in ray opinion, he cannot but produce, so that the creation ceases to be unintelligible, and God is no more without a world than a world without God." ^ It is one of the most familiar aphorisms of the German philosophers, " Ohne Welt kein Gott ; und ohne Gott keine Welt."
Renan in his " Vie de J^sus," understands by Pantheism, ma- terialism, or the denial of a living God. This would exclude all the forms of the doctrines held by idealistic pantheists in all ages. Dr. Calderwood pronounces Sir William Hamilton's doctrine of creation pantheistic, because it denies that the sum of existence can either be increased or diminished. Sir William Hamilton teaches that when we say God created the world out of nothing, we can only mean that " He evolves existence out of Himself." Although all the forms of Pantheism are monistic, except Hylozoism, which is properly dualistic, yet the mere doctrine of the unity of substance does not constitute Pantheism. However objectionable the doc- trine may be that everything that exists, even unorganized matter, is of the substance of God, it has been held by many Christian Theists. This does not necessarily involve the denial of the essen- tial distinction between matter and mind.
2. How^ever they differ as to the nature of the Infinite as such, whether it be matter or spirit ; or that of wdiich both thought and extension (potentially) can be predicated ; or, whether it be thought itself, or force, or cause, or nothing, i. e., that of which nothing can be affirmed or denied ; a simple unknown quantity ; they all agree that it has no existence either before or out of the world. The world is, therefore, not only consubstantial, but co- eternal with God.
3. This of course precludes the idea of creation ; except as an eternal and necessary process.
4. They deny that the Infinite and Absolute Being in itself has either intelligence, consciousness, or will. The Infinite comes into existence in the Finite. The whole life, consciousness, intelligence, and knowledge, at any time, of the former, is the life, conscious- ness, intelligence, and knowledge of the latter, i. e., of the world. " Omnes (mentes)," says Spinoza, " simul Dei aeternum et infini- tum intcllectum constituunt." ^ " God alone is, and out of Him is nothing."*^ " Seine Existenz als Wesen ist unser Denken von ihin ; aber seine reale Existenz ist die Natur, zu welcher das einzelne Denkende als moment gehort."*
1 Psycholof/y. fourth edition, N. Y. 1856, p. 447.
2 Jtihices, V. xl. schol., edit. Jena, 1803, p. 297.
3 Fichte, Von selit/m Leben, p. 143, edit. Berlin, 1806. * Strauss, Dogmntik, i. p. 517.
802 TART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. m.— Anti-Theism.
5. Pantheism denies the personality of God. Personality as well as consciousness implies a distinction between the Self and the Not Self; and such distinction is a limitation inconsistent with the nature of the Infinite. God, therefore, is not a person who can say I, and who can be addressed as Thou. As He comes into existence, in- telligence, and consciousness only in the world, He is a person only so far as He comprehends all personalities, and the consciousness of the sum of finite creatures constitutes the consciousness of God. " The true doctrine of Hegel on this subject," says Michelet,^ " is not that God is a person as distinguished from other persons ; neither is He simply the universal or absolute substance. He is the move- ment of the Absolute ever making itself subjective ; and in the subjective first comes to objectivity or to true existence." " God," he adds, " according to Hegel, is the only true personal Being." " As God is eternal personality, so He eternally produces his other self, namely. Nature, in order to come to self-consciousness."
It follows of necessity from the doctrine, that God is the substance of which the universe is the phenomenon ; that God has no exist- ence but in the world ; that the aggregate consciousness and life of the Finite is, for the time being, the whole consciousness and life of the Infinite ; that the Infinite cannot be a pei'son distinct from the world, to whom we can say. Thou. On this point Cousin says, " Take away my faculties, and the consciousness that attests them to me, and I am not for myself. It is the same with God ; take away nature, and the soul, and every sign of God disappears." '^ What the soul would be without faculties and without conscious- ness, that is God without the universe. An unconscious God, with- out life, of whom nothing can be predicated but simple being, is not only not a person, but he is, for us, nothing.
6. Man is not an individual subsistence. He is but a moment in the life of God ; a wave on the surface of the sea ; a leaf which falls and is renewed year after year.
7. When the body, which makes the distinction of persons among men, perishes, personality ceases Avith it. There is no conscious ex- iijtence for man after death. Schleiermacher, in his " Discourses," says, the piety in which he was nurtured in his youth, " remained with me when the God and immortality of my childhood disappeared from mv doubting sight." ^ On this avowal, i\Ir. Hunt, curate of St. Ives, Hunts, comments : " The ' God and immortality ' of his
1 Gescfiichie der leizen Systeme der PhilosopUe in Deutschland, vol. ii. p. 647.
s Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, trans. Wight, N. Y. 185-1, p. 365.
8 Hunt's Essay on Pantheism, London, 1866, p. 312.