Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/132

Rh is to be thought as capable of existing without a world, and as literally separated from the world in time and space, then deism says it is purely arbitrary to declare the separation overcome by means of miracle. Consistency, and in so far rationality, would rather require that the separation be kept up; and the folly of the zoomorphic dualism is made to display itself in the deistic inference, which such dualism cannot consistently refute, that divine revelation and providence, without which the practical religion indispensable to the reality of theism cannot have being, are by this literal separateness of the divine existence rendered impossible.

The comparative virtue of pantheism here, as against deism and sensuous theism alike, is that it transcends, in a certain sort at least, this mechanical rigidity in divine relations. However faulty its way of accomplishing this may be, — and we shall presently see this is indeed faulty, — it does us the service of calling attention to the religious need of cancelling this mechanical view; and it habituates our thoughts to an inseparable union and communion between God and the world. It teaches us the great and lasting lesson, that the relation between God and the world of souls is in no wise contingent or temporal, but is necessary, essential, eternal.