by evolution; that is, the world is either made by God, or is the manifestation of God.

Materialism is derived from a reversing of the latter part of this argument. Mind or thought, it is contended, is the product of matter. The forces of Nature meeting at a certain point produce a resultant, which is consciousness. The impact of one molecule of matter on another gives birth to thought as the spark flashing from the flint and steel. Intellectual effort is the corrosion of the brain by cerebric and phosphoric acids; thought, therefore, like heat, is produced by the combination of bases and acids. Consequently, every chemical compound while in process of combination has consciousness, differing in kind according to the materials that unite. There is, therefore, neither cause, purpose, nor providence in the world. The philosophic materialism of Critias, who placed the soul of man in the blood; of the sophist Antiphon, who supposed an unconscious nature-power, blindly producing all things by hap-hazard change; of the Atomists, who held that all things consisted of the fortuitous concourse of molecules; and of the philosophers of the last century, is necessarily downright atheism.

Theism and pantheism are by no means so irreconcilable as they appear at the first glance; for this reason, that pantheism stands on a sliding interpretation of the word substance. When it grasps the pure idea of a something underlying all phenomena, it verges on theism; but when it confuses substance with matter it envisages theism from a diametrically opposite point, for then it makes God, as has already been observed, to be the Great Result. Theodore Parker, with his usual vehemence and splendor of illustration, fell on the pantheists of the latter type as Samson fell on the Philistines of Ramoth-lehi, and smote them hip and thigh. "Their idea of God," he says, "is only the idea of

the world of nature and of spirits as it is to-day; and as the world of nature and of spirit will be fairer and wiser a thousand years hence than it is now, so, according to them, God will be fairer and wiser a thousand years hence than He is now. Thus they give you a variable God, who learns by experience, and who grows with the growth and strengthens with the strength of the universe itself. According to them, when there was no vegetation in the world of matter, God knew nothing of a plant, no more than the stones on the earth. When the animal came, when man came, God was wiser, and He advanced with the advance of man. When Jesus came, He was a better God; He was a wiser God, after Newton and Laplace; and was a more philosophical being after those pantheistic philosophers had taught Him the way to be so; for their God knows nothing until it is either a fact of observation in finite nature in the material world, or else a fact of consciousness in finite spirit, in some man. Mr. Babbage, a most ingenious Englishman, invented a calculating engine. He builded wiser than he knew; for, by-and-by, he found that his engine calculated conclusions which had never entered into the thought of Mr. Babbage himself. The mathematical engine outciphered the inventor. And these men represent God as being in just that predicament: the world is constantly revealing things unknown before, and which God had not conceived of. As there is a progressive development of the powers of the universe as a whole, and of each man, so there is a progressive development of God. He is, therefore, not so much a Being as a Becoming." But the same writer can say, "God is as much present in a blade of grass, or an atom of mahogany, this day and in every moment of its existence, as He was at the instant of creation. Every

1 Theod. Parker's Works, xi., 107, 108.

drop of water which falls from my roof in a shower, or from my finger thus, as I lift it in this cup, has as much the presence of God in it as when, in Biblical phrase, 'the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy,' at the creation of water itself."1

The theist admits that God is everywhere presentpresent in earth, heaven, and hell, present in mind and present in matter; consequently, God may be regarded as the substance of spirit and the substance of matter. It is remarkable that St. Paul, whose views were in no way tinged with what is popularly regarded as pantheism, showed a readiness to meet the philosophic pantheism of the Greeks half-way, when he addressed the Athenians on the hill of Ares with the words, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being," and when he wrote to the Colossians, God is before all things, and by Him all things consist "3 (τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν).

1 Theod. Parker's Works, p. 111.

2 Acts xvii. 28.

3 Col. i. 17.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE HISTORY OF MONOTHEISM.

The Semitic race and monotheism.-Jewish monotheistic ideas gradually developed.-Characteristics of Semitic progress.-Shape finally assumed by Jewish theism.-Jewish indifference to philosophy and science.-Mohammedan monotheism.-Calvinistic monotheism.-Classic theism.-Fate.-Hindoo monotheism.-Traces of theism among barbarous races.-Conclusion.

IT

T is the glory of the Semitic race to have given to the world in a compact and luminous form that monotheism which the philosophers of Greece and Rome only vaguely apprehended, and which has become the heritage of the Christian and the Mohammedan alike.

Of the Semitic race, however, but one small branch, Jewdom, preserved and communicated the idea. Every other branch of that race sank into polytheism. But from the first moment that Jewdom, floating down the stream of history, emerges out of obscurity, its cry has been, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one Lord!" It has been the Moses of religious thought leading out of the Egypt of misbelief into the Canaan of truth, but not without many a wandering.

From its earliest growth to its latest stage, as a mental system it has stood out in trenchant contrast against a background of heathenism, through persecution, exile, and anarchy, through every fluctuation of fortune, preserving the ark of its sublime idea, which antiquity wondered at but could not receive. When borrowing myth and rite from Phœnician and Philistine, Greece put not forth her hand to

grasp this divine conception; feeling, possibly, that before it all her Dagons must fall.

It is, at first sight, inexplicable that Jewish monotheism, which was in time to exercise such a prodigious influence over men's minds, should have so long remained the peculiar property of an insignificant people. But every religious idea has its season, and the thoughts of men have their Avatars. It is as though fresh flowers cannot appear till those already blooming have expended their force; as though the drops of light in the night heavens must wheel in their course before the sun can arise and smite them with death.

It was apparently necessary that mankind should be given full scope for unfettered development, that they should feel in all directions after God, if haply they might find Him, in order that the foundations of inductive philosophy might be laid, that the religious idea might run itself out through polytheistic channels for the development of art. Certainly Jewish monotheism remained in a state of congelation till the religious thought of antiquity had exhausted its own vitality and had worked out every other problem of theodicy; then, suddenly thawing, it poured over the world its fertilizing streams.

Jewish monotheism has thrilled through Gentiledom, and everywhere has given birth to art, literature, and science. But, like an Alpine glacier, it hangs cold and barren above the flowery meadows which derive their beauty and their freshness from itself. In one of the Arctic expeditions an explorer kindled a fire by means of a prism of ice. Jewdom has been that prism, giving birth to warmth, but remaining cold itself.

Whence did the Jews derive their monotheism? Monotheism is not a feature of any primitive religion; but that which is a feature of secondary religions is the appropriation to a tribe of a particular god, which that tribe exalts above