Chapter III: Erroneous Explanations, And Conclusion (2)

Saisset, Pantheism, 148—“An imperfect God, yet perfection arising
from imperfection.” Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 1:13—“Pantheism applies
to God a principle of growth and imperfection, which belongs only
to the finite.” Calderwood, Moral Philos., 245—“Its first
requisite is moment, or movement, which it assumes, but does not
account for.” Caro’s sarcasm applies here: “Your God is not yet
made—he is in process of manufacture.” See H. B. Smith, Faith and
Philosophy, 25. Pantheism is practical atheism, for impersonal
spirit is only blind and necessary force. Angelus Silesius: “Wir
beten ‘Es gescheh, mein Herr und Gott, dein Wille’; Und sieh’, Er
hat nicht Will’,—Er ist ein ew’ge Stille”—which Max Müller
translates as follows: “We pray, ‘O Lord our God, Do thou thy holy
Will’; and see! God has no will; He is at peace and still.”
Angelus Silesius consistently makes God dependent for
self-consciousness on man: “I know that God cannot live An instant
without me; He must give up the ghost, If I should cease to be.”
Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Hegelianism destroys both God
and man. It reduces man to an object of the universal Thinker, and
leaves this universal Thinker without any true personality.”
Pantheism is a game of solitaire, in which God plays both sides.

2. Its assumed unity of substance is not only without proof, but it directly contradicts our intuitive judgments. These testify that we are not parts and particles of God, but distinct personal subsistences.

Martineau, Essays, 1:158—“Even for immanency, there must be
something wherein to dwell, and for life, something whereon to
act.” Many systems of monism contradict consciousness; they
confound harmony between two with absorption in one. “In Scripture
we never find the universe called τὸ πᾶν, for this suggests the
idea of a self-contained unity: we have everywhere τὰ πάντα
instead.” The Bible recognizes the element of truth in
pantheism—God is “_through all_”; also the element of truth in
mysticism—God is “_in you all_”; but it adds the element of
transcendence which both these fail to recognize—God is “above
all”_ (Eph. 4:6)_. See Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Orig. of
Christianity, 539. G. D. B. Pepper: “He who is over all and in all
is yet distinct from all. If one is over a thing, he is not that
very thing which he is over. If one is in something, he must be
distinct from that something. And so the universe, over which and
in which God is, must be thought of as something distinct from
God. The creation cannot be identical with God, or a mere form of
God.” We add, however, that it may be a manifestation of God and
dependent upon God, as our thoughts and acts are manifestations of
our mind and will and dependent upon our mind and will, yet are
not themselves our mind and will.

Pope wrote: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body
nature is and God the soul.” But Case, Physical Realism, 193,
replies: “Not so. Nature is to God as works are to a man; and as
man’s works are not his body, so neither is nature the body of
God.” Matthew Arnold, On Heine’s Grave: “What are we all but a
mood, A single mood of the life Of the Being in whom we exist, Who
alone is all things in one?” Hovey, Studies, 51—“Scripture
recognizes the element of truth in pantheism, but it also teaches
the existence of a world of things, animate and inanimate, in
distinction from God. It represents men as prone to worship the
creature more than the Creator. It describes them as sinners
worthy of death ... moral agents.... It no more thinks of men as
being literally parts of God, than it thinks of children as being
parts of their parents, or subjects as being parts of their king.”
A. J. F. Behrends: “The true doctrine lies between the two
extremes of a crass dualism which makes God and the world two
self-contained entities, and a substantial monism in which the
universe has only a phenomenal existence. There is no identity of
substance nor division of the divine substance. The universe is
eternally dependent, the product of the divine _Word_, not simply
_manufactured_. Creation is primarily a spiritual act.” Prof.
George M. Forbes: “Matter exists in subordinate dependence upon
God; spirit in coördinate dependence upon God. The body of Christ
was Christ externalized, made manifest to sense-perception. In
apprehending matter, I am apprehending the mind and will of God.
This is the highest sort of reality. Neither matter nor finite
spirits, then, are mere phenomena.”

3. It assigns no sufficient cause for that fact of the universe which is highest in rank, and therefore most needs explanation, namely, the existence of personal intelligences. A substance which is itself unconscious, and under the law of necessity, cannot produce beings who are self-conscious and free.

