"Understand, ye brutish among the people; and ye fools, when will ye be
wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the
eye, shall he not see? He that chastiseth the heathen, shall he be not
correct? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not know?"--Psalm
xciv, 8, 9.
Pantheism, personified, is a hypocrite, a deceiver. The name God, as a
proper name in the English language, means the Divine Being, Jehovah,
the Eternal and Infinite Spirit, the Creator and Lord of the universe.
Pantheists say they believe in God, but they tell you, when pressed,
they mean by that name "everything"--_God is everything._ The term
"Pantheist" is from _pan_, all, and _theos_, God. Webster defines the
term thus: "One that believes the universe to be God; a name given to
the followers of Spinoza."
Has any man the right to pervert language, fixing new meanings to words
in common use which are in direct opposition to established usage? The
man who knows the meaning of a word and uses it in a contrary sense is
guilty of an abuse of language; and if he fails to make known the fact
that he is using the term in a sense differing from established usage,
he is, then, a deceiver. Pantheists are simply Atheists in disguise, the
only difference being in their professions. The Pantheist says, "I
believe in a God;" but this saying is only a distinction without a
difference. The atheist is the frank, outspoken man of the two.
What must we think of the man who says, "I believe in God," and then
explains himself to mean, by the name God, heat, steam, electricity,
force, animal life, the soul of man, magnetism, mesmeric force, and, in
one word, the sum of all the intelligences and forces in the universe,
at the same time denying the proper currency of the term God by denying
the existence of a personal God. All Christians should demand that
Christian terms be used in their own proper currency. But infidels will
always do as they have hitherto, will often get out of their own "ruts,"
by the most perfect abuse of language. They can not, it seems, leave off
the use of language which is only appropriate to the Christian idea.
Their divinity, by their own confession, differs essentially from God,
and let them use a different word to describe it. Let them do like their
heathen brethren in India, call it Brahma, or whatever else they please,
and cease "stealing Heaven's livery to serve the devil." Let them cease
to profane religion and offend common sense by giving the name of the
glorious Father of Spirits to their million-headed nondescript.
Pantheism dethrones Jehovah and places no other intelligence in his
place as Creator and Ruler of the universe; and, being conscious of the
odium that necessarily attaches itself to Atheism, on account of its
everlasting foolishness, they steal the name of God to cloak their
Atheism.
_Pantheism is demoralizing._ It cuts a man loose from all the sanctions
of moral law, by denying the resurrection, the judgment and the future
retribution. It annihilates from the mind of its votary the idea of
God's moral government. If man, as it avows, be the highest intelligence
in the universe of worlds, to whom will he render an account? Who will
call upon him to answer? If men and women are simply developments of
God, will God be offended with himself? "Evil is good," we are told, "in
another way, we are not skilled in." See the author of "Representative
Men," Festus, page 48. "Evil" was held by some of the old heathen
philosophers to be "good in the making." They argued that it was the
carrion in the sunshine, converting into grass and flower. And then, to
apply their figure, man in the brothel, jail, or on gibbets, is in the
way to all that is lovely and true. Such reminds us of the ravings of
lunatics. It is the climax of profanation of the moral government of
God. Let those who fear no God, but have wives and children and property
to lose, reflect upon the propriety of lending their influence to a
system fraught with such consequences. The system positively denies the
distinction between good and evil. It declares that we can not sin;
that we are God, and God can not offend against himself; that sin is all
simply an old lie; that impiety, immorality and vice of frightful mien
are wedded in eternal decrees, and that man can not sever them.
_Pantheism is veiled Atheism._ It is not necessary to argue this
proposition at length. Pantheists often speak of the great being, which,
according to Pantheism, is composed of all the intelligences of the
universe. Can any man conceive of such a being? Can intelligences be
piled one upon another, like brick and mortar, and thus be compounded?
And if my spirit be the highest intelligence in the universe, did it
create itself? Does it govern itself? Did it create the universe? Does
it govern it? Some Pantheists have gone to this length! M. Comte says:
"At this present time, for minds properly familiarized with true
astronomical philosophy, the heavens display no other glory than that of
Hipparchus, or Kepler, or Newton, and of all who have helped to
establish these laws." "Establish these laws!" They were laws governing
the planets thousands of years before these astronomers were born.
Pantheists often express very high respect for the Christian religion.
Some of the more vulgar sort, however, speak of it as a superstition.
