“Brahmanism has avoided the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant
philosophy by assuming an impersonal deity in three modes of
manifestation, while Christian thinkers have played around the logical
contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen
hundred years. We must utterly break with the idea of a personal God, and
accept that of one impersonal essence behind all phenomena.” [Hartmann’s
future religion.]
Must we do this? Is there any necessity for it? What have we to do with
“the fatal mistake of Catholic and Protestant philosophy?” It was a
_mistake_, that’s all! “Christian thinkers have played around the logical
contradiction of one personality in three equal persons for fifteen
hundred years.” _Have they? ’Tis well!_ Christianity requires no man to
step into logical contradiction and stand there. They have done this “for
fifteen hundred years.” Well, it has been about that long since men, in
the prelude of the dark ages, began to speculate foolishly about the
subject of the Divine existence. There was a purer atmosphere in the first
centuries of the Christian era, in which primitive Christians enjoyed
better conceptions of the Divine Being, to which it is the privilege of
Christians to return. Is it the _only alternative_ “to break with the idea
of a personal God, and accept that of one impersonal essence behind all
phenomena?” _No!_ We Christians affirm nothing that can necessarily be
construed with the Catholic and Protestant “mistake” concerning the
_Trinity_, nor anything that can be construed with ultra Unitarianism,
which treats of our Lord and Savior simply as an extraordinarily inspired
man. Neither are we under any logical necessity to “break with the idea of
a personal God,” and form an alliance with Atheistic philosophy through
the adoption of the idea of a Pantheistic “essence behind all phenomena.”
Such speculative _nonsense_ may be the best that a mind can do while it is
in its own ignorance upon the subject of what it takes to constitute
personality, and while it is also surrounded with nothing but the darkness
of the dark ages, which has been the legitimate accompaniment of “the
Catholic and Protestant _fatal mistake_,” but it is not the best that an
intelligent mind, clothed with the sunlight of the gospel of Christ, and
intelligently educated upon the subject of _personality_ can do. _No!_ The
intelligently informed mind can stand upon the everlasting bed-rock of
truth, which has been raised to the highest mountain top of Christian
thought by the pure, unadulterated teachings of the Savior of men, which
lie behind the fifteen hundred years of jargon upon the questions of
Trinitarian and Unitarian “_isms_.”
“God is a spirit.” That settles the question of “person” with every well
instructed Christian mind. “What man knoweth the things of a man save the
spirit of man which is in him; even so the things of God knoweth no man
but the Spirit of God.” The Spirit of God is the _Supreme intelligence_.
And, being such, he is the _Supreme person_, for where there is
_intelligence_ there is person. The attributes of personality belong to
intelligence, and they belong to nothing else. If you have an
_intelligent_ essence, it is, of a logical and scientific necessity, a
person. Let some Pantheistic “wiseacre” grapple with this thought.
The fatal mistakes are not all confined to Catholics and Protestants;
Pantheists and Scientists have made full as many mistakes. The great
mistake upon the subject of the Divine existence, which Scientists and
Pantheists have made, is the conclusion that person is simply and
necessarily _material_, or animal existence. So they say, if God is a
person he must be a great big _almighty_ man, having great arms and legs,
etc. I have the first Atheist or Pantheist to meet in conversation that
understands the truth of science in reference to this question of
_person_.
It is claimed that a Monotheistic Pantheism, that is, the idea of _one
essence_, not person, but _essence_, is to _unite_, or make one, the whole
human family upon the scientific (sciolistic) base that man himself is one
grand part of the grand all-pervading, impersonal essence.
Religions have their practical results, and, consequently, bearings upon
human society. The Monotheistic idea, which, it is claimed, is to equalize
all beings and things throughout this vast universe, in the conception
that all are parts of the same grand all-pervading essence, can have only
the following results: First, to wipe out all ideas of a future
retribution, for want of judge, for want of governor; second, to destroy
all distinctions consequent upon the ideas of a divine moral kingdom, or
Kingdom of God among men; third, to loosen up the religious and moral
restraints by removing the religious sanctions, or promises and threats,
which relate to the future retribution.
The advocates of this universal religion of the future, which is simply
universal non-religion, say “Protestantism is the grave digger of
Christianity.” “But Christianity stoutly refuses to be buried alive,” and
the multitude of facts that are continually transpiring demonstrate a
living, active existence; “its blood circulates; its pulse is certainly
beating;” its force is not spent in the least; it is always giving but is
never growing lean; “it has a long lease of life.” All the trees of the
forest stand together in one grand old struggle for life. It may be that
Christianity will be under the necessity of struggling, for many years to
come, with the Godless forms of _Pantheism_ and _Atheism_, which are
simply two different phases of the same Godless philosophy; but the seeds
of the great Christian tree, in these United States, are being shaken down
into the tender and warm soil of millions of hearts in all our
Sunday-schools, and it will be many a year before Christianity dies.