and moral world, and the spirit in a thousand ways recognises itself and its laws in the objective reason which it meets with in nature. But the wrong lies in stopping short at this one universal life, just as if it were the origin of all things, that is, God Himself, instead of raising our minds to the recognition of that absolute Reason which must at the same time be absolute Will and Self-consciousness, i.e. to the One to whom this unity of being and becoming in the world directly points us as the origin and the goal of everything.

Further, it is the special effort of Pantheism to refer everything which exists and occurs to the direct agency of God, and to show its dependence on Him. It cannot imagine anything which is not an efflux of divine power, and therefore finds God in everything. And this, too, contains a great truth, viz., that it is utterly impossible to imagine the life of the world, its origin and continuance, both as a whole and in its smallest details, as severed from God, seeing that He must needs be omnipresent and everywhere active. This much may be learned from Pantheism by deists, rationalists, and all those who at the present day would attribute to the world a life and self-development independent of God's direct influence. But the will, the activity of God, is one thing, and His very essence is another. Although the world, down to its very smallest particle, may be entirely dependent on the former, it does not follow that the latter should be merged in and swallowed up by the world. On the contrary, true and rational as is the first proposition, it is just as irrational to make out that God, the first Cause of the world, is Himself dependent on it, and only exists in the totality of the world's being; in other words, to deny His supramundane existence, and therefore His personality, just as if the Being who is the Cause of all things must not for this very reason be something different from the things caused!

Another truth expressed by Pantheism is this, that even evil is not to be thought of as entirely without the pale of God's government. There can be no power whatever which is not subject to Him or entirely independent of His control. and guidance. He foresees evil and allows it; indeed, when it is once in existence, He makes use of it for His own purposes in the government of the world. But it is an error on this account to attribute the authorship of evil to the will of

God, as if the absolutely existent and eternal Being must not at the same time be the absolutely good and holy One. It is also wrong, by thus referring the origin of evil to the Divine Will, to do away with the freedom of man and to efface the distinction between good and evil, just as if the indelible selfcertainty of man in respect to his moral freedom and responsibility, as well as his feeling of guilt, could be a lie.

Finally, there is something true in the pantheistic view, that the conception of personality is too limited and finite to be applied to God; for we cannot conceive of God only as a single Person. The fulness of His Being overflows the limits of this conception. But it is wrong, on this account, entirely to give up the idea of personality. There is a conception of God which leaves room for the infinite fulness of life in Him, and yet maintains the infinite prerogative of personality. This, as we shall see, is accomplished by the Christian doctrine of the triune personality of God. The true conception of God must as decidedly acknowledge and embrace these elements of truth as exclude the false inferences drawn from them. And such we shall show to be the case with the teaching of the Christian faith.

There now remains for our consideration one more conception of God which acknowledges His personality, and yet, from a scriptural point of view, must be rejected.

IV.—DEISM AND RATIONALISM.

This is in many respects the antithesis of Pantheism. According to Pantheism, God exists only in the world as its soul; according to Deism, He exists only above the world as a personal Spirit: by Pantheism, God and the world are regarded as absolutely inseparable; by Deism, as absolutely severed, and as not merely different, but divided one from the other. God is for the deist a personal Being, who, after creating the world by His will, now acts towards it like an artificer with a finished machine, which mechanically pursues its natural course according to the laws laid down for it, and no longer requires the immediate assistance or interference of its maker. The master shipbuilder has completed and launched

his ship, and now leaves her to herself and her own crew. The clockmaker has completed and wound up his clock, which now goes of itself without any more need of him.

The being, personality, and supramundane nature of the Deity (hence the vague and awkward term "Deism"), and the creation of the world by Him, are thus acknowledged; while, on the other hand, any continuous active presence of God in the world, and any living interposition in its affairs, are denied. The world has outgrown its leading-strings, and, emancipated from divine control, is now left to itself. There is no special providence: miracles are an impossibility. Everything takes place in harmony with natural laws which are implanted in the universe, and suffer no alteration whatsoever. This is the chief characteristic of the deistical theory. For the pantheist, God is too near to seem to be above him; for the deist, too far off to be recognised as exercising any direct rule over the world which He has made. Relegating God, as it were, to the outermost confines of being, he seeks to keep Him as far off as possible, in order to follow the light of natural reason, unmolested by the cross-lights of a higher revelation. The first and immediate consequence of this is, that every special manifestation of God, no matter what, must be denied, all supernatural elements in the Christian belief, even those involved in the Person and Work of Christ, must be excluded, and anything in Scripture bearing on these points must be explained away by a reference to natural causes.

