el in the Finite, and muddle everything they touch even
there. Revelation, on the other hand, does unfold to us a true philosophy
of the Infinite. It shows how the Infinite is contained in the Finite, the
Absolute in the Relative, not spatially or by continuation, but by exact
correspondency, as the soul is contained in the body. Mr. James
demonstrates the supreme absurdity of the notion of noumenal existence, or
of any created existence which has life _in se_. God alone has life in
Himself. All things else are only forms and receptacles of life, sheerly
phenomenal, except so far forth as He is their substance. The notion of
Creation as something made out of nothing, having life afterwards _in se_,
and so holding an external relation to Deity, falsifies all the
theologies, and degrades them into mere natural religions." It is the
mother-fallacy," says Mr. James, "which breeds all these petty fallacies
in the popular understanding." Those familiar with Dr. Mansel's argument
will see that he has not the remotest conception of Creation, except as an
exploit of God in time and space, or of the Infinite, except as an
unbounded aggregation of finites. That God reposed alone through all the
past eternities, but roused some day and sent forth a shout, or six
successive shouts, and spoke things out of nothing into "noumenal"
existence, were absurd enough, to use Mr. James's nervous English, "to
nourish a standing army of Tom Paines into annual fatness." The utter
childishness of the theological quarrels over the first chapter of Genesis
is obvious enough, so long as both parties swamp the spirit in the letter,
or deny that the Finite can reveal the Infinite.

Following out his favorite postulate, that God alone has life in Himself,
and all things else are only phenomena of life, Mr. James evolves the
doctrine of Creation, of Man and Nature, and of Redemption, steering clear
alike of the shoals of Atheism and the devouring jaws of Pantheism. In his
constructive argument he draws upon the vast wealth of Swedenborg, and
herein, as we conceive, he has done a rare service to our literature. Both
the popular and ecclesiastical conception of Swedenborg would be
ludicrously, if they were not shamefully inadequate. He has been known but
little, except as a ghost-seer, or as a Samson grinding painfully in
sectarian mills. Mr. James has done something like justice to his broad
humanity, and his incomparably profound and exhaustive philosophy