Dresser emphasized the inadequacy of pantheism, as undermining the genuineness of human beings, which they could not have if they were merely roles played by God. If they were not real in themselves, they could not be free. Some of the terms used here are particularly characteristic of Swedenborgianism, to which Dresser turned perhaps partly because New Thought little heeded his wisdom on these matters. For the remainder of his life he wrote for both Swedenborgian and New Thought publications, appearing in Unity as late as 1946. It persists as a real individual regarded from the standpoint of some kind of pluralism.
Dresser deserves to be remembered for many reasons.
He pointed the way to a non-pantheistic New Thought, but he did not develop this into a clearly panentheistic New Thought, recognizing that all is in God, but not as God. While the term panentheism goes back to 1828, it is only in the last half century that we have heard much of it, largely in connection with the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead and his followers, especially Charles Hartshorne. However, some others, including Matthew Fox, have adopted the term for their views. In earlier writings I have summarized panentheism as the outlook that recognizes God as figuratively inside, outside, upstairs, and downstairs, meaning that God is in the world, beyond the world, receptive, and active. All reality is focused on the present, with the influential past being the collection of all the former presents that already and permanently have made their choices between past and divinely-given possibilities for each new present.