An essay on pantheism Author:John Hunt Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. BKAHMANISM AND BUDHISM. OF the word Pantheism we have no accurate definition. The most opposite beliefs are sometimes called by this name; and s... more »ystems which, in the judgment of some, are notoriously Pantheistic are defended by others as compatible with the received doctrines of Christianity. The popular definition does not go textit{beyond the etymology of the word, God is All, or the All is God. But this defines nothing until we know either what God is, or what the textit{All is. If the universe is material, taking matter in its ordinary sense, then according to this definition God is matter, or, what is the same thing, there is no God. If, on the other hand, the universe is spiritual, then God is a spirit and matter is only an illusion?there is no material universe?what we call matter is only an appearance?the image or shadow of the Infinite Being. Hence two classes of Pantheists wholly distinct from each other, the material and the spiritual: the one is without a real God, the other is without a real world. To call the first by any name which at all implies that they are Theists is a contradiction in terms. The second is the class which are chiefly intended when we speak of Pantheists. Since we neither know what is matter nor what is spirit, it being impossible to demonstrate the existence of the one apart from the other, the indefinite meaning of Pantheism necessarily remains. Between these two kinds of Pantheism, that which denies a real God and that which denies a real universe, are a multitude of intermediary views approaching more or less to either of these. It is conceivable that mind may be eternally associated with matter, and thus the relation between God and the universe may correspond to that of the human soul with the human body. It is again conceiv...« less