Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-12-22
DR. ABBOTTS s POSITION.
Aisht Bs Considered asin Lime Wish kIInd6o and Buddhist TeachiAG.


 HInd6o and Buddhist TeachiAG.
 If Dr Lyman Abbott is not pan theist he seems to come peFilously near being one. He speaks of God ''as the, indWelling spirit who Is one of the entire uhiyerse.p NOw5 if this means anything it means that the world about us is an emanation from or manifestati ton of one divine substance, and this is panthelsm pure and simple. It makes little difference whether the one reality be termed "substanee, with Spinola; or the lego" with Fichte; or the absolute with Schll- ling; or the .'idea," with Hegel--these are only different forms of presenting the same teaching. Dr Abbott's the ory, as reported in. the papers, seems to be but the reproduction of Elmer sons immanent Being, the currents of which" he says, circulate through me and am part and parcel of God We can hardly admit of God being of the entire universe without at the same time admitting the. universe 70 be "a part of God, and this is surely Da1theism Tn fact, Dr Abbott speaks of leach soul coming to the fullest sense of its oneness with God." Con- sequently in his theory there is no reality, but one being, emanations of. which are found in the soul of every individual, and this is precisely che position of Dr Royce, the ardent ad. Vocate of pantheistic ideahsm, who says. '.All minds are in essence one and the whole world Of ideas constie tntes essentially one world with which each individual Is Identified 7
 pr Abbott claims that his position Is s'the inevitable conflict of the old with the new" We might ask, the new and the old what2 1t is a deci1. ed return to the old. It is essenualE the teaching of the Hindoo and the Buddhist, whose religious faith was that the procession of existence rom sin Is by way of emanation" And this seems to. be the more so since pr Abbott denies the mediation of Christ and simply reduces Him to 'our iuea of the divine expressed in human con, duct" which denial leaves no other way of return to God except by way of absorption in Him, which is farta- mount to a denial of all indivfduaa existence and personal immortality
 Denying the divine character of the Il mediatorship of Christ is also denled. If the Bible is mo trUer Q revefation than spiritual souls have today it can lay no we'll founded claim to di4 vine authority that men are bound to respect, and consequently 1t is. at best only human record, and to one who looks at it in that light Christ is but the best among human beings, and AI, It's logical conclusion Christianity. Is but a sham and a humbug For if Christ be not the Son of God, if He. be not the EternaI Word made flesh the very foundation on which Chris hanity is built is taken away and the whole edifice crumbles and the Chris Han system is on level with the moral system of Plato or Confucius, Eliminate the mediat torship of Christ. ana it is difficult to understand why Dr Abbott continues to exercise a Christian ministry. If pr Abbott's system brings each soul as near to God as any man has ever been Ur eyer will be- we. might as well close. all our churches If there be no me diation between God and man, neither primary through Christ, nor secondary through the saints, we clergy are at best but interlopers and interferers with the divine plan and confusers of mems minds, and are wasting cur en- ereies In helping to do what an indef- lnite, indwelling spirit could do .sery well without our assistance In fact, In Dr Abbott's theory of Christ and the Bible, we cannot be sure that there is any divine plan Naked Christ merely human being and throw hside the divine revelation of the Bible and our only other resource is to the individual revelation (which is as liable to bolster up the cause of the anarchist and extreme socialist as the cause of the protesting Christian
 T. NJ. CROWLEY.