ter, but in the
philosophy of modern Germany. Schelling carries it still farther by
pronouncing that there is but one reason, one mind, the human and the
Divine being identical. The lines of Paracelsus are inevitably
suggested:--

O God, Thou art Mind!
Crush not my mind, O God!

Fichte, in his _Characteristics of the Present Age_, pronounces the
individual to be but "a single ray of the one universal and necessary
thought". "There is but One Life, one animating power, one Living
Reason . . . of which all that seems to us to exist and live is but a
modification, definition, variety and form." And, finally, he goes so
far as to say that it is only _by_, and _to_, mere earthly and finite
perception, that this one and homogeneous life of reason is broken up
and divided into separate individual persons. What a piercing thought!
Surely it is almost past believing that the eternal Life is itself in
us, nay, that it is we; that in very literal truth we may say, "I and
the Infinite are One". Only one who could speak in tongues of men and
angels is fit to hold discourse on thoughts so sublime, but it is
difficult to discern a flaw in the arguments of these prophetic souls
who have dared to believe and to preach to men, "Ye are gods, and sons
of the Most High, every one".

It is a doctrine we learn only from the new masters. Nothing half so
fair, so radiant, did we hear in days of old, so rich in promise, so
full of inspiration and helpfulness. "You are an adopted son of God,"
it was said. There is but one natural son, the Messiah and Logos,
Jesus Christ. Through him alone we have access to the Divine, apart
from him we are children of wrath; only in him are we "light in the
Lord". "He that believeth not the Son hath not life, but the wrath of
God abideth with him." To this hour do they say these things, but we
who have been privileged to hear wiser words, diviner voices, know that
nothing can come between our lonely spirits and the Great Alone--no
Church, no Book, no Messiah, or Saviour. We are greater than all that,
for the eternal soul of man is within us, heir-at-law divine of the
promises, and in its _own_ right a natural son of God.

But to continue. The scattered rays of this wonderful gospel are
focussed in the transcendental teaching of the last of the ethical
prophets, Waldo Emerson. In him the truth shines forth as the sun. We
have seen the germ of the doctrine in the fourteenth and fifteenth
c