Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/31

xxx follower of Darwin and of Spencer undertook to interpret the Philosophy of Evolution so as to impart to the Immanent Power, the “Omnipresent Energy” of the evolutionist, a tinge of the Personal God, and to transfigure evolutional Agnosticism into Cosmic Theism. Of this, the pervading theme was the substitution of a “quasi-personal God immanent in the world” for the traditional “God remote from the world.” Evolutionism joined forces with a semi-idealistic Monism, to extend the spread of the conception of a one and only Immanent Spirit.

But whatever religious advantages this form of Idealism may have, — in the way of displacing Agnosticism and of recovering an Absolute that shall be personal so far as regards possession of self-consciousness and intelligent purpose, — or even in the way of winning an assurance of something for the human Self that may excusably be called everlasting life, — there still remains to be settled a question of far graver import for religion and for human worth; the question, namely, of Freedom, and of the moral responsibility and moral opportunity dependent on freedom. Can the reality of human free-agency, of moral responsibility and universal moral aspiration, of unlimited spiritual hope for every soul, — can this be made out, can it even be held, consistently with