eas 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Caused by the Mutual Pressure of Science and Faith.]

[Sidenote: The Nebular Hypothesis taken alone Involves Absurdity.]

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
doctrine of evolution. For these give no definite substitu