Gess, Foundations of our Faith, 36—“Animal instinct, and the
spirit of a nation working out its language, might furnish
analogies, if they produced personalities as their result, but not
otherwise. Nor were these tendencies self-originated, but received
from an external source.” McCosh, Intuitions, 215, 393, and
Christianity and Positivism, 180. Seth, Freedom as an Ethical
Postulate, 47—“If man is an ‘imperium in imperio,’ not a person,
but only an aspect or expression of the universe or God, then he
cannot be free. Man may be depersonalized either into nature or
into God. Through the conception of our own personality we reach
that of God. To resolve our personality into that of God would be
to negate the divine greatness itself by invalidating the
conception through which it was reached.” Bradley, Appearance and
Reality, 551, is more ambiguous: “The positive relation of every
appearance as an adjective to Reality; and the presence of Reality
among its appearances in different degrees and with diverse
values; this double truth we have found to be the centre of
philosophy.” He protests against both “an empty transcendence” and
“a shallow pantheism.” Hegelian immanence and knowledge, he
asserts, identified God and man. But God is more than man or man’s
thought. He is spirit and life—best understood from the human
_self_, with its thoughts, feelings, volitions. Immanence needs to
be qualified by transcendence. “God is not God till he has become
all-in-all, and a God which is all-in-all is not the God of
religion. God is an aspect, and that must mean but an appearance
of the Absolute.” Bradley’s Absolute, therefore, is not so much
personal as super-personal; to which we reply with Jackson, James
Martineau, 416—“Higher than personality is lower; beyond it is
regression from its height. From the equator we may travel
northward, gaining ever higher and higher latitudes; but, if ever
the pole is reached, pressing on from thence will be descending
into lower latitudes, not gaining higher.... Do I say, I am a
pantheist? Then, _ipso facto_, I deny pantheism; for, in the very
assertion of the Ego, I imply all else as objective to me.”

4. It therefore contradicts the affirmations of our moral and religious natures by denying man’s freedom and responsibility; by making God to include in himself all evil as well as all good; and by precluding all prayer, worship, and hope of immortality.

Conscience is the eternal witness against pantheism. Conscience
witnesses to our freedom and responsibility, and declares that
moral distinctions are not illusory. Renouf, Hibbert Lect.,
234—“It is only out of condescension to popular language that
pantheistic systems can recognize the notions of right and wrong,
of iniquity and sin. If everything really emanates from God, there
can be no such thing as sin. And the ablest philosophers who have
been led to pantheistic views have vainly endeavored to harmonize
these views with what we understand by the notion of sin or moral
evil. The great systematic work of Spinoza is entitled ’Ethica’;
but for real ethics we might as profitably consult the Elements of
Euclid.” Hodge, System. Theology, 1:299-330—“Pantheism is
fatalistic. On this theory, duty = pleasure; right = might; sin =
good in the making. Satan, as well as Gabriel, is a
self-development of God. The practical effects of pantheism upon
popular morals and life, wherever it has prevailed, as in Buddhist
India and China, demonstrate its falsehood.” See also Dove, Logic
of the Christian Faith, 118; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith,
202; Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:603-615; Dix, Pantheism, Introd., 12. On
the fact of sin as refuting the pantheistic theory, see Bushnell,
Nature and the Supernat., 140-164.

Wordsworth: “Look up to heaven! the industrious sun Already half
his course hath run; He cannot halt or go astray; But our immortal
spirits may.” President John H. Harris; “You never ask a cyclone’s
opinion of the ten commandments.” Bowne, Philos. of Theism,
245—“Pantheism makes man an automaton. But how can an automaton
have duties?” Principles of Ethics, 18—“Ethics is defined as the
science of conduct, and the conventions of language are relied
upon to cover up the fact that there is no ‘conduct’ in the case.
If man be a proper automaton, we might as well speak of the
conduct of the winds as of human conduct; and a treatise on
planetary motions is as truly the ethics of the solar system as a
treatise on human movements is the ethics of man.” For lack of a
clear recognition of personality, either human or divine, Hegel’s
Ethics is devoid of all spiritual nourishment,—his
“Rechtsphilosophie” has been called “a repast of bran.” Yet
Professor Jones, in Mind, July, 1893:304, tells us that Hegel’s
task was “to discover what conception of the single principle or
fundamental unity which alone _is_, is adequate to the differences
which it carries within it. ‘_Being_,’ he found, leaves no room
for differences,—it is overpowered by them.... He found that the
Reality can exist only as absolute Self-consciousness, as a
Spirit, who is universal, and who knows himself in all things. In
all this he is dealing, not simply with thoughts, but with
Reality.” Prof. Jones’s vindication of Hegel, however, still
leaves it undecided whether that philosopher regarded the divine
self-consciousness as distinct from that of finite beings, or as
simply inclusive of theirs. See John Caird, Fund. Ideas of
Christianity, 1:109.

