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we are not a mere transient mode of the Infinite, but its enduring expression, its chosen and wished for instrument. These doctrines were called Pantheistic. Schleiermacher maintained that they were not. His critics say that these were merely the doctrines of his youth, and they trace in his writings modifications, gradual changes, approximations to a belief in the personality of God. Schleiermacher, in his old age, declared that he retracted nothing. He added explanatory notes to his 'Discourses on Religion;' but these were only to confirm what he had taught, and to show the harmony of his earlier and his later teaching. His critics found in this but 'the weakness, common to great men, of believing that he had never erred.'

The great German theologians whose works we now eagerly translate into our language-Tholuck, Neander, Dorner, Lücke, Ullmann, and Julius Müller-were the disciples of Schleiermacher. To such as these we may suppose were addressed the inspiring words with which he concludes the fourth of the Discourses on Religion,'-" Friends and admirers of all that is beautiful and good, you are a school of priests. Each of you handles as the object of art and study the representation of the spiritual life-to you the highest life. The Godhead out of His infinite riches has given to each of you a peculiar destiny. With the universal sense for all which belongs to the sacred domain of religion, each of you, as becomes an artist, unites the desire to be perfect in one particular branch. A noble emulation reigns among you, and the desire to produce something which is worthy of such an assembly, suffers each of you to drink in with truth and eagerness all which belongs to his appointed domain. It will be preserved in a pure heart. It will be arranged with a collected mind. It will be adorned and perfected by a heavenly art. And thus in all ways and from all sources shall sound forth a hymn of gratitude and praise to the Infinite, whilst each of you with a joyful heart, offers the ripest fruit of his thought and contemplation-of his reflection and feeling. You are a band of friends. Each knows that he is a part and a work of the universe, and that in him its divine work and life are manifested. He beholds himself as a worthy object of attention for others. What he observes in himself, of his relation to the universe-what there is formed in him of the elements of humanity, all will be disclosed with holy fear, but with ready openness that every one may go in and see it. Why should you conceal anything from each other? All that is human is sacred, for all is divine. You are a band of brothers

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-or have you a better expression for the entire mingling of your nature, not as regards being and action, but as regards feeling and understanding? The more each of you comes near to the universal, the more does he communicate himself to others, the more perfectly do you become one. Each has a consciousness for himself. Each at the same time has a consciousness of the other. You are no longer merely men; you are also humanity, and in going forth from yourselves; triumphing over yourselves, you are on the road to true immortality and eternity."*

The next theology we have to examine is that of Frederick Robertson. Shall we call him a disciple of Schleiermacher? His favorite doctrine of the heart preceding the intellect in all matters of eternal truth reminds us of Schleiermacher's devout feeling, and immediate consciousness of God. In Robertson's sermons there is the same mystical piety combined with a manly freedom of enquiry, the same faith in the inherent power of truth, and the same placing of the personal or internal possession of eternal life,' above all external authority. And, more than this, Robertson's view of the relation of God to the world is as near to Schleiermacher's as it can well be. The world,' he says, 'is but manifested Deity,-God shown to eye and ear and sense; this strange phenomenon of a world, what is it? All we know of it; all we know of matter is that it is an assemblage of powers which produce in us certain sensations, but what these powers are in themselves we know not. The sensations of color, weight, form we have, but what it is which gives us these sensationsin the language of the schools, what is the substance which supports the accidents and qualities of being, we cannot tell. Speculative philosophy replies it is but ourselves becoming conscious of ourselves Positive philosophy replies, what the being of the world is we cannot tell, we only know what it seems to us. Phenomena, appearances, beyond these we cannot reach. Being itself is, and ever must be, unknowable. Religion replies

Schleiermacher's strength lay in the religious life within him; his weakness was his faith in criticism. It was necessary that the spirit of enquiry should be permitted free course, but the grounds on which he rejected some portions of the Scriptures were arbitrary without measure. His classification of the Dialogues of Plato from internal evidence has not been sanctioned by any eminent Platonist. That kind of criticism which gave but a faint probability as to Plato, ought surely never to have been applied to the writings of the New Testament. It must be very questionable criticism which rejects from internal evidence the first two chapters of S. Luke's gospel and retains the rest as genuine.

that something is God, the world is but manifested Deity. That which is beneath the surface of all appearances, the cause of all manifestations is God. The sounds and sights of this lovely world are but the drapery of the robe in which the Invisible has clothed Himself."

'Go out at this Spring season; see the mighty preparations for life that nature is making; feel the swelling sense of gratefulness, and the persuasive, expanding consciousness of love for all being, and then say whether this whole form which we call nature is not the great sacrament of God-the revelation of His existence, and the channel of His communication with the spirit? 'What is the world itself but the form of Deity; whereby the manifoldness of His mind and beauty manifests itself, and wherein and whereby it clothes itself. It is idle to say that spirit can exist apart from form. We do not know that it can.

