With the whole force of my existence,
with the whole force of my thought, mind, and soul, I pray to find this
Highest Soul, this greater than deity, this better than God. Give me
to live the deepest soul-life now and always with this soul. For want
of words I write soul, but I think it is something beyond soul.' Could
anything be more pathetic or, at the same time, more self-refuting?
How can anything be greater than the Infinite, more enduring than the
Eternal, better than the All-Pure and All-Perfect? It could be only
the God of unenlightened, unchristian teaching, Whom he rejected. The
God Whom he sought must be not only in but beyond and above all created
or developed things. It was, indeed, the Higher than the Highest that
he worshipped. It was for God, for the Living God, that his eager soul
was athirst, and it is in God, the Living God, that his eager soul is
now, we humbly trust, for ever satisfied.

{75}

IV

'The heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.' 'Whither shall
I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?' 'My
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways saith the
Lord.' 'In Him we live and move and have our being.' 'Of Him and
through Him and to Him are all things, to Whom be glory for ever.
Amen.'[6] Now it cannot be denied that some who have striven to
express after this fashion the unutterable majesty and the universal
presence of God, who have endeavoured to demonstrate that God is in all
things, and that all things are in God, have at times failed to make
their meaning plain. Either from the obscurity of their own language,
or from the obtuseness of their readers, they have been considered
Atheists. While vehemently asserting that God is {76} everywhere, they
have been taken to mean that God is nowhere. The actual conclusion to
be drawn from the treatises of Spinoza, the reputed founder of modern
Pantheism, is still undecided. But no one now would brand him with the
name of Atheist. He was excommunicated by Jews and denounced by
Christians, yet there are many who think that his aim, his not
unsuccessful aim, was to establish faith in the Unseen and Eternal on a
basis which could not be shaken. So far from denying God, he was,
according to one of the greatest of German theologians, 'a
God-intoxicated man.' 'Offer up reverently with me a lock of hair to
the manes of the holy, repudiated Spinoza! The high world-spirit
penetrated