with such consequences. The system positively denies the distinction between good and evil. It declares that we can not sin; that we are God, and God can not offend against himself; that sin is all simply an old lie; that impiety, immorality and vice of frightful mien are wedded in eternal decrees, and that man can not sever them.

Pantheism is veiled Atheism. It is not necessary to argue this proposition at length. Pantheists often speak of the great being, which, according to Pantheism, is composed of all the intelligences of the universe. Can any man conceive of such a being? Can intelligences be piled one upon another, like brick and mortar, and thus be compounded? And if my spirit be the highest intelligence in the universe, did it create itself? Does it govern itself? Did it create the universe? Does it govern it? Some Pantheists have gone to this length! M. Comte says: "At this present time, for minds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, the heavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, or Kepler, or Newton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws." "Establish these laws!" They were laws governing the planets thousands of years before these astronomers were born.

Pantheists often express very high respect for the Christian religion. Some of the more vulgar sort, however, speak of it as a superstition. But the wiser ones have reached the perfection of Jesuitism, that is to say, they indulge in hypocrisy and deception to effect a purpose. They grant that the Christian religion is the highest development of humanity yet attained by a majority of the race. The heathen of every grade of character, and the Christian, with all others who may not be classified by us with either, are all, in their scheme, so many successive developments of humanity. It is a trick of their trade to clothe their abominations in Bible language by wresting the Scriptures. They speak of the "beauty of holiness in the mind, that surmounted every idea of a personal God;" and of "God dwelling in us, and his love perfected in us," when they maintain that he dwells in every creature and thing. They say they can accept the Bible—that is their phrase—notwithstanding it pronounces death upon the fools who, "professing to be wise, change the truth of God into a lie, and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator," as a mystic revelation of the Pantheism which leaves us to "erect everything into a God," provided it is none, inasmuch as "every product of the human mind is a development of Deity." So the Bible, in the conclusion of their system, is on a level with Thomas Paine's writings as respects inspiration and origin. The great Pantheistic divinity is spoken of by Pantheists as the great soul of the universe, while the more materialistic look upon it as the universe itself, body and soul. With them the soul is the fountain of all the imponderable forces, vegetable and animal life, the mesmeric influences, galvanism, magnetism, electricity, light and heat; and the body the sum of all the ponderable substances; in one word, "God is everything, and everything is God." This system is called "Monotheistic Pantheism." It is a vast generalization of everything into a higher unity, which exalts men and paving stones, and cats, dogs and reptiles, and monkeys, to the same level of God-head, or divinity. Man, the soul of men, as the system would term it, is the greatest manifestation of the divine essence. Yes! DIVINE ESSENCE! for, with Pantheists, there is no personal hereafter. This system of Pantheism is an old, worn-out theory; it has putrefied and rotted with the worshippers of cats, monkeys, and holy cows and bulls, and pieces of sticks and stones on the Ganges more than two thousand years ago. It is now dragged up from the dung-hill and presented as a new discovery of modern philosophy, sufficient to supplant the Ruler of the universe. How strange it is that men of ordinary intelligence will embrace the idea, rather than submit to the dictates of conscience and the Bible! This world of ours is not an abstraction in philosophy that consists of one simple substance called matter, nor yet of one substance, for there are many different material substances, such as oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, sulphur, aluminum and iron, and more than fifty others already discovered.

Now, let us suppose that all these elements or substances existed as a cloud of atoms millions of ages in the past; are we, then, any nearer the solution of the great problem of world making than we were before? The atoms must be material, for a material world is to be made of them; and they must have extension; each one of them must have length, breadth and thickness; and, as inertia is a property of each and every atom, the Pantheist has only multiplied the difficulty by millions, for matter can not begin, of itself, to move. Did the dead atoms dance about and jumble themselves together as we now find them? Is the one substance theory correct? Monotheistic Pantheism is scientifically false in fact. Some of these men who tell us of a world without an intelligence in the past, who have such implicit confidence in the powers of matter, tell us, that "millions of ages" in the past the world existed as a great cloud of fire mist, which, after a long time cooled down into granite; and this, by dint of earthquakes, broke up on the surface, and washed with rain until, after ages upon ages had passed, clays and soil were formed, from which plants, of their own accord, sprang up without a germ; in other words, germs came into being spontaneously and grew up, as we see them, developed in all their grandeur. This chance life, somehow, chanced to assume animal form and fashion until, in the multitude of its changes it reached the fashion of the monkey; and then, at last, the fashion of man, both male and female. Truly, the Atheists and Pantheists of our country need not complain of any want of power to believe while such is their basis of faith upon the subject of world making. But they, to avoid the difficulty that nothing made something, tell us "the fire mist was eternal," that it did not make itself. Very well, let us have it that way; then we must be allowed to ask, how an eternal red hot mist cooled off? And also what there was to cool it, when it was all there was, and it was red hot, and always had been? In other words, how could an eternal red hot cool down without something else in existence to cool it? Why should it cool at all? And why did it begin to cool just when it did? The utmost that any scientist can do is to show that such a change took place, but he can not tell you why it took place. Change it did! But change is an effect, and requires a cause. And, according to their theory, there could be no cause outside of the fire mist; for they say there was nothing else in the universe. Then the cause was inside of the fire mist. But how can red hot cool when all there is, is red hot? Had this first mist, to say nothing of organic life, a mind? Did it become sensible and resolve to cool off a little, and settle itself into orderly worlds? What became of its mind? Did it divide, and a part go to each planet? Has each planet a great "soul of the world," as well as our earth? If so, had we not as well build an altar to each planet and go back to the religion of our banana-fed ancestors, who burned their children alive in sun worship?

The Christian religion is so fearfully demoralizing (?) that it is a great pity that these Godless, Christless souls called Pantheists and Atheists can't get some solution of the great problem of world-making that would dispense with the Bible. How well they could get along if—if—if—they only had this great question settled.

"In God we trust."