f three generalizations respecting God's relation to the
world, known as _theism_, _pantheism_, and _deism_. Although,
theoretically, these are corollaries of the different arguments for God,
two of them, theism and pantheism, owe their importance to their rivalry
as religious tendencies. _Theism_ emphasizes that attitude to God which
recognizes in him an historical personage, in some sense distinct from
both the world and man, which are his works and yet stand in an external
relationship to him. It expresses the spirit of ethical and monotheistic
religion, and is therefore the natural belief of the Christian.
_Pantheism_ appears in primitive religion as an animistic or
polytheistic sense of the presence of a divine principle diffused
throughout nature. But it figures most notably in the history of
religions, in the highly reflective Brahmanism of India. In sharp
opposition to Christianity, this religion preaches the indivisible unity
of the world and the illusoriness of the individual's sense of his own
independent reality. In spite of the fact that such a doctrine is alien
to the spirit of Christianity, it enters into Christian theology through
the influence of philosophy. The theoretical idea of God tends, as we
have seen, to the identification of him with the world as its most real
principle. Or it bestows upon him a nature so logical and formal, and so
far removed from the characters of humanity, as to forbid his entering
into personal or social relations. Such reflections concerning God find
their religious expression in a mystical sense of unity, which has in
many cases either entirely replaced or profoundly modified the theistic
strain in Christianity. In current philosophy pantheism appears in the
epistemological argument which identifies God with being; while the
chief bulwark of theism is the ethical argument, with its provision for
a distinction between the actual world and ideal principle of evolution.

[Sidenote: Deism.]

Sect. 92. While theism and pantheism appear to be permanent phases in
the philosophy of religion, _deism_ is the peculiar product of the
eighteenth century. It is based upon a repudiation of supernaturalism
and "enthusiasm," on the one hand, and a literal acceptance of the
cosmological and teleological proofs on the other. Religions, like all
else, were required, in this epoch of clear thinking, to submit to the
canons of experimental observation and practical common sense. These
authori