SOME LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINE IMMANENCY. The doctrine of the Divine immanency carries with it the solution of many vexed questions. In fact, in its light these questions simply pass out of view as no longer having any significance. Several of these questions have been alluded to in an indirect way in the previous chapter and in Chapter III. We take them up distinctly here, and show their relation to evolution. Religious thought, like all else, is subject to a law of evolution, and therefore passes through regular stages. Of these stages, three are very distinct and even strongly contrasted. They correspond in a general way to the three stages of Comte, which he has misnamed the _theological_, the _metaphysical_, and the _positive_. We will illustrate by many examples. I. _Conception of God._ This, the most fundamental conception of all religion, has passed from a gross anthropomorphism to a true spiritual theism, and the change is largely due to science and especially to the theory of evolution. There are three main stages in the history of this change: (1.) The first is a _low_ anthropomorphism. God is altogether such a one as ourselves, but larger and stronger. His action on Nature, like our own, is _direct_; his will is wholly man-like, capricious and without law. (2.) The second is still anthropomorphism, but of a nobler sort. God is not _altogether_ like ourselves. He is man-like; yes, but also _king-like_. He is _not_ present in Nature, but sits enthroned above Nature in solitary majesty. He acts on Nature, not directly but indirectly, through physical forces and natural laws. He is an absentee landlord governing his estate by means of appointed agents, which are the natural forces and laws established in the beginning. He interferes personally and by direct action only occasionally, to initiate something new or to rectify something going wrong. This idea culminated and found the clearest expression in the eighteenth century, and was the necessary result of the scientific ideas then prevalent, viz., ideas of pre-established _stability_ of cosmic order and _fixedness_ of organic types. God was the great _artificer_, the great _architect_, working, as it were, on foreign material and conditioned by its nature. He established all things as they are in the beginning, and they have continued so ever since. This conception still lingers in the religious mind, and is in fact the prevailing one now. It is a great advance on the preceding, but, alas! it removes God beyond the reach of our love. He is the architect of worlds, the artificer of the eye, the sovereign ruler of the universe, but not our Father. We are his creatures, his subjects, but not his children.