At present we are to deal with the theories of a class of scientists who believe in the existence of God--of a personal God, and who profess the greatest reverence for the Sacred Scriptures, but whose God is clearly not the God the Bible reveals. This general class of thinkers may be subdivided into subordinate schools, as they verge toward one or the other of the extremes above indicated.
1. One school is represented by such writers as Prof. Tyndall, Dr. H. Bence Jones, and Dr. Bastian. Their fundamental principle is "the absolute inseparability of matter and force;" consequently they do not recognize the Divine Will as the sole and immediate cause of the motion and life of the universe. Molecular attractions and repulsions are the primal forces communicated to matter at the Creation, and from "the self-activity of these primary forces" result all the forms of energy in nature, whether organic or inorganic. "Our idea of the grandeur, the unity, and the power of the first cause," writes Dr. H. Bence Jones, "will surely not be lessened if we can show that one law of the union of matter and force and of the conservation of energy obtains throughout the organic as well as the inorganic creation."[228] Here we have a close approximation, if not intentionally, yet logically, to the Atheistic extreme. The transition seems easy, if not inevitable, to the recognition of force as an inherent and necessary attribute of matter which _may_ be eternal. Then what need of a God, or what place for one, if the forces and laws of matter are adequate to the explanation of all phenomena? As Martineau aptly suggests, "These properties and powers once installed in the cosmic executive are too apt, like mayors of the palace, to set up for themselves," and eject the real Lord and God.
2. Another school is represented by such men as Professors Owen, Huxley, and Baden Powell, who deny the ultimate distinction between matter and force, and regard both as phenomenal manifestations of some "unknown substratum"--a supramaterial PHYSIS (φύσις) which is identical with the Divine substance, the _natura naturans_ of Spinoza. To these minds the universe discloses nothing but immutable law, absolute continuity, and necessary development. "The grand principle of the _self-evolving powers of nature_"[229] and "the grand inductive conclusion of universal and _eternal_ order,"[230] are the bases of all rational theology. Here we encounter a phase of thought which verges toward the extreme of Pantheism. The Deity himself is conditioned in his action by the eternal and immutable laws of nature, and can not be conceived as a living Will exercising control over and subordinating these laws to higher moral ideas and ends. This doctrine, Prof. Powell admits, "summarily overrides the Mosaic creation, renders miracles irrational, excludes a special providence, and, we may add, dismisses prayer as a useless absurdity."