Schleiermacher.
That Schleiermacher was much indebted to Spinoza is abundantly evident from his own words. He spoke of "the holy repudiated Spinoza." He declared that "the high world-spirit penetrated him; the Infinite was his beginning and his end; the universe his only and eternal love. In holy innocence and lowliness, he mirrored himself in the eternal world, and saw himself as its most love-worthy image. He was full of religion and of the Holy Spirit; and therefore he stands alone and unreachable, master in his art above the profane multitude, without disciples and without citizenship."[[22]]
Anglican Broad Churchmen.
Coming down to Anglican Broad Churchmen, it would scarcely be fair to quote isolated utterances as proofs of their Pantheism. And yet when Frederick Robertson asked, "What is this world itself but the form of Deity whereby the manifoldness and beauty of His mind manifests itself?" and still farther, when he quotes with approval Channing's word, that "perhaps matter is but a mode of thought," the most earnest Pantheist would hardly desire more. For the conception of the Universe involved must surely exclude the real being, or even the real existence, of anything but God. Matthew Arnold never committed himself to Pantheism, nor, indeed, to any other theory of the Universe. For his delicate humour and lambent satire always had in view simply the practical object of clearing a plain way for the good life through the "Aberglaube" of theology. His description of God as "the Power not ourselves which makes for righteousness," might seem, in fact, the negation of Pantheism, because, if God is not ourselves, there is something other than God. But the man who deliberately justified the loose phraseology of the Bible about infinite Being, by the plea that it was language "thrown out" at an object infinitely transcending linguistic expression, ought not himself to be pinned to the implications logically deducible from his own words "thrown out" at the same transcendant object. And, though Matthew Arnold was too literary to be a Pantheist, that is, though he thought more of forms of expression than of ultimate reality, his satirical disintegration of the creeds, wherever it is effective, makes Pantheism the only religious alternative. So-called "secular" and godless alternatives may be offered; but their incongruity with the whole evolution of humanity from prehistoric animism to the higher Pantheism will make their doom short and sure.
Why Pantheism as a Religion was called Modern.
In the earlier part of this essay I made the remark that Pantheism as a religion is almost entirely modern. The context, however, clearly showed what was meant; for several pages have been occupied with indications of the ideas and teaching of individual Pantheists from Xenophanes to Spinoza. But we do not usually take much note of a religion that is confined to one or two men in an age. If it dies out we treat it merely as a curiosity, or an intellectual puzzle, like the dreams of Jacob Boehme, or the atheistic ecclesiasticism of Comte. But, if it afterwards shows symptoms of unexpected adaptation to the mental and moral conditions of a newer world, and if, on account of this adaptation, it gains a hold on men who are neither philosophers nor metaphysicians, but only religious, it demands our consideration on far other grounds than those of intellectual curiosity.
Pantheistic Tendencies of Contemporary Thought
Now it has only been during the second half of the last century that Pantheism has been able to claim attention as a religion in such a sense as this. As to the fact there can hardly be any dispute. For not only has it become ever a more prominent motive in the music of the poets, and not only are all rationalizations of Christianity more or less transparent disguises of Pantheism, but I may safely appeal to those ordinary members of intelligent society who are neither poets, nor divines, nor philosophers, whether the freest and most confidential interchange of religious thought does not continually verge on a faith which merges everything in God.
Caused by the Mutual Pressure of Science and Faith.
Nor are the reasons of this tendency far to seek. Indeed, they are palpable and conspicuous in the mutual pressure of science and faith. For, on the one hand science has made unthinkable the old-world conception of a three-storeyed Universe, constructed by an artificer God, who suddenly awoke from an eternity of idleness to make Heaven, Earth, and Hell—a conception involving a King of kings, enthroned like an eastern monarch, and sending forth His ministering spirits, or appointing His angel deputies to direct and govern at His beck. Or if it be said that never, except in the ages of primeval simplicity, or amongst later generations living under primeval conditions? has such a conception been entertained, it would be difficult for the "broadest" Churchman to say what has been, put in its place. It is vain to remind us how later Christianity has patronised nebular hypotheses and the The Nebular Hypothesis taken alone Involves Absurdity. doctrine of evolution. For these give no definite substitute whatever for the old story, that Elohim "spoke, and it was done—he commanded, and it stood fast." Whence the fiery mists by the rotation and cooling of which the worlds were slowly evolved? We are told that the same process is going on now within the ken of astronomers. But does any one suppose that in those realms of space God is evoking something out of nothing, or saying "be," and "there is"? No; we are assured that these fiery mists are formed by the collision of misguided orbs; and we are even asked—or, at least we were asked—to believe that this process must go on until all systems are agglomerated in one orb, to be ultimately congealed into stone. What, then, is the office of the Creator according to this scheme, as repulsive as it is absurd? It would appear that, at some moment in a vacuous eternity, He calls matter out of nothing, whirls it into fiery vortices, and then lets it cool down to the absolute zero wherein death reigns for ever.