And science has done us good service in recalling this doctrine to mind. For it has a religious as well as a theological importance, constituting, as it does, the element of truth in that higher Pantheism which is so common in the present day. Whether the term higher Pantheism is happily chosen or not, the thing which it denotes is quite distinct from Pantheism proper, with its logical denial of human personality and freedom. It is the name of an emotion rather than a creed; that indescribable mystic emotion which the poet, the artist, the man of science, and all their kindred feel in contemplating the beauty or the wonder of the world. Vague as it is, and indefinite, this sentiment is still one of the strongest of which our nature is susceptible, and should be recognised, as an integral element in all true religion. Yet for want of such recognition on the part of Christians it is often allowed to gravitate nearer and nearer to pure Pantheism, with which it has, in reality, no essential affinity. We cannot therefore over-estimate the importance of restoring to its due place in theology the doctrine of the Divine immanence in nature, to which this sentiment is the instinctive witness. Fathers, schoolmen, mystics, who were quite as alive to any danger of Pantheism as ourselves, yet astonish us by the boldness of their language upon this point; and we need not fear to transgress the limits of the Christian tradition in saying that the physical immanence of God the Word in His creation can hardly be overstated, as long as His moral transcendence of it is also kept in view. 'God dwelleth within all things, and without all things, above all things and beneath all things[207],' says S. Gregory the Great. 'The immediate operation of the Creator is closer to everything than the operation of any secondary cause,' says S. Thomas[208]. And Cornelius a Lapide, after comparing our dependence upon God to that of a ray on the sun, an embryo on the womb, a bird on the air, concludes with the words, 'Seeing then that we _are_ thus united to God physically, we _ought_ also to be united to Him morally[209].' Here are three typical theologians, in three different ages, not one of them a mystic even, using as the language of sober theology words every whit as strong as any of the famous Pantheistic passages in our modern literature; and yet when met with in that literature they are commonly regarded as pleasing expressions of poetic dreams, very far away from, if not even inconsistent with what is thought to be dogmatic Christianity. To sum up then, the reopening of the teleological question has not only led to its fuller and more final answer, but has incidentally contributed to revive among us an important aspect of the Theology of the Word.