Now, the problem which presents itself here is so to guard our language wnat it shall not be open to the charge of confounding God with nature. It is hard to steer clear of both Scylla and Charybdis, to avoid Deism on the one side, Pantheism on the other. Greek philosophy furnishes us with in- structive illustrations of the difficulty of avoiding fatal error in this matter, if we attempt to con- struct our theology without the aid of revelation. If the Epicureans, with their conception of gods who lived at ease a life of undisturbed and dignified repose, went off in the direction of Deism, the Stoics, with their doctrine of God as the soul of the world, were Pantheistic. And this is reall δι more serious error than the other, because it effectually banishes all true religion. For religion involves belief in a Person, who not only is in constant and intimate relation to nature, but who also enters into communion with men. This is impossible if God be identified with nature, for with a mere abstraction no fellowship can be sought, and to it no worship can be addressed. Pantheism is as impotent as Deism to satisfy the in- tellectual and the emotional cravings of mankind.
Pantheism is a vague word, and requires closer examination than we have yet given it. Some- thing has been said above of theories which resolve God into the complex of material forces, which identify God and nature, indeed, but by the elimination from the idea of God of its distinctive features, reason, intelligence, personality, good- ness, and the like. Such theories, though from one point of view ‘Pantheistic,—for the only Supreme which they recognize is the Universe of Being,—are, from a truer point of view, ‘ Atheistic,’ for they do not admit the existence of any spiritual being higher than ourselves. But idealist philoso- phies, such as that which was unfolded in the sys- tem of Spinoza, do not thus begin and end with the material forces of the phenomenal world; they Paes and end with God, in whom as the Great All-pervading Spirit they find the explanation of all existence. Spinoza does not resolve God into nature, but he exalts nature to God, he treats all the operations of nature as the manifestations of supreme spiritual substance. For him, nature is the development of freedom, or, to use his own remarkable language, the processes of the universe
* Homily for Rogation Week, pt. i.
NATURE
are the exhibition of the natura naturans (or God) unfolding itself (or Himself) in the natura natur- ati (or nature). It is plain that, on such a system as this, the ‘laws of nature’ are absolutely binding on the Divine Life; for the operations of these laws are the manifestations (and the only possible manifestations) of that Life. We have here, indeed, a spiritual interpretation of nature presented to us; every movement in the visible order is, as it were, a sacrament of the Divine Life. But such a doctrine is widely removed from Theism ; for while it speaks of a Divine Life, it leaves no room for a Divine Reason, and Will, and Personality. The relation of the Supreme to nature is conceived in such systems rather as the relation of the vital principle to the living plant, than as the relation of the directing mind to the field of experience in which itoperates. Certainly, this latter analogy is not complete or final. Our minds produce etfects in the physical order only through the medium of our Be ies, and even thus only within certain limits and under certain conditions; the power of supreme mind over the universe, which is the sphere of its manifestation, cannot be conceived as other than absolute (see MIRACLE). But yet is the analogy true so far as it goes, and it is in harmony with the few hints which Scripture offers on this great subject. The opening verses of St. John’s Gospel speak of the creation of all things as the work of the Logos, and of Him as the Life of the world and the Light of men (Jn 14), The Logos is not a mere name for the impersonal order of nature; He is the Directing Intelli- gence which set in array its forces, and con- tinues to guide and control them in their energy. And of the life of man St. Paul quotes with
approval the saying of Cleanthes, ‘We are also his offspring,’ and de move, and have our being’ (Ac 17%).
clares, ‘In him we live, and This is the rational and Christian view of nature and of humanity, and it is as widely divergent from Pantheism on the one hand as it is from Deism on the other. An important conclusion is thus reached. Theology, no less than science, leads to the conception of the Unity of nature. It is not @ mere aggregate of independent forces; it is a totality, which is conceived as One because of the Unity of the Intelligence which created and governs it. Each part ministers to the welfare of the whole ; in its growth only the ‘ fittest’ survive, because, were it not for the elimination of the ‘unfit,’ nature would be not Cosmos but Chaos. It would be ‘without form and void,’ as in the days before the Divine Spirit moved upon the face of the waters (Gn 13). ature is One, because of the Unity of its Author; ‘Iam J” that maketh all things’ (Is 44%; οἵ. Rev 4"). But wnity does not necessarily involve wniformity. The Unity of Nature is an axiom of science Hes of religion ; the Uniformity of Nature, i.e. the rule that ‘the same physical causes will always produce the same physical effects,’ far from being an axiom, is nothing more than an empirical maxim, convenient for scientific investigation, which has been found to hold good in an enormous number of instances, but which has no a@ priori necessity and no rational guarantee of universality. Nature is, indeed,