Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/105

58 Sum-total of Spirit; immanent in Spirit but not transcending spiritual manifestations. This was the Pantheism of Spinoza and some others. It lies at the bottom of many mystical discourses, and appears, more or less, in most of the pious and spiritual writers of the middle ages, who confound the Divine Being with their own personality, and yet find some support for their doctrines in the language, more or less figurative, of the New Testament.

This system appears more or less in the writings of John the Evangelist, in Dionysius the Areopagite, and the many authors who have drawn from him. It tinges in some measure the spiritual philosophy of the present day. But the charge of Pantheism is very vague, and is usually urged most by such as know little of its meaning. He who conceives of God, as transcending creation indeed, but yet at the same time as the Immanent Cause of all things, as infinitely present, and infinitely active, with no limitations, is sure to be called a Pantheist in these days, as he would have passed for an Atheist two centuries ago. Some who have been called by this easy but obnoxious name, both in ancient and modern times, have been philosophical defenders of the doctrine of one God, but have given him the historical form neither of Brahma nor Jehovah.