ve "no
health" in it? It would be matter for wonder if it were otherwise; and
thus Deism is well in accord with those gloomier forms of religious
thought which for a long time were the generally predominating ones.

The distance between this conception and that which flows from the
doctrine of Divine immanence can hardly be measured; it certainly
cannot be bridged. The soul to which, through whatever experience,
there has come the revelation that God is closer to us than breathing,
and nearer than hands or feet, looks out upon a new heaven and a new
earth. Once it is understood that God is really and truly in His
universe, that He is not infinitely far {43} and inaccessible but
infinitely nigh, an encompassing Presence, a fresh light falls upon
nature and human nature alike. Viewed in that light, and from the
standpoint of this illuminating truth, "the world's no blot for us, nor
blank," but the scene of Divine activity and unceasing revelation; for
all nature's forces are seen to be the expression of the Divine Energy,
and all nature's laws the manifestation of the Divine Will. If God
Himself is the Life that stirs within all life, the Reality underlying
all phenomena--if we live and move and have our being in Him, and His
Spirit dwelleth within us--the direct outcome of such a belief should
be a sacred optimism, an assurance that the cosmos "means intensely,
and means good."

There can, we think, be little doubt as to the beneficial effects which
have accompanied the re-affirmation of this idea in recent times. It
is only too true as yet, in the case of many, that "the past, which
still holds its ground in the back chambers of the brain, would
persuade us that 'tis a demon-haunted world, where not God but the
devil rules; we are not yet persuaded that this is a cheerful, homely,
well-meaning universe, whose powers, if strict in their working, are
nevertheless beneficent and not diabolic." Against these phantasmal
fears the doctrine of God's immanence, rightly understood, offers the
best of antidotes, and here lies its unquestionable value. At the same
time it has already become apparent {44} to us that the suddenness of
the stress laid upon that idea has brought new dangers in its train.
The temptation is ever to swing round from one extreme to its opposite;
and in the present case not a few have carried--or been carried by--the
reaction against the belief in God's remoteness so far as to forget, in
contempl