5. Our intuitive conviction of the existence of a God of absolute perfection compels us to conceive of God as possessed of every highest quality and attribute of men, and therefore, especially, of that which constitutes the chief dignity of the human spirit, its personality.

Diman, Theistic Argument, 328—“We have no right to represent the
supreme Cause as inferior to ourselves, yet we do this when we
describe it under phrases derived from physical causation.”
Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 351—“We cannot conceive of anything
as impersonal, yet of higher nature than our own,—any being that
has not knowledge and will must be indefinitely inferior to one
who has them.” Lotze holds truly, not that God is
_supra_-personal, but that man is _infra_-personal, seeing that in
the infinite Being alone is self-subsistence, and therefore
perfect personality. Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 224—“The
radical feature of personality is the survival of a permanent
self, under all the fleeting or deciduous phases of experience; in
other words, the personal identity that is involved in the
assertion ‘I am.’... Is limitation a necessary adjunct of that
notion?” Seth, Hegelianism: “As in us there is more _for
ourselves_ than _for others_, so in God there is more of thought
_for himself_ than he manifests _to us_. Hegel’s doctrine is that
of immanence without transcendence.” Heinrich Heine was a pupil
and intimate friend of Hegel. He says: “I was young and proud, and
it pleased my vain-glory when I learned from Hegel that the true
God was not, as my grandmother believed, the God who lived in
heaven, but was rather _myself upon the earth_.” John Fiske, Idea
of God, xvi—“Since our notion of force is purely a generalization
from our subjective sensations of overcoming resistance, there is
scarcely less anthropomorphism in the phrase ‘Infinite Power’ than
in the phrase ‘Infinite Person.’ We must symbolize Deity in some
form that has meaning to us; we cannot symbolize it as physical;
we are bound to symbolize it as psychical. Hence we may say, God
is Spirit. This implies God’s personality.”

6. Its objection to the divine personality, that over against the Infinite there can be in eternity past no non-ego to call forth self-consciousness, is refuted by considering that even man’s cognition of the non-ego logically presupposes knowledge of the ego, from which the non-ego is distinguished; that, in an absolute mind, self-consciousness cannot be conditioned, as in the case of finite mind, upon contact with a not-self; and that, if the distinguishing of self from a not-self were an essential condition of divine self-consciousness, the eternal personal distinctions in the divine nature or the eternal states of the divine mind might furnish such a condition.

Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:163, 190 _sq._—“Personal
self-consciousness is not primarily a distinguishing of the ego
from the non-ego, but rather a distinguishing of itself from
itself, _i. e._, of the unity of the self from the plurality of
its contents.... Before the soul distinguishes self from the
not-self, it must know self—else it could not see the distinction.
Its development is connected with the knowledge of the non-ego,
but this is due, not to the fact of _personality_, but to the fact
of _finite_ personality. The mature man can live for a long time
upon his own resources. God needs no other, to stir him up to
mental activity. Finiteness is a hindrance to the development of
our personality. Infiniteness is necessary to the highest
personality.” Lotze, Microcosmos, vol. 3, chapter 4; transl. in N.
Eng., March, 1881:191-200—“Finite spirit, not having conditions of
existence in itself, can know the ego only upon occasion of
knowing the non-ego. The Infinite is not so limited. He alone has
an independent existence, neither introduced nor developed through
anything not himself, but, in an inward activity without beginning
or end, maintains himself in himself.” See also Lotze, Philos. of
Religion, 55-69; H. N. Gardiner on Lotze, in Presb. Rev.,
1885:669-673; Webb, in Jour. Theol. Studies, 2:49-61.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre: “Absolute Personality = perfect
consciousness of self, and perfect power over self. We need
something external to waken our consciousness—yet
self-consciousness comes [logically] before consciousness of the
world. It is the soul’s act. Only after it has distinguished self
from self, can it consciously distinguish self from another.”
British Quarterly, Jan. 1874:32, note; July, 1884:108—“The ego is
_thinkable_ only in relation to the non-ego; but the ego is
_liveable_ long before any such relation.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
1:185, 186—In the pantheistic scheme, “God distinguishes himself
from the _world_, and thereby finds the object required by the
subject; ... in the Christian scheme, God distinguishes himself
from _himself_, not from something that is not himself.” See
Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:122-126; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt
and Christ. Belief, 161-190; Hanne, Idee der absoluten
Persönlichkeit; Eichhorn, Die Persönlichkeit Gottes; Seth,
Hegelianism and Personality; Knight, on Personality and the
Infinite, in Studies in Philos. and Lit., 70-118.

