school, Atheists are stupid as Christians, Christians stupid as Mohammedans, and Mohammedans stupid as nearly everybody else. These men are peculiarly fitted to make in the world of intellect the best possible 'arrangements for general confusion.' Atheists in all but good sense, and seemingly without knowing it, they contrive to mix up, with skill worthy of better employment, a very novel and amusing species of philosophical hodge-podge. Their Reverend leader or 'Shepherd' was wont to rail most furiously against dogmatists, especially those of the Atheistic sort; but his own dogmatism is at least a match for theirs. He did more than dogmatize when combatting Materialism, he from ignorance or design, libelled it by putting, according to a custom 'more honoured in the breach than the observance,' words into the mouths of Materialists that no real Materialist could utter. Take an example. In the periodical just referred to and quoted from, [50:1] are these words:—'The mode of (matter's) existence is the only subject in dispute. The Materialist says, it is an infinite collection of dead unintelligent particles of sand; the spiritualist, that it is the visible and tangible development of an infinite, eternal, omnipresent, thinking, sentient mind.' Now, the truth is, Materialists contend that matter as a whole cannot in strictness be considered either dead or living, intelligent or non-intelligent, but simply matter; which matter when in certain well-known states is called dead, and when in other equally well-known states is called living. If where motion is there is life, then there is no dead matter; for all matter, or at least all matter of which we have experience, moves. To charge upon Materialists the dogma of matter's deadness is a paltry trick which a writer like Mr. Smith should disdain to practice. Nor does it become him to lecture Atheists about their dogmatism, while from his own published writings can be adduced such passages as the following:—

'We know that the two principal attributes of matter are visibility and tangibility, and these two properties are purely spiritual or immaterial. Thus resistance is nothing but that mysterious power we call repulsion—a power which fills the whole universe—which holds the sun, moon, and stars in its hand, and yet is invisible.'

This is what our Rev. Pantheist calls one of Spiritualism's 'splendid arguments,' and splendidly absurd it certainly is; quite equal, considered as a provocative of mirth, to Robert Owen's sublimest effusions about that very mysterious and thoroughly incomprehensible power which 'directs the atom and controuls the aggregate of nature.' But the argument though 'splendid,' is false. Who is ignorant that resistance is not a power at all, though we properly enough give the name resistance to one of matter's phenomena. Only half crazed Spiritualists would confound phenomena with things by which they are exhibited. Matter under certain circumstances resists, and under certain other circumstances attracts. But neither repulsion nor attraction exists, though we see every day of our lives that matter does repel and does attract. Its doing so proves it is able to do so, and proves nothing more. Mr. Smith says, 'if we want repose for our minds upon this subject we may find it; but it can only be found in the universal mind.' He does not however explain the co-existence of universal mind with universal matter. He does not tell us how two universals could find room in one universe.

'We are gravely assured (by spiritualising Pantheists among the rest) that God is something out of time and space; but since our knowledge is intuition comprehended under conception, we cannot have any knowledge of that which is not received into the imaginary recipients of time and space, and consequently God is not an entity.

'But here comes the jugglery—reason forms the idea of the soul or a substance out of nature, by connecting substance and accident into infinite and absolute substance. What is that verbiage, but that the reason gives the name of soul to something that does not exist at all?'

'Reason forms the idea of God or of Supreme Intelligence out of Nature, by connecting action and reaction into infinite and absolute concurrence. What is God out of Nature? Where is out? Where is God? What is God?—an absolute nothing.'

'For an imagination to exist there must be two properties or qualities coming in contact with each other to produce that imagination. For these two properties or qualities to exist there must be matter for them to exist in; and for matter to exist there must be space for it to exist in, and so on. Matter might exist without two different properties to produce an imagination; but neither two properties nor one property can exist without matter for it to exist in. Man may exist for a time as he does when he is dead without an imagination; but the imagination cannot exist without the material man. Matter cannot become non-existent, but the imagination can and does become so. Matter therefore is the reality and the imagination a nonentity, an unsubstantial idea; or an imagination only.' [52:1]