The facts are certain, and they are sufficiently striking to suggest the question, May not Nature itself be the one Being whose endless transformations constitute the history of the universe?
This question may be naturally suggested, and it may even be lawfully entertained; but it cannot be satisfactorily determined by any theory which leaves the evident marks of Intelligence and Design in the whole constitution and course of Nature unaccounted for or unexplained.
Influenced by these and similar considerations, many thoughtful men have recently avowed their belief that the two grand alternatives in modern times are, Christianity and Pantheism.

The Abbe Maret and Amand Saintes differ only in this: that by Christianity the former means Catholicism, the latter means the Gospel, or the religion of the primitive church; but both agree that Pantheism is the only other alternative.

Schlegel contrasts the same alternatives in the following impressive terms: "Here is the decisive point; two distinct, opposite, or diverging paths lie before us, and man must choose between them.

The clear-seeing spirit, which, in its sentiments, thoughts, and views of life, would be in accordance with itself, and would act consistently with them, must, in any case, take one or the other.

Either there is a living God, full of love, even such a One as love seeks and yearns after, to whom faith clings, and in whom all our hopes are centred (and such is the personal God of Revelation),--and on this hypothesis the world is not God, but is distinct from Him, having had a beginning, and being created out of nothing,--or there is only one supreme form of existence, and the world is eternal, and not distinct from God; there is absolutely but One, and this eternal One comprehends all, and is itself all in all; so that there is no where any real and essential distinction, and even that which is alleged to exist between evil and good is only a delusion of a narrow-minded system of Ethics....