On the whole subject of Pantheism, see Martineau, Study of
Religion, 2:141-194, esp. 192—“The _personality_ of God consists
in his voluntary agency as free cause in an unpledged sphere, that
is, a sphere transcending that of immanent law. But precisely this
also it is that constitutes his _infinity_, extending his sway,
after it has filled the actual, over all the possible, and giving
command over indefinite alternatives. Though you might deny his
infinity without prejudice to his personality, you cannot deny his
personality without sacrificing his infinitude: for there is a
mode of action—the _preferential_, the very mode which
distinguishes rational beings—from which you exclude him”;
341—“The metaphysicians who, in their impatience of distinction,
insist on taking the sea on board the boat, swamp not only it but
the thought it holds, and leave an infinitude which, as it can
look into no eye and whisper into no ear, they contradict in the
very act of affirming.” Jean Paul Richter’s “Dream”: “I wandered
to the farthest verge of Creation, and there I saw a _Socket_,
where an _Eye_ should have been, and I heard the shriek of a
Fatherless World” (quoted in David Brown’s Memoir of John Duncan,
49-70). Shelley, Beatrice Cenci: “Sweet Heaven, forgive weak
thoughts! If there should be No God, no Heaven, no Earth, in the
void world—The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!”

For the opposite view, see Biedermann, Dogmatik, 638-647—“Only
man, as finite spirit, is personal; God, as absolute spirit, is
not personal. Yet in religion the mutual relations of intercourse
and communion are always personal.... Personality is the only
adequate term by which we can represent the theistic conception of
God.” Bruce, Providential Order, 76—“Schopenhauer does not level
up cosmic force to the human, but levels down human will-force to
the cosmic. Spinoza held intellect in God to be no more like man’s
than the dog-star is like a dog. Hartmann added intellect to
Schopenhauer’s will, but the intellect is unconscious and knows no
moral distinctions.” See also Bruce, Apologetics, 71-90; Bowne,
Philos. of Theism, 128-134, 171-186; J. M. Whiton, Am. Jour.
Theol., Apl. 1901:306—Pantheism = God consists in all things;
Theism = All things consist in God, their ground, not their sum.
Spirit in man shows that the infinite Spirit must be personal and
transcendent Mind and Will.

IV. Ethical Monism.

Ethical Monism is that method of thought which holds to a single substance, ground, or principle of being, namely, God, but which also holds to the ethical facts of God’s transcendence as well as his immanence, and of God’s personality as distinct from, and as guaranteeing, the personality of man.

Although we do not here assume the authority of the Bible,
reserving our proof of this to the next following division on The
Scriptures a Revelation from God, we may yet cite passages which
show that our doctrine is not inconsistent with the teachings of
holy Writ. The immanence of God is implied in all statements of
his omnipresence, as for example: _Ps. 139:7 sq.—_“Whither shall I
go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”
_Jer. 23:23, 24—_“Am I a God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God
afar off?... Do not I fill heaven and earth?” _Acts 17:27, 28—_“he
is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and
have our being.” The transcendence of God is implied in such
passages as: _1 Kings 8:27—_“the heaven and the heaven of heavens
cannot contain thee”; _Ps. 113:5—_“that hath his seat on high”;
_Is. 57:15—_“the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity.”

This is the faith of Augustine: “O God, thou hast made us for
thyself, and our heart is restless till it find rest in thee.... I
could not be, O my God, could not be at all, wert thou not in me;
rather, were not I in thee, of whom are all things, by whom are
all things, in whom are all things.” And Anselm, in his
Proslogion, says of the divine nature: “It is the essence of the
being, the principle of the existence, of all things.... Without
parts, without differences, without accidents, without changes, it
might be said in a certain sense alone to exist, for in respect to
it the other things which appear to be have no existence. The
unchangeable Spirit is all that is, and it is this without limit,
simply, interminably. It is the perfect and absolute Existence.
The rest has come from non-entity, and thither returns if not
supported by God. It does not exist by itself. In this sense the
Creator alone exists; created things do not.”

