CHAPTER III.
THEORIES OF PANTHEISM.
At the commencement of the present century, Pantheism might have been justly regarded and safely treated as an obsolete and exploded error,--an error which still prevailed, indeed, in the East as one of the hereditary beliefs of Indian superstition, but which, when transplanted to Western Europe by the daring genius of Spinoza, was found to be an exotic too sickly to take root and grow amidst the fresh and bracing air of modern civilization.
But no one who has marked the recent tendencies of speculative thought, and who is acquainted, however slightly, with the character of modern literature, can have failed to discern a remarkable change in this respect within the last fifty years.

German philosophy, always prolific, and often productive of monstrous births, has given to the world many elaborate systems, physical and metaphysical, whose most prominent feature is the deification of Nature or of Man.

France, always alert and lively, has appropriated the ideas of her more ponderous neighbors, and has given them currency through educated Europe on the wings of her lighter literature.

And even in England and America there are not wanting some significant tokens of a disposition to cherish a kind of speculation which, if it be not formally and avowedly Pantheistic, has much of the same dreamy and mystic character, and little, if any, harmony with definite views of God, or of the relations which He bears to man.
One of the most significant symptoms of a reaction in favor of Pantheism may be seen in the numerous republications and versions of the writings of Spinoza which have recently appeared, in the public homage which has been paid to his character and genius, and in the more than philosophic tolerance--the kindly indulgence--which has been shown to his most characteristic principles.

He is now recognized by many as the real founder both of the Philosophic and of the Exegetic Rationalism, which has been applied, with such disastrous effect, to the interpretation alike of the volume of Nature and of the records of Revelation.