It is not to be disguised that
Pantheism is the most formidable opponent which truth has to encounter
in the cultivated and reflecting classes. We do not here allude to the
formal reception and logical defense of the system, so much as to that
pantheistic way of thinking, which is unconsciously stealing into the
lighter and more imaginative species of modern literature, and from them
is passing over into the principles and opinions of men at large. This
popularized Naturalism--this Naturalism of polite literature and of
literary society--is seen in the lack of that depth and strength of
tone, and that heartiness and robustness of temper, which characterize a
mind into which the personality of God, and the responsibility of man
cut sharply, and which does not cowardly shrink from a severe and
salutary moral consciousness.... The intensely theistic character of the
philosophy of Coleridge is rooted and grounded in the Personal and the
Spiritual, and not in the least in the Impersonal and the Natural.
Drawing in the outset, as we have remarked above, a distinct and broad
line between these two realms, it keeps them apart from each other, by
affirming a difference in essence, and steadfastly resists any and every
attempt to amalgamate them into one sole substance.
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