1. While Ethical Monism embraces the one element of truth contained in Pantheism—the truth that God is in all things and that all things are in God—it regards this scientific unity as entirely consistent with the facts of ethics—man’s freedom, responsibility, sin, and guilt; in other words, Metaphysical Monism, or the doctrine of one substance, ground, or principle of being, is qualified by Psychological Dualism, or the doctrine that the soul is personally distinct from matter on the one hand, and from God on the other.

Ethical Monism is a monism which holds to the ethical facts of the
freedom of man and the transcendence and personality of God; it is
the monism of free-will, in which personality, both human and
divine, sin and righteousness, God and the world, remain—two in
one, and one in two—in their moral antithesis as well as their
natural unity. Ladd, Introd. to Philosophy: “Dualism is yielding,
in history and in the judgment-halls of reason, to a monistic
philosophy.... Some form of philosophical monism is indicated by
the researches of psycho-physics, and by that philosophy of mind
which builds upon the principles ascertained by these researches.
Realities correlated as are the body and the mind must have, as it
were, a common ground.... They have their reality in the ultimate
one Reality; they have their interrelated lives as expressions of
the one Life which is immanent in the two.... Only some form of
monism that shall satisfy the facts and truths to which both
realism and idealism appeal can occupy the place of the true and
final philosophy.... Monism must so construct its tenets as to
preserve, or at least as not to contradict and destroy, the truths
implicated in the distinction between the _me_ and the _not-me_,
... between the morally good and the morally evil. No form of
monism can persistently maintain itself which erects its system
upon the ruins of fundamentally ethical principles and ideals.”...
Philosophy of Mind, 411—“Dualism must be dissolved in some
ultimate monistic solution. The Being of the world, of which all
particular beings are but parts, must be so conceived of as that
in it can be found the one ground of all interrelated existences
and activities.... This one Principle is an Other and an Absolute
Mind.”

Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, II, 3:101, 231—“The unity of
essence in God and man is the great discovery of the present
age.... The characteristic feature of all recent Christologies is
the endeavor to point out the essential unity of the divine and
human. To the theology of the present day, the divine and human
are not mutually exclusive, but are connected magnitudes.... Yet
faith postulates a difference between the world and God, between
whom religion seeks an union. Faith does not wish to be a relation
merely to itself, or to its own representations and thoughts; that
would be a monologue,—faith desires a dialogue. Therefore it does
not consort with a monism which recognizes only God, or only the
world; it opposes such a monism as this. Duality is, in fact, a
condition of true and vital unity. But duality is not dualism. It
has no desire to oppose the rational demand for unity.” Professor
Small of Chicago: “With rare exceptions on each side, all
philosophy to-day is monistic in its ontological presumptions; it
is dualistic in its methodological procedures.” A. H. Bradford,
Age of Faith, 71—“Men and God are the same in substance, though
not identical as individuals.” The theology of fifty years ago was
merely individualistic, and ignored the complementary truth of
solidarity. Similarly we think of the continents and islands of
our globe as disjoined from one another. The dissociable sea is
regarded as an absolute barrier between them. But if the ocean
could be dried, we should see that all the while there had been
submarine connections, and the hidden unity of all lands would
appear. So the individuality of human beings, real as it is, is
not the only reality. There is the profounder fact of a common
life. Even the great mountain-peaks of personality are superficial
distinctions, compared with the organic oneness in which they are
rooted, into which they all dip down, and from which they all,
like volcanoes, receive at times quick and overflowing impulses of
insight, emotion and energy; see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation
and Ethical Monism, 189, 190.

2. In contrast then with the two errors of Pantheism—the denial of God’s transcendence and the denial of God’s personality—Ethical Monism holds that the universe, instead of being one with God and conterminous with God, is but a finite, partial and progressive manifestation of the divine Life: Matter being God’s self-limitation under the law of Necessity; Humanity being God’s self-limitation under the law of Freedom; Incarnation and Atonement being God’s self-limitations under the law of Grace.

