' Yet the
difference between his Pantheism and our Atheism is only perceptible to
the microscopic eye of super-sublimated spiritualism. The subjoined is
offered to the reader's notice as a sample of Pantheism so closely
resembling Atheism, that, like the two Sosias in the play, to
distinguish them is difficult:
'What Coleridge meant by the motto (all Theology depends on mastering
the term nature) concerns us not. We appropriate the motto, but we do
not profess to appropriate it in the same sense as Coleridge
appropriated it. Every man must appropriate it for himself. Coleridge
perceived what every thinking mind has perceived--the difficulty of
believing in two self-determining powers, viz., God and Nature, as also
the consequences of regarding them as identical. If Nature be one power
and God another power, and if God be not responsible for what Nature
does, then Nature is a self-subsisting God. If God and Nature be
esteemed one universal existence, this is Pantheism, which is
denominated an accursed doctrine by the disciples of Sectarianism, and
formed no part of the creed, of the great dialectician of modern times.
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