ntly or up to the degree required by the pure
logic of the case, while Pantheism has but rarely considered the rival
doctrine of personality--or the possible union of immanence with
personality.[49]

Now it is the object of this book to go much further than any one has
hitherto gone in proving the possibility of this union. For I purpose to
show that, provided only we lay aside all prejudice, sentiment, &c.,
and follow to its logical termination the guidance of pure reason, there
are no other conclusions to be reached than these. Namely, (_A_) That if
there be a personal God, no reason can be assigned why He should not be
immanent in nature, or why all causation should not be the immediate
expression of His will. (_B_) That every available reason points to the
inference that He probably is so. (_C_) That if He is so, and if His
will is self-consistent, all natural causation must needs appear to us
'mechanical.' Therefore (_D_) that it is no argument against the divine
origin of a thing, event, &c., to prove it due to natural causation.

After having dealt briefly with (_A_), (_B_) and (_C_), I would show
that (_D_) is the most practically important of these four conclusions.
For the fundamental hypothesis which I began by mentioning is just the
opposite of this. Whether tacitly or expressly, it has always been
assumed by both sides in the controversy between Science and Religion,
that as soon as this that and the other phenomenon has been explained by
means of natural causation, it has thereupon ceased to be ascribable
[directly] to God. The distinction between the natural and the
supernatural has always been regarded by both sides as indisputably
sound, and this fundamental agreement as to ground of battle has
furnished the only possible condition to fighting. It has also furnished
the condition of all the past, and may possibly furnish the condition of
all the future, discomfitures of religion. True religion is indeed
learning her lesson that something is wrong in her method of fighting,
and many of her soldiers are now waking up to the fact that it is here
that her error lies--as in past times they woke up to see the error of
denying the movement of the earth, the antiquity of the earth, the
origin of species by evolution, &c. But no one, even of her captains and
generals, has so far followed up their advantage to its ultimate
consequences. And this is what I want to do. The logical advantage is
clearly on their sid