ere to tread on ground in which trenchant
distinctions may easily seem to mutilate the facts.

That sense of emotional reconciliation with God which characterizes the
highest moments of the theistic consciousness may be described as
'oneness' with him, and so from the very bosom of theism a {135}
monistic doctrine seem to arise. But this consciousness of
self-surrender, of absolute practical union between one's self and the
divine object of one's contemplation, is a totally different thing from
any sort of substantial identity. Still the object God and the subject
I are two. Still I simply come upon him, and find his existence given
to me; and the climax of my practical union with what is given, forms
at the same time the climax of my perception that as a numerical fact
of existence I am something radically other than the Divinity with
whose effulgence I am filled.

Now, it seems to me that the only sort of union of creature with
creator with which theism, properly so called, comports, is of this
emotional and practical kind; and it is based unchangeably on the
empirical fact that the thinking subject and the object thought are
numerically two. How my mind and will, which are not God, can yet
cognize and leap to meet him, how I ever came to be so separate from
him, and how God himself came to be at all, are problems that for the
theist can remain unsolved and insoluble forever. It is sufficient for
him to know that he himself simply is, and needs God; and that behind
this universe God simply is and will be forever, and will in some way
hear his call. In the practical assurance of these empirical facts,
without 'Erkentnisstheorie' or philosophical ontology, without
metaphysics of emanation or creation to justify or make them more
intelligible, in the blessedness of their mere acknowledgment as given,
lie all the peace and power he craves. The floodgates of the religious
life are opened, and the full currents can pour through.

It is this empirical and practical side of the theistic position, its
theoretic chastity and modesty, which I {136} wish to accentuate here.
The highest flights of theistic mysticism, far from pretending to
penetrate the secrets of the _me_ and the _thou_ in worship, and to
transcend the dualism by an act of intelligence, simply turn their
backs on such attempts. The problem for them has simply
vanished,--vanished from the sight of an attitude which refuses to
notice such futile theoreti