But the wiser ones have reached the perfection of Jesuitism, that is to
say, they indulge in hypocrisy and deception to effect a purpose. They
grant that the Christian religion is the highest development of humanity
yet attained by a majority of the race. The heathen of every grade of
character, and the Christian, with all others who may not be classified
by us with either, are all, in their scheme, so many successive
developments of humanity. It is a trick of their trade to clothe their
abominations in Bible language by wresting the Scriptures. They speak of
the "beauty of holiness in the mind, that surmounted every idea of a
personal God;" and of "God dwelling in us, and his love perfected in
us," when they maintain that he dwells in every creature and thing. They
say they can accept the Bible--that is their phrase--notwithstanding it
pronounces death upon the fools who, "professing to be wise, change the
truth of God into a lie, and worship and serve the creature more than
the Creator," as a mystic revelation of the Pantheism which leaves us to
"erect everything into a God," provided it is none, inasmuch as "every
product of the human mind is a development of Deity." So the Bible, in
the conclusion of their system, is on a level with Thomas Paine's
writings as respects inspiration and origin. The great Pantheistic
divinity is spoken of by Pantheists as the great soul of the universe,
while the more materialistic look upon it as the universe itself, body
and soul. With them the soul is the fountain of all the imponderable
forces, vegetable and animal life, the mesmeric influences, galvanism,
magnetism, electricity, light and heat; and the body the sum of all the
ponderable substances; in one word, "God is everything, and everything
is God." This system is called "Monotheistic Pantheism." It is a vast
generalization of everything into a higher unity, which exalts men and
paving stones, and cats, dogs and reptiles, and monkeys, to the same
level of God-head, or divinity. Man, the soul of men, as the system
would term it, is the greatest manifestation of the divine essence. Yes!
DIVINE ESSENCE! for, with Pantheists, there is no _personal_ hereafter.
This system of Pantheism is an old, worn-out theory; it has putrefied
and rotted with the worshippers of cats, monkeys, and holy cows and
bulls, and pieces of sticks and stones on the Ganges more than two
thousand years ago. It is now dragged up from the dung-hill and
presented as a new discovery of modern philosophy, sufficient to
supplant the Ruler of the universe. How strange it is that men of
ordinary intelligence will embrace the idea, rather than submit to the
dictates of conscience and the Bible! This world of ours is not an
abstraction in philosophy that consists of one simple substance called
matter, nor yet of one substance, for there are many different material
substances, such as oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, sulphur, aluminum and
iron, and more than fifty others already discovered.
Now, let us suppose that all these elements or substances existed as a
cloud of atoms millions of ages in the past; are we, then, any nearer
the solution of the great problem of world making than we were before?
The atoms must be material, for a material world is to be made of them;
and they must have extension; each one of them must have length, breadth
and thickness; and, as inertia is a property of each and every atom, the
Pantheist has only multiplied the difficulty by millions, for matter can
not begin, _of itself_, to move. Did the dead atoms dance about and
jumble themselves together as we now find them? Is the one substance
theory correct? Monotheistic Pantheism _is scientifically false in
fact_. Some of these men who tell us of a world without an intelligence
in the past, who have such implicit confidence in the powers of matter,
tell us, that "millions of ages" in the past the world existed as a
great cloud of fire mist, which, after a long time cooled down into
granite; and this, by dint of earthquakes, broke up on the surface, and
washed with rain until, after ages upon ages had passed, clays and soil
were formed, from which plants, of their own accord, sprang up without a
germ; in other words, germs came into being spontaneously and grew up,
as we see them, developed in all their grandeur. This chance life,
somehow, chanced to assume animal form and fashion until, in the
multitude of its changes it reached the fashion of the monkey; and then,
at last, the fashion of man, both male and female. Truly, the Atheists
and Pantheists of our country need not complain of any want of power to
believe while such is their basis of faith upon the subject of world
making. But they, to avoid the difficulty that nothing made something,
tell us "the fire mist was eternal," that it did not make itself. Very
well, let us have it that way; then we must be allowed to ask, how an
eternal red hot mist cooled off? And also what there was to cool it,
when it was all there was, and it was red hot, and always had been? In
other words, how could an eternal red hot cool down without something
else in existence to cool it? Why should it cool at all? And why did it
begin to cool just when it did? The utmost that any scientist can do is
to show that such a change took place, but he can not tell you why it
took place. Change _it did_! But change is an effect, and requires a
cause. And, according to their theory, there could be no cause outside
of the fire mist; for they say there was nothing else in the universe.
Then the cause was inside of the fire mist. But how can red hot cool
when all there is, is red hot? Had this first mist, to say nothing of
organic life, a mind? Did it become sensible and resolve to cool off a
little, and settle itself into orderly worlds? What became of its mind?
Did it divide, and a part go to each planet? Has each planet a great
"soul of the world," as well as our earth? If so, had we not as well
build an altar to each planet and go back to the religion of our
banana-fed ancestors, who burned their children alive in sun worship?
The Christian religion is so fearfully demoralizing (?) that it is a
great pity that these Godless, Christless souls called Pantheists and
Atheists can't get some solution of the great problem of world-making
that would dispense with the Bible. How well they could get along
if--if--if--they only had this great question settled.
"IN GOD WE TRUST."