The universe is related to God as my thoughts are related to me,
the thinker. I am greater than my thoughts, and my thoughts vary
in moral value. Ethical Monism traces the universe back to a
beginning, while Pantheism regards the universe as coëternal with
God. Ethical Monism asserts God’s transcendence, while Pantheism
regards God as imprisoned in the universe. Ethical Monism asserts
that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him, but that
contrariwise the whole universe taken together, with its elements
and forces, its suns and systems, is but a light breath from his
mouth, or a drop of dew upon the fringe of his garment. Upton,
Hibbert Lectures: “The Eternal is present in every finite thing,
and is felt and known to be present in every rational soul; but
still is not broken up into individualities, but ever remains one
and the same eternal substance, one and the same unifying
principle, immanently and indivisibly present in every one of that
countless plurality of finite individuals into which man’s
analyzing understanding dissects the Cosmos.” James Martineau, in
19th Century, Apl. 1895:559—“What is Nature but the province of
God’s pledged and habitual causality? And what is Spirit, but the
province of his free causality, responding to the needs and
affections of his children?... God is not a retired architect, who
may now and then be called in for repairs. Nature is not
self-active, and God’s agency is not intrusive.” Calvin: Pie hoc
potest dici, Deum esse Naturam.

With this doctrine many poets show their sympathy. “Every fresh
and new creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God
proceeds.” Robert Browning asserts God’s immanence;
Hohenstiel-Schwangau: “This is the glory that, in all conceived Or
felt, or known, I recognize a Mind—Not mine, but like mine—for the
double joy, Making all things for me, and me for him”; Ring and
Book, Pope: “O thou, as represented to me here In such conception
as my soul allows—Under thy measureless, my atom-width! Man’s
mind, what is it but a convex glass, Wherein are gathered all the
scattered points Picked out of the immensity of sky, To reunite
there, be our heaven for earth, Our Known Unknown, our God
revealed to man?” But Browning also asserts God’s transcendence:
in Death in the Desert, we read: “Man is not God, but hath God’s
end to serve, A Master to obey, a Cause to take, Somewhat to cast
off, somewhat to become”; in Christmas Eve, the poet derides “The
important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one
with the Creator”; he tells us that it was God’s plan to make man
in his image: “To create man, and then leave him Able, his own
word saith, to grieve him; But able to glorify him too, As a mere
machine could never do That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its
fitness for aught but praise or prayer, Made perfect as a thing of
course.... God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands
away, As it were, a hand-breadth off, to give Room for the newly
made to live And look at him from a place apart And use his gifts
of brain and heart”; “Life’s business being just the terrible
choice.”

So Tennyson’s Higher Pantheism: “The sun, the moon, the stars, the
seas, the hills, and the plains, Are not these, O soul, the vision
of Him who reigns? Dark is the world to thee; thou thyself art the
reason why; For is not He all but thou, that hast power to feel ‘I
am I’? Speak to him, thou, for he hears, and spirit with spirit
can meet; Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and
feet. And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot
see; But if we could see and hear, this vision—were it not He?”
Also Tennyson’s Ancient Sage: “But that one ripple on the
boundless deep Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself
Forever changing form, but evermore One with the boundless motion
of the deep”; and In Memoriam: “One God, one law, one element, And
one far-off divine event, Toward which the whole creation moves.”
Emerson: “The day of days, the greatest day in the feast of life,
is that in which the inward eye opens to the unity of things”; “In
the mud and scum of things Something always, always sings.” Mrs.
Browning: “Earth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush
afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes.” So
manhood is itself potentially a divine thing. All life, in all its
vast variety, can have but one Source. It is either one God, above
all, through all, and in all, or it is no God at all. E. M.
Poteat, On Chesapeake Bay: “Night’s radiant glory overhead, A
softer glory there below, Deep answered unto deep, and said: A
kindred fire in us doth glow. For life is one—of sea and stars, Of
God and man, of earth and heaven—And by no theologic bars Shall my
scant life from God’s be riven.” See Professor Henry Jones, Robert
Browning.

3. The immanence of God, as the one substance, ground and principle of being, does not destroy, but rather guarantees, the individuality and rights of each portion of the universe, so that there is variety of rank and endowment. In the case of moral beings, worth is determined by the degree of their voluntary recognition and appropriation of the divine. While God is all, he is also in all; so making the universe a graded and progressive manifestation of himself, both in his love for righteousness and his opposition to moral evil.