Perhaps even the Eternal Himself is more closely bound to His works than our philosophical systems have conceived. Perhaps matter is but a mode of thought.'†

'The Spirit of God lies touching, as it were, the soul of manever around and near. On the outside of earth man stands with the boundless heaven above him—nothing between him and space, space around him and above him-the confines of the sky touching him. So is the spirit of man to the spirit of the Evernear. They mingle-in every man this is true. God has placed men here to feel after Him, if haply they might find Him, albeit He is not far from any one of them. Our souls float in the immeasurable ocean of Spirit. God lies around us; at any moment we might be conscious of the contact.'*

The influence of Schleiermacher may be distinctly traced in the writings of Theodore Parker. His chief work,' A Discourse

*Even the practical Charles Kingsley, who is thoroughly sound on the personality of God, has these words in one of his Village Sermons,-' He lets His breath, His spirit, go forth, and out of that dead dust grow plants and herbs afresh for man and beast, and He renews the face of the earth. For, says the wise man, all things are God's garment '-outward and visible signs of His unseen and unapproachable glory; and when they are worn out He changes them-says the Psalmist-as a garment, and they shall be changed. The old order changes, giving place to the new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways.

But He is the same. He is there all the time. All things are His work In all things we may see Him, if our souls have eyes. All things, be they what they may, which live and grow on this earth, or happen on land or in the sky, will tell us a tale of God.

Even Dr. Rowland Williams, in quoting this passage, puts a query after it. These three lines are found almost verbatim in Channing's Essay on Milton.

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of Matters pertaining to Religion' was obviously suggested by Schleiermacher's 'Discourses.' It proceeds on the same doctrine of religious consciousness a sense of dependence; or, as it is otherwise called, the religious element in man. This sense of dependence does not disclose the character, still less the nature and essence of the Object on which it depends. It is but the capacity of perception-the eye which sees or the ear which hears. But it implies the Absolute. The reason spontaneously gives us by intuition an IDEA of that on which we depend. This is natural religion or revelation, for all actual religion is revealed in us. There is but one religion, and it is always the same. Theologies are men's thoughts about religion, and these have never ending differences; no two men having precisely the same theology. There have been then forms of religion of all kinds, from the worship of the Fetich to the worship of Him who is a Spirit. God has spoken most clearly in Jesus of Nazareth; but He is speaking in all men-speaking most audibly in those who listen most attentively, who honestly use the faculties which God has given them, and are in earnest to know and do His will. Jesus of Nazareth taught the absolute religion, but the churches have never realized what He taught. The Christianity of the churches is, therefore, transient and like all other passing forms will have its day, and give place to something higher and better. Parker discourses of the workings of the religious sentiment, and after the fashion of the Germans traces its development from the lowest to the highest forms. Of the one-and-all doctrine, he says, "Pantheism has, perhaps, never been altogether a stranger to the world. It makes all things God, and God all things. This view seems at first congenial to a poetic and religious mind. If the world be regarded as a collection of powers,

the awful force of the storm, of the thunder, the earthquake; the huge magnificence of the ocean, in its slumber or its wrath; the sublimity of the ever-during hills; the rocks, which resist all but the unseen hand of Time; these might lead to the thought that matter is God. If men looked at the order, fitness, beauty, love, everywhere apparent in Nature, the impression is confirmed. The All of things appears so beautiful to the comprehensive eye, that we almost think it is its own Cause and Creator. The animals find their support and their pleasure; the painted leopard and the snowy swan, each living by its own law; the bird of passage that pursues, from zone to zone, its unmarked path; the summer warbler which sings out its melodious existence in the woodbine; the flowers that come unasked,

PARKER ON PANTHEISM.

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charming the youthful year; the golden fruit maturing in its wilderness of green; the dew and the rainbow; the frost flake and the mountain snow; the glories that wait upon the morning, or sing the sun to his ambrosial rest; the pomp of the sun at noon, amid the clouds of a June day; the awful majesty of night, when all the stars with a serene step come out, and tread their round, and seem to watch in blest tranquillity about the slumbering world; the moon waning and waxing, walking in beauty through the night:-daily the water is rough with the winds; they come or abide at no man's bidding, and roll the yellow corn, or wake religious music at nightfall in the pinesthese things are all so fair, so wondrous, so wrapt in mystery; it is no marvel that men say, this is divine; yes, the All is God; He is the light of the morning, the beauty of the noon, and the strength of the sun. The little grass grows by His Presence. He preserveth the cedars. The stars are serene because He is in them. The lilies are redolent of God. He is the One; the All. God is the mind of man. The Soul of all; more moving than motion; more stable than rest; fairer than beauty, and stronger than strength. The power of nature is God; the universe, broad, and deep, and high, a handful of dust, which God enchants. He is the mysterious magic that possesses the world. Yes, He is the All; the Reality of all phenomena.

But an old writer thus pleasantly rebukes this conclusion: 'Surely, vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God, and could not out of the good things that are seen, know Him that is... but deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world. With whose beauty if they being delighted took them to be gods; let them know how much better the Lord of them is, for the first Author of beauty hath created them.”

After this description of material Pantheism, which does not admit God as the Absolute and Infinite, but only as the sum total of material things, and which he regards as having been the doctrine of Strato of Lampsacus, of Democritus, and perhaps of Hippocrates, Parker goes on to describe what he calls Spiritnal Pantheism. This denies the existence of matter, and resolves all into spirit, which is God. The material is but phenomenal, and the reality of it is God. This, Parker describes, as the Pantheism of Spinoza, of the Medieval Mystics, of S. John, and of S. Dionysius the Areopagite. We may add that it is the Pantheism of Theodore Parker, at least it is difficult to distinguish