for the most part they confessed that whatever light the Gospel might
shed on moral issues, it left untouched the ultimate question of the
relation of the Infinite to the Finite. And the only aspect of their
most venturesome speculations which I need recall is their insistence,
even when apparently verging toward Pantheism, on a transcendent as well
as an immanent God, that is on a Creator existing, so to speak, outside
the Universe and apart from it as well as permeating every part. Thus,
for example, Augustine would seem to deny to the world any separate
creature existence when he says, that but for the divinity everywhere in
it, creation would cease to be. But in his insistence on the creation of
the world from nothing, he directly contradicts Pantheism, because he
must necessarily be taken to mean that there is now something other than
God.

That there have been devout Christians whose mystic speculations on the
relations of the soul to the Eternal logically involved Pantheism--if
logic in such a case had any function--there can be no doubt. But for
most of them "God's word written" seemed to confirm God's word in
heaven and earth as known to them, proclaiming that there had been a
beginning and there must be an end. Therefore, whatever might be the
immanence of the Creator in His works, God could not, in their minds, be
identified with "the fashion of this world" which "passeth away."

Yet the time was coming when the Divine word both in Scripture and in
Nature was to be otherwise read. For men began to learn that the Bible
was other than they had supposed and the Universe immeasurably greater
than they had conceived.

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