320 GOD IMMANENT IN YET TRANSCENDING THE WORLD.

if from what he says soon after, about the relation of nature to God:-"If Infinite, He must be present everywhere in general, and not limited to any particular spot, as an old writer so beautifully says: 'Even heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.' Heathen writers are full of such expressions. God, then, is universally present in the world of matter. He is the substantiality of matter The circle of His Being in space has an infinite radius. We cannot say, Lo here, or Lo there for He is everywhere. He fills all nature with His overflowing currents; without Him it were not. His Presence gives it existence; His Will its law and force; His Wisdom its order; His Goodness its beauty.

It follows unavoidably, from the idea of God, that He is pre⚫ sent everywhere in space; not transiently present, now and then, but immanently present, always; His centre here; His circumference nowhere; just as present in the eye of an emmet as in the Jewish holy of holies, or the sun itself. We may call common what God has cleansed with His Presence; but there is no corner of space so small, no atom of matter so despised and little, but God, the Infinite, is there.

Now, to push the inquiry nearer the point. The nature or substance of God, as represented by our idea of Him, is divisible or not divisible. If infinite He must be indivisible, a part of God cannot be in this point of space, and another in that; His Power in the sun, His Wisdom in the moon, and His Justice in the earth. He must be wholly, vitally, essentially present, as much in one point as in another point, or all points; as essentially present in each point at any one moment of time as at any other or all moments of time. He is there not idly present but actively, as much now as at creation. Divine Omnipotence can neither slumber nor sleep. Was God but transiently active in matter at creation, His action now passed away? From the idea of Him it follows that He is immanent in the world, however much He also transcends the world. 'Our Father worketh hitherto,' and for this reason nature works, and so has done since its creation. There is no spot the foot of hoary time has trod on, but it is instinct with God's activity. He is the ground of nature; what is permanent in the passing; what is real in the apparent. All nature then is but an exhibition of God to the senses; the veil of smoke on which His shadow falls; the dew-drop in which the heaven of His magnificence is poorly imaged. The sun is but a sparkle of His splendor. Endless

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF NATURE.

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and without beginning flows forth the stream of Divine influence that encircles and possesses the all of things. From God it comes, to God it goes. The material world is perpetual growth; a continual transfiguration, renewal that never ceases. Is this without God? Is it not because God, who is ever the same, flows into it without end? It is the fulness of God that flows into the crystal of the rock, the juices of the plant, the life of the emmet and the elephant. He penetrates and pervades the world. All things are full of Him, who surrounds the sun, the stars, the universe itself; goes through all lands, the expanse of oceans, and the profound heaven.'

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Since these things are so, nature is not only strong and beautiful, but has likewise a religious aspect. This fact was noticed in the very earliest times; appears in the rudest worship, which is an adoration of God in nature. It will move man's heart to the latest day, and exert an influence on souls that are deepest and most holy. Who that looks on the ocean, in its anger or its play; who that walks at twilight under a mountain's brow, listens to the sighing of the pines, touched by the indolent wind of summer, and hears the light tinkle of the brook, murmuring its quiet tune,-who is there but feels the deep religion of the scene? In the heart of a city we are called away from God. The dust of man's foot and the sooty print of his fingers are on all we see. The very earth is unnatural, and the heaven scarce seen. In a crowd of busy men which set through its streets, or flow together of a holiday; in the dust and jar, the bustle and strife of business, there is little to remind us of God. Men must build a cathedral for that. But everywhere in nature we are carried straightway back to Him. The fern, green and growing amid the frost, each little grass and lichen, is a silent memento. The first bird of spring, and the last rose of summer; the grandeur or the dulness of evening or morning; the rain, the dew, the sunshine; the stars that come out to watch over the farmer's rising corn; the birds that nestle contentedly, brooding over their young, quietly tending the little strugglers with their beak,—all these have a religious significance to a thinking soul. Every violet blooms of God, each lily is fragrant with the presence of Deity. The awful scenes of storms, and lightning and thunder, seem but the sterner sounds of the great concert, wherewith God speaks to man. Is this an accident? Ay, earth is full of such accidents.' When the seer rests from religious thought, or when the world's temptations make his soul tremble, and though

the spirit be willing, the flesh is weak; when the perishable body weighs down the mind, musing on many things; when he wishes to draw near to God, he goes, not to the city- there conscious men obstruct Him with their works but to the meadow, spangled all over with flowers, and sung to by every bird; to the mountain; 'visited all night by troops of stars;' to the ocean, the undying type of shifting phenomena and unchanging law; to the forest, stretching out motherly arms, with its mighty growth and awful shade, and there, in the obedience these things pay, in their order, strength, beauty, he is encountered front to front with the awful presence of Almighty power. A voice cries to him from the thicket, 'God will provide. The bushes burn with Deity. Angels minister to Him. There is no mortal pang, but it is allayed by God's fair voice as it whispers, in nature, still and small, it may be, but moving on the face of the deep, and bringing light out of darkness."