In all essentials, then, Deism coincides entirely with that which was formerly denominated Naturalism; for it pronounces the laws of nature to be adequate to the continuous existence of the world, and natural religion to be the only essential form of belief, even in connection with Christianity. It likewise agrees in principle with what is called Rationalism, the essence of which consists in the position that Reason is not merely the formal, but also the material, principle of

1At the present day, in Germany, "Naturalism" and "Materialism” are used almost as synonymous terms for the theory which derives from the operation of the laws of nature only, not merely the continuance, but the very existence and even the origin of the world; whilst in England, for instance, "Naturalism" still retains its original meaning, and is defined as "the denial of any divine rule and providence extending to individuals" (cf., for instance, Pearson on Infidelity).

religion, and supreme arbiter over the whole substance of the Christian faith (cf. Lect. II. sec. 1 and 3).

This theory is, however, by no means new. We meet with something like it even in Greek philosophy, both in the mechanical interpretations of nature given by the atomists and Anaxagoras' notion of a world-forming intelligence absolutely separated from all matter, as well as in the teaching of Epicurus, that the gods can take no interest in human affairs. But it was first reduced to a real system in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the English (and Dutch) "freethinkers," "minute philosophers," and "deists," whose common principle might be described as the elevation of natural religion, on the basis of free thought and inquiry, to the position of supreme arbiter of all religion that claimed to be positive, as a denial of any special divine providence, of miracles, and generally of every direct interposition by God in the course of the world. Thus, for instance, Chubb taught that God held Himself aloof from human concerns; and that whatever happens to man is only the dependent result of second causes. In like manner, Bolingbroke maintained that God regards the universe as a whole, and not its individual parts; and that there is no divine intervention as to details either in nature or morals. In the Germany of the last generation, these rationalistic tendencies were prevalent among theologians and educated persons generally; but in such various shades and modifications as to the views taken of Divine Providence, and the chief of all miracles, the Person of our Lord, that we must be on our guard against comprehending them all in one category. While some of those speculations were not far removed from the Christian and scriptural ideas of God and Providence, others approximated very closely to Pantheism. But in general, it is a characteristic principle of Rationalism not to recognise any special divine interposition in the course of this world or the concerns of men, to explain in a manner comprehensible to natural reason everything in Scripture which implies such interposition, all miracles and special revelations, and so to eliminate the supernatural element generally.

At the present time, both in German and English theology, this principle has but few representatives, but reckons a pro

portionately larger number among Swiss (Zurich), French (Strasburg), and Dutch (Leyden and Gröningen) theologians, while the great body of educated laymen, and especially of the students of modern natural science, are confessedly under its influence. In spite of all the attempts which Rationalism has made, and is still making, to find for its theories a scriptural basis, we scarcely need any justification if we class its theological conceptions among the non-biblical. In every page, indeed, the Bible teaches a direct divine agency in the world, a providence extending to the minutest details (the very hairs of our head being all numbered), and a constant dependence of the world on God for its existence and guidance; points which, in the next lecture on the Scriptural Idea of God, will come before us in more detail.

But we affirm that this rationalistic conception of God is not merely unscriptural, but also impossible and false; and we maintain the untenableness of its positions from a scientific point of view,-in a word, the irrationality of Rationalism. In proof of these assertions, we may pursue a like course to that we followed in the case of Pantheism, and consider in succession the main arguments which can be adduced from a consideration of the nature of God, the world, and man's moral condition, against the fundamental positions of Deism and Rationalism. Having previously become acquainted to some extent with the weakness of Rationalism in its denial of revelation as such, and having also to submit hereafter the general question as to the possibility of miracles to a separate discussion, we need not now do more than take a brief view of its general principle as to the position it assigns to God in the world.

Deism, falsely named as it is, is also in its principle an unnatural combination of conflicting elements, adopting some things even from Atheism, when it regards the world, as now constituted, as existing without God or any divine influence; others from Materialism and Pantheism, when it seeks to derive all that takes place in the world from nat iral causes inherent in it, and to exclude all exercise of supernatural power on the part of God. So far, Deism shares in and suffers from the fundamental faults of the three other systems. But it is itself more inconsistent than they, attempting to make an essential

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