Hence the task which falls to me to-day cannot but be felt by myself to be one of very grave importance. I could unfeignedly have wished that it had fallen into other and more competent hands. Perhaps, however, I may venture to claim two qualifications which may, in some measure, help to fit me for dealing with the subject on which I have to speak. One is, that the subject of Pantheism is one which has much and frequently exercised my thoughts for many years past, ever since I learnt from the writings of Coleridge, Hare, and others the meaning of what Hare spoke of as the "fascination of Pantheism;" ever since I was led to the study of philosophy and its development, and especially of the thoughts of the early Greek wrestlers with the mysteries of being, of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists, and of the modern thinkers of Germany, who have filled with transcendental exhalations of verbal dialectics the vacuum in speculation which had been created by the destructive logic of Kant. The other qualification which I venture to claim for my task to-day is that I have some knowledge of the difficulties of thought and belief which may lead honest men to become pantheists; that I understand the manner of thought of one who has become entangled in the mazy coil of pantheistic reasonings; at all events, that I know that honest searchers after truth may reluctantly become intellectually pantheists, while yet their heart longs to retain faith and worship towards a personal God. If, therefore, one necessary condition of true success in argument is an intellectual and, as far as possible, a moral sympathy with one's opponents, that condition, I believe, is fulfilled in my case. And I cannot but think that all Christian controversialists ought to feel a tender sympathy towards honest thinkers who are involved in the bewildering confusions of a philosophy which they do not love, even although they may, after many a struggle and in sadness of heart, have succumbed at length to Pantheism as the only conclusion of controversy in which they are able to abide. My subject to-day is not the history of Pantheism, but its principles. The history could not be dealt with in one lecture; the principles, I hope, may. And whatever may be the intellectual genesis, the descent and derivation, or the special character, of any particular form of Pantheism, all its forms will be found to coincide in certain respects. The semi-Hegelian of Oxford, and the pantheist who falls back on the lines of Mr. Herbert Spencer's speculations as his place of defence, may both be regarded as standing on common ground for the purpose of my present argument.