otentially within him
all the attributes and powers of the Supreme Being. It is the idea that
nothing exists except God and that humanity is one portion of Him, and
one phase of His being, as clouds are one expression of the waters that
constitute the sea. The immanence of God is a conception of the universe
that puts science and religion into perfect harmony with each other
because miraculous creation disappears and evolutionary creation takes
its place.

Although the anthropomorphic idea of God has such widespread dominion in
Occidental thought the immanence of God is plainly taught and repeatedly
emphasized in the Christian scriptures. "For in Him we live, and move,
and have our being," is certainly very explicit and admits of no
anthropomorphic interpretation. It could not be said that a son lives
and moves in his father. The declaration presents the relationship of a
lesser consciousness within a greater, and constituting a part of it.
The essentially divine nature of man is made clear in the declaration in
Genesis that he is an image of God. To say that the likeness is on the
material side would, of course, be absurd. In divine essence, in latent
power, in potential spirituality, man is an image of God, because he is
a part of Him. The same idea is more directly put in the Psalms with the
assertion, "ye are gods."[A] If the idea of the immanence of God is
sound man, as a literal fragment of the consciousness of the Supreme
Being, is an embryo god, destined to ultimately evolve his latent powers
into perfect expression.

The oneness of life was explicitly asserted by Jesus in his teaching.
Emerson's teaching of the immanence of God is unmistakable in both his
prose and poetry. "There is no bar or wall," he says, "in the soul where
man, the effect, ceases and God, the Cause, begins." Still more
explicitly he puts it:

The realms of being to no other bow;
Not only all are Thine, but all are Thou.

The statement is as complete as it is emphatic. "Not only all are Thine,
_but all are thou_." It's an unqualified assertion that humanity is a
part of God, as leaves are part of a tree--not something a tree has
created in the sense that a man creates a machine but something that is
an emanation of the tree, and is a living part of it. Thus only has God
made man. Humanity is a growth, a development, an emanation, an
evolutionary expression of the Supreme Being.

It is upon the unity of all life that theosop