[Sidenote: Schleiermacher.]
That Schleiermacher was much indebted to Spinoza is abundantly evident
from his own words. He spoke of "the holy repudiated Spinoza." He
declared that "the high world-spirit penetrated him; the Infinite was
his beginning and his end; the universe his only and eternal love. In
holy innocence and lowliness, he mirrored himself in the eternal world,
and saw himself as its most love-worthy image. He was full of religion
and of the Holy Spirit; and therefore he stands alone and unreachable,
master in his art above the profane multitude, without disciples and
without citizenship."[22]
[Sidenote: Anglican Broad Churchmen.]
Coming down to Anglican Broad Churchmen, it would scarcely be fair to
quote isolated utterances as proofs of their Pantheism. And yet when
Frederick Robertson asked, "What is this world itself but the form of
Deity whereby the manifoldness and beauty of His mind manifests itself?"
and still farther, when he quotes with approval Channing's word, that
"perhaps matter is but a mode of thought," the most earnest Pantheist
would hardly desire more. For the conception of the Universe involved
must surely exclude the real being, or even the real existence, of
anything but God. Matthew Arnold never committed himself to Pantheism,
nor, indeed, to any other theory of the Universe. For his delicate
humour and lambent satire always had in view simply the practical object
of clearing a plain way for the good life through the "Aberglaube" of
theology.
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