From this immanency of God in the universe, Parker argues for the in-dwelling of God in man—the natural, perpetual, and universal inspiration of the human race. He supposes that the spiritual Pantheists, especially the German philosophers, did not allow God any existence beyond the sum total of finite spirit; and thus, God, with them, was variable and progressive, growing in wisdom as the ages roll. From this view of the Deity, he differed widely, as God must infinitely transcend both the worlds of matter and of spirit. The progress is not in God, the manifestor, but in nature, which is the manifestation of Him.

We have already quoted from Emerson's poetry. His prose writings abound with sentiments similar to those in his verses. Emerson is usually classed with Theodore Parker as representatives of a far gone school of Unitarianism, but this like all such classifications is open to many exceptions. A similarity of sentiments is indeed found, but the differences are manifest. For some to whom Parker is reverent, Emerson seems to border on blasphemy.

The Egyptian Hermes said, 'Let us call God by all names, or rather let us call Him by no name, for no man can express Him.' The latter is more reverent, and Parker has followed it, but Emerson delights to give God names, which according to the wise rule of Des Cartes should be rejected as expressing impefection in the Divine rature. But Emerson does not forget the wisdom of Hermes. If he calls God by any name, it is with the distinct remembrance that no name can express Him. He says that Empedocles spoke a great truth of thought when

he declared that he was God, but it was a lie before it reached the ear, for every expression of the Infinite must be blasphemous to the finite. To determine is to deny. Yet Emerson calls God the Oversoul,' within which every man's particular being is contained, and by which it has its unity with all other beings. God is the Impersonal-the Common Nature-which appears in each of us, and which is yet higher than ourselves. We, as individuals, live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles, but within, in the universal-soul, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part or particle is equally related-the Eternal One. And the deep power in which we all exist-this beatitude, which is all accessible to us, is not only perfect and self-sufficient, but it is at once the act of seeing, and the thing seen, the subject and the object in one. Time, space, and nature vanish before the revelation of the soul. The simplest person, who in integrity worships God receives God, yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new, and unsearchable. Man, the imperfect, adores his own perfect. He is receptive of the great soul, whereby he overlooks the sun and the stars, and feels them to be accidents and effects, which today are, and to-morrow change and pass. Man is nothing. As a transparent eyeball he sees all the currents of universal being circulate through him. He is a part or particle of God. Humanity is a façade of Deity. Let man but live according to the laws of his being, and he becomes Divine. So far as man is just and pure and good-he is God. The immortality of God, the safety of God, the majesty of God have entered into his soul. There is but one mind everywhere-in each wavelet of the pool, in each ray of the star, in each heart. Whatever opposes that mind is baffled. When man becomes unjust or impure, he comes into collision with his own nature. Of his own will he subjects himself to the opposition of that mind, which, with rapid energy, is righting all wrongs.

'Jesus Christ,' says Emerson, belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the majesty of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to humanity. He saw that God incarnates Himself in man, and goes forth evermore anew to take possession of the world. He felt respect for Moses and the prophets, but no unfit tenderness at postponing their initial revelation to the hour, and man that now is-to the eternal revelation in the human heart. Thus was He a true man.'

Y 2

A theology, corresponding to Theodore Parker's, is at the foundation of the celebrated Life of Jesus,' by M. Rénan. Describing the theology of Jesus and its relation to other religions, the author says, "Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology. The paltry discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of Des Cartes, the deep-rooted irreligion of the eighteenth century, by lessening God, and by limiting Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of everything which is not His very self, have stifled in the breast of modern rationalism all fertile ideas of the Divinity. If God, in fact, is a personal being outside of us, he who believes himself to have peculiar relations with God is a visionary,' and as the physical and physiological sciences have shown us that all supernatural visions are illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand the great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, in suppressing the Divine personality, is as far as it can be from the living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have best comprehended God-Sakya-Muni, Plato, S. Paul, S. Francis d'Assissi, and S. Augustine (at some periods of his fluctuating life)-Deists or Pantheists? Such a question has no meaning. The physical and metaphysical proofs of the existence of God were quite indifferent to them. They felt the Divine within themselves. We must place Jesus in the first rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus had no visions; God did not speak to Him as to one outside of Himself; God was in Him; He felt himself with God, and He drew from His heart all He said of his Father. He lived in the bosom of God by constant communication with Him; he saw Him not, but he understood Him, without need of the thunder and the burning bush of Moses, of the revealing tempest of Job, of the oracle of the old Greek sages, of the familiar genius of Socrates, or of the angel Gabriel of Mahomet. The imagination and the hallucination of a S. Theresa, for example, are useless here. The intoxication of the Sufi proclaiming himself identical with God is also quite another thing. Jesus never once gave utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God. He believed Himself to be in direct communion with God; He believed Himself to be the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in the bosom of humanity was that of Jesus."

What M. Rênan means by Pantheism,' is evidently materialism, or the denial of a living God. It is not that of the ancient religions nor of the old philosophers. But the doctrine which