RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN. Foolscap 8vo. 1s. net per volume . It is intended in this series to present to a large public the SALIENT FEATURES, first of the GREAT RELIGIONS, secondly of the GREAT PHILOSOPHIES, and thirdly of the GREAT LITERARY and ARTISTIC REPUTATIONS of the Human Race. PANTHEISM: ITS STORY AND SIGNIFICANCE. By J. ALLANSON PICTON, M.A. Author of The Religion of the Universe , etc. RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE. By Miss JANE HARRISON, Fellow of Newnham College, Author of Prolegom

Pantheism not Sectarian or even Racial. Pantheism differs from the systems of belief constituting the main religions of the world in being comparatively free from any limits of period, climate, or race. For while what we roughly call the Egyptian Religion, the Vedic Religion, the Greek Religion, Buddhism, and others of similar fame have been necessarily local and temporary, Pantheism has been, for the most part, a dimly discerned background, an esoteric significance of many or all religions, rat

Its Origins Doubtful and Unimportant. It has been the customary and perhaps inevitable method of writers on Pantheism to trace its main idea back to the dreams of Vedic poets, the musings of Egyptian priests, and the speculations of the Greeks. But though it is undeniable that the divine unity of all Being was an almost necessary issue of earliest human thought upon the many and the one, yet the above method of treating Pantheism is to some extent misleading; and therefore caution is needed in u

In speaking of Neo-Platonism I incidentally mentioned its apparent subjection to "extraneous influences," These, of course, included the rising power of Christianity and its Jewish traditions. The Hebrew Tradition. Even before the advent of the new revelation, the Jewish settlements existing in all great cities of the Graeco-Roman world excited interest at any rate among sentimentalists touched by the fascination at that time beginning to be exerted by oriental religions. And this influence of J

Spinoza. Modern Pantheism as a religion begins with Spinoza. Whether it ended with him is a question which the future will have to decide. But the signs of the times are, at least in my view, very clearly against such a conclusion. And amongst the omens which portend immortality, not necessarily for the philosophical scheme, but for the "God-intoxicated" devoutness of his Pantheism, is the desire, or rather the imperious need increasingly realized, for a religion emancipated from theories of A P

Spinoza's Apparent Failure. Notwithstanding the admiration, and even reverence, with, which Spinoza was regarded by a few scholars during his life-time, it cannot be said that during the century following his death, in 1677, there was any wide acceptance of his ideas. The times were not favourable. For the Power of Ecclesiasticism. political and social power of ecclesiasticism, whether established, or unestablished, compelled men of science and philosophers to treat dominant creeds as consecrate