It has been charged that the doctrine of monism necessarily
involves moral indifference; that the divine presence in all
things breaks down all distinctions of rank and makes each thing
equal to every other; that the evil as well as the good is
legitimated and consecrated. Of pantheistic monism all this is
true,—it is not true of ethical monism; for ethical monism is the
monism that recognizes the ethical fact of personal intelligence
and will in both God and man, and with these God’s purpose in
making the universe a varied manifestation of himself. The worship
of cats and bulls and crocodiles in ancient Egypt, and the
deification of lust in the Brahmanic temples of India, were
expressions of a non-ethical monism, which saw in God no moral
attributes, and which identified God with his manifestations. As
an illustration of the mistakes into which the critics of monism
may fall for lack of discrimination between monism that is
pantheistic and monism that is ethical, we quote from Emma Marie
Caillard: “Integral parts of God are, on monistic premises, liars,
sensualists, murderers, evil livers and evil thinkers of every
description. Their crimes and their passions enter intrinsically
into the divine experience. The infinite Individual in his
wholeness may reject them indeed, but none the less are these evil
finite individuals constituent parts of him, even as the twigs of
a tree, though they are not the tree, and though the tree
transcends any or all of them, are yet constituent parts of it.
Can he whose universal consciousness includes and defines all
finite consciousnesses be other than responsible for all finite
actions and motives?”

To this indictment we may reply in the words of Bowne, The Divine
Immanence, 130-133—“Some weak heads have been so heated by the new
wine of immanence as to put all things on the same level, and make
men and mice of equal value. But there is nothing in the
dependence of all things on God to remove their distinctions of
value. One confused talker of this type was led to say that he had
no trouble with the notion of a divine man, as he believed in a
divine oyster. Others have used the doctrine to cancel moral
differences; for if God be in all things, and if all things
represent his will, then whatever is is right. But this too is
hasty. Of course even the evil will is not independent of God, but
lives and moves and has its being in and through the divine. But
through its mysterious power of selfhood and self-determination
the evil will is able to assume an attitude of hostility to the
divine law, which forthwith vindicates itself by appropriate
reactions.

“These reactions are not divine in the highest or ideal sense.
They represent nothing which God desires or in which he delights;
but they are divine in the sense that they are things to be done
under the circumstances. The divine reaction in the case of the
good is distinct from the divine reaction against evil. Both are
divine as representing God’s action, but only the former is divine
in the sense of representing God’s approval and sympathy. All
things serve, said Spinoza. The good serve, and are furthered by
their service. The bad also serve and are used up in the serving.
According to Jonathan Edwards, the wicked are useful ‘in being
acted upon and disposed of.’ As ‘vessels of dishonor’ they may
reveal the majesty of God. There is nothing therefore in the
divine immanence, in its only tenable form, to cancel moral
distinctions or to minify retribution. The divine reaction against
iniquity is even more solemn in this doctrine. The besetting God
is the eternal and unescapable environment; and only as we are in
harmony with him can there be any peace.... What God thinks of
sin, and what his will is concerning it can be plainly seen in the
natural consequences which attend it.... In law itself we are face
to face with God; and natural consequences have a supernatural
meaning.”

4. Since Christ is the Logos of God, the immanent God, God revealed in Nature, in Humanity, in Redemption, Ethical Monism recognizes the universe as created, upheld, and governed by the same Being who in the course of history was manifest in human form and who made atonement for human sin by his death on Calvary. The secret of the universe and the key to its mysteries are to be found in the Cross.

_John 1:1-4 (marg.), 14, 18—_“In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the
beginning with God. All things were made through him; and without
him was not any thing made. That which hath been made was life in
him; and the life was the light of men.... And the Word became
flesh, and dwelt among us.... No man hath seen God at any time;
the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him.” _Col. 1:16, 17—_“for in him were all things
created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and
things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities
or powers; all things have been created through him and unto him;
and he is before all things, and in him all things consist.” _Heb.
1:2, 3—_“his Son ... through whom also he made the worlds ...
upholding all things by the word of his power”; _Eph. 1:22,
23—_“the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that
filleth all in all” = fills all things with all that they contain
of truth, beauty, and goodness; _Col. 2:2, 3, 9—_“the mystery of
God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge hidden ... for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily.”

This view of the relation of the universe to God lays the
foundation for a Christian application of recent philosophical
doctrine. Matter is no longer blind and dead, but is spiritual in
its nature, not in the sense that it _is_ spirit, but in the sense
that it is the continual _manifestation_ of spirit, just as my
thoughts are a living and continual manifestation of myself. Yet
matter does not consist simply in _ideas_, for ideas, deprived of
an external object and of an internal subject, are left suspended
in the air. Ideas are the product of Mind. But matter is known
only as the operation of force, and force is the product of Will.
Since this force works in rational ways, it can be the product
only of Spirit. The system of forces which we call the universe is
the immediate product of the mind and will of God; and, since
Christ is the mind and will of God in exercise, Christ is the
Creator and Upholder of the universe. Nature is the omnipresent
Christ, manifesting God to creatures.

