pantheists allow or acknowledge) the sonl of man is the highest form of the existence of God. As the souls of men differ very much one from another, one being much superior to others, the greater the man the more divine he is, i. e., the more does he rep- resent God ; the more of the divine essence does he reveal. The highest step of development is reached only by those who come to the consciousness of their identity with God. This is the precise doctrine of the Hindus, who teach that when a man is able to say, *' I am Brahm," the moment of his absorption into the infinite Being has arrived. This is the ground on which the pantheistic pliilosophers rest their claim of preeminence ; and the ground on which they concede the preeminence of Christ. He, more than any other man, saw into the depths of his own nature. He was able to say as no other man could say, " I and the Father are one." But the difference between Christ and other men is only one of degree. The human race is the incarnation of God, which is a process from eternity to eternity. " Mankind," says Strauss, " is the Godman ; the key of a true Christology is, that the predicates which the Church gives to Christ, as an individual, belong to an idea, a generic whole." ^
11. Tiiere is only one step further, and that is, the deification of evil. That step Pantheists do not hesitate to take; so far as evil exists it is as truly a manifestation of God as good. The wicked are only one form of the self-manifestation of God ; sin is only one formi of the activity of God. This dreadful doctrine is explicitly avowed.
Rosenkranz says,^ " Die dritte Consequenz endlich ist die, dass Gott der Sohn audi als identisch gesetzt ist mit dera Subject, in welchem die religiose Vorstellung den Ursprung des Bosen an- schaut, mit dem Satan, Phosphoros, Lucifer. Diese Verschmelzung begriindet sich darin, dass der Sohn innerhalb Gottes das Moment der Unterscheidung ist, in dem Unterschied aber die Moglichkeit der Eiitgegensetzung und Entzweiung angelegt ist. Der Sohn ist der selbstbewusste Gott." Such a sentence as the foregoing has never been written in English, and, we trust, never will be. The conclusion it avows, however, is unavoidable. If God be every- thing, and if there be a Satan, God must be Satan. Rosenkranz says, that the mind is horrified at such language, only because it does not recognize the intimate connection between good and evil ; that evil is in good, and good in evil. Without evil there can be no good.
1 Dogmatik, ii. p. 215. ^ Encykiepddie, p. 51.
308 PART L — THEOLOGY. [Ch. ni. - Ajiti-Theism.
It is because of this deification of evil, that a recent German writer^ said that this S3^stem should be called Pandiabolism instead of Pantheism. He, if we mistake not, is the author of the article in Hengstenberg's " Kirchen-Zeitung,"^ in which it is said, "this is the true positive blasphemy of God — this veiled blasphemy — this diabolism of the deceitful angel of light — this speaking of reckless words, with which the man of sin sets himself in the tem- ple of God, showing himself that he is God. The Atheist cannot blaspheme with such power as this ; his blasphemy is merely nega- tive. He merely says : ' There is no God.' It is only out of Pantheism that a blasphemy can proceed, so wild, of such inspired mockery, so devoutly godless, so desperate in its love of the world, — a blasphemy so seductive, and so offensive that it may well call for the destruction of the world."
Pantheism, however, becomes all things to all men. To the pure it gives scope for a sentimental religious feeling which sees God in every thing and every thing in God. To the proud it is the source of intolerable arrogance and self-conceit. To the sen- sual it gives authority for every form of indulgence. The body being a mode of God's extension, according to Spinoza's theory, as the mind is a mode of the divine intelligence, the body has its divine rights as well as the soul. Even some of the most reputable of the Pantheistic school, do not hesitate to say in reference to the trammels of morality : " It is well that the rights of our sensual nature should, from time to time, be boldly asserted."^ This system, therefore, as even the moderate Tholuck says, " comes to the same result with the materialism of French encyclopedists, who mourned over mankind for having sacrificed the real pleasures of time for the imaginary pleasures of eternity, and the protracted enjoyments of life, for the momentary happiness of a peaceful death."
Pantheism, therefore, merges everything into God. The uni- verse is the existence-form of God ; that is, the universe is his existence. All reason is his reason ; all activity is his activity ; the consciousness of creatures, is all the consciousness God has of him- self; good and evil, pain and pleasure, are phenomena of God; modes in which God reveals himself, the way in which He passes from Being into Existence. He is not, therefore, a person whom we can worship and in whom we can trust. He is only the sub- stance of which the universe and all that it contains are the ever
1 Leo, the historian, we believe. 2 1836, p. 575.
' Bischer, quoted in Evangelische Kirch&n-Zeitung, 1839, p. 31.