cams_benton_b028_f003_025_011

(3) [centered]

3. But there is another vanity in our time calling itself
Science, & we see the folly of it; it confounds Gods [God's]
with the phenomena of the universe – & makes both one.

God is a principle & not a personal – but tending
to personality – a tendency manifested in & producing the
phenomena of the universe. God is all things & all
things are God. Human action is the action of the
infinite! Of course there can be in this system of
Pantheism no personal God, no separate existence for
each of us – no personal immortality for the soul – for
the qualities of the soul re-enter the universal mass in due
time to take on other forms; & identity is lost forever.

The essence of God is his creative power – he is the mere
living force of the universe – & all things are but the ra-
-diations & effluences of this primary energy. The whole
universe is the creator, proceeds from the Creator, exists in him, &
returns to him. – (It is proper to state this theory thus bec. [because]
we have been receiving parts of it on one or two recent occasions.)

God is made the substratum of all existence – the
difference of matter & mind is lost – "& we are only bubbles
thrown up upon the bosom of the mighty all, to reflect the rainbow
colors, in one brief phenomenal existence, & then be absorbed a-
-gain into the ocean from which we came."

All this may do for poetry – & we have aplenty
of it in Popes [Pope's] Essay on Man & in the wild flights of the Muse
of Shelley – but in sober prose, when it is said God is
the ever-streaming immanence of Spirit in matter –
the nature given to the ceaseless flow of being – then