formed no part of the creed, of the great dialectician of modern times.
The attempt to separate God from Nature will mistify the clearest head:
not even Coleridge could wade the depths of this vulgar Theology. Is
there any man who can rest satisfied in the faith of two independent
powers who exist together in any other sense than the two polar energies
of a magnet, which are really one? No: and men are afraid to regard them
as one. On the one hand they are puzzled to understand an unintelligible
absurdity, and on the other, they are afraid to admit a simple truism
which leads to the abolition of all ceremonial forms, and lip
professions of religion, and is execrated by priests and their
accomplices on this very account. We do not pretend to understand
anything. Every subject whatsoever is too high, too deep, and too broad
for us. But coming into a world where men act upon certain modes of
reasoning, which are unsatisfactory to our minds, we battle immediately
with these men, like an animalcule thrown into a glass of water amongst
other animalcules of opposite principles, and in doing so we act from
the impulse within which is our sole authority--that impulse within is
the preference we give to a mode of reasoning which begins by regarding
the existing of every kind and, degree as a 'perfect unity,' and making
the unity, responsible for every mode--the cause of every mode.' [49:1]
That is to say, dealing with it as what it is, the only existence; the
one, or all and in all. Can Atheists object to that? No, surely, for
they uniformly thus reason with respect to Nature; and unless traitors
to their own principles, cannot object to Pantheistical philosophy _as
here laid down_. Atheists say, Nature never had an Author--so do
Pantheists of the 'Shepherd' school. Atheists say Nature is at once the
womb and grave and cause and effect of all phenomena--so do they.
Atheists say 'death is nothing, and nothing death;' all matter breathing
the breath of life--so do they. Indeed, notwithstanding their talk about
God and Devil, they think Nature both, which amounts to denying both.