Christ is the principle of cohesion, attraction, interaction, not
only in the physical universe, but in the intellectual and moral
universe as well. In all our knowing, the knower and known are
“connected by some Being who is their reality,” and this being is
Christ, “the Light which lighteth every man”_ (John 1:9)_. We
_know_ in Christ, just as “in him we live, and move, and have our
being”_ (Acts 17:28)_. As the attraction of gravitation and the
principle of evolution are only other names for Christ, so he is
the basis of inductive reasoning and the ground of moral unity in
the creation. I am bound to love my neighbor as myself because he
has in him the same life that is in me, the life of God in Christ.
The Christ in whom all humanity is created, and in whom all
humanity consists, holds together the moral universe, drawing all
men to himself and so drawing them to God. Through him God
“reconciles all things unto himself ... whether things upon the
earth, or things in the heavens”_ (Col. 1:20)_.

As Pantheism = exclusive immanence = God imprisoned, so Deism =
exclusive transcendence = God banished. Ethical Monism holds to
the truth contained in each of these systems, while avoiding their
respective errors. It furnishes the basis for a new interpretation
of many theological as well as of many philosophical doctrines. It
helps our understanding of the Trinity. If within the bounds of
God’s being there can exist multitudinous finite personalities, it
becomes easier to comprehend how within those same bounds there
can be three eternal and infinite personalities,—indeed, the
integration of plural consciousnesses in an all-embracing divine
consciousness may find a valid analogy in the integration of
subordinate consciousnesses in the unit-personality of man; see
Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, Feeling and Will, 53, 54.

Ethical Monism, since it is ethical, leaves room for human wills
and for their freedom. While man could never break the natural
bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond
and introduce into creation a principle of discord and evil. Tie a
cord tightly about your finger; you partially isolate the finger,
diminish its nutrition, bring about atrophy and disease. So there
has been given to each intelligent and moral agent the power,
spiritually to isolate himself from God while yet he is naturally
joined to God. As humanity is created in Christ and lives only in
Christ, man’s self-isolation is his moral separation from Christ.
Simon, Redemption of Man, 339—“Rejecting Christ is not so much
refusal to _become_ one with Christ as it is refusal to _remain_
one with him, refusal to let him be our life.” All men are
naturally one with Christ by physical birth, before they become
morally one with him by spiritual birth. They may set themselves
against him and may oppose him forever. This our Lord intimates,
when he tells us that there are natural branches of Christ, which
do not “abide in the vine” or “bear fruit,” and so are “cast
forth,” “withered,” and “burned”_ (John 15:4-6)_.

Ethical Monism, however, since it is Monism, enables us to
understand the principle of the Atonement. Though God’s holiness
binds him to punish sin, the Christ who has joined himself to the
sinner must share the sinner’s punishment. He who is the life of
humanity must take upon his own heart the burden of shame and
penalty that belongs to his members. Tie the cord about your
finger; not only the finger suffers pain, but also the heart; the
life of the whole system rouses itself to put away the evil, to
untie the cord, to free the diseased and suffering member.
Humanity is bound to Christ, as the finger to the body. Since
human nature is one of the “all things” that “consist” or hold
together in Christ (_Col 1:17_), and man’s sin is a
self-perversion of a part of Christ’s own body, the whole must be
injured by the self-inflicted injury of the part, and “it must
needs be that Christ should suffer”_ (Acts 17:3)_. Simon,
Redemption of Man, 321—“If the Logos is the Mediator of the divine
immanence in creation, especially in man; if men are
differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if the Logos
is the immanent controlling principle of all differentiation—_i.
e._, the principle of all _form_—must not the self-perversion of
these human differentiations react on him who is their
constitutive principle?” A more full explanation of the relations
of Ethical Monism to other doctrines must be reserved to our
separate treatment of the Trinity, Creation, Sin, Atonement,
Regeneration. Portions of the subject are treated by Upton,
Hibbert Lectures; Le Conte, in Royce’s Conception of God, 43-50;
Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 297-301, 311-317, and
Immanence of God, 5-32, 116-153; Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge,
574-590, and Theory of Reality, 525-529; Edward Caird, Evolution
of Religion, 2:48; Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 2:258-283;
Göschel, quoted in Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:170. An
attempt has been made to treat the whole subject by A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation and Ethical Monism, 1-86, 141-162, 166-180,
186-208.