there exists in His work no principle of
action other than those which He has Himself placed in it.

Deism results therefore from a confusion between the work of a creature
placed in a preexisting world, and the work of the Supreme Will which is
in itself the single and absolute cause of all. It contains an element
of dualism: its God does not create; but organizes a world the being of
which does not depend on him. Take what is true in deism--the existence
of the only God; remember that the Creator is the absolute Cause of the
universe; and the distinction between _ensemble_ and detail will vanish,
and you will understand that God is too great that there should be
anything small in His eyes:

God measures not our lot by line and square:
The grass-suspended drop of morning dew
Reflects a firmament as vast and fair
As Ocean from his boundless field of blue.[171]

In other words, take what is true in deism, and accept all the
consequences of it, and you will arrive at the full doctrine of the
creation.

Pantheism recognizes the omnipresence of God in the universe, or, if you
like the terms of the school, the immanence of God; this is its portion
of truth. When I open the Hindoos' songs of adoration, and find therein
the unlimited enumeration of the manifestations of God in nature, I find
nothing to complain of. But when, in those same hymns, I see liberty
denied, the origin of evil attributed to the Holy One, and man cowering
before Destiny, instead of turning his eyes freely towards the Heavenly
Father, then I stand only more erect and say: You forget that if your
God is the Cause of all, He is the Cause of liberty. If liberty exists,
evil, the revolt of liberty, is not the work of the Creator. Your system
contradicts itself. You make of God the universal Principle, and you are
right; make of Him then the Author of free wills, so that He will be no
longer the source of evil, and we shall be agreed.

Deism and pantheism therefore, pushed to their legitimate consequences,
are transformed and united in the truth. And you see plainly that I am
not making, for my part, an arbitrary selection in these systems. I am
walking by one sole light, the light which has been given to us, and
which serves me everywhere as a guiding clue:--The Lord is God, and
there is no other God but He.

Such, Gentlemen, is the fundamental truth on which rests all religion,
and all philosophy capable of accounting fo