IN the Bible the mystery of God is revealed, but not explained. Faith accepts the revelation of the mystery without attempting to explain it. Thus the Christian may enjoy the blessings of the mystery of godliness and share in the character of God, although he can not define to the human understanding his nature and being. The attempt to be wise above what is written and to explain those things which are incomprehensible to a finite mind results in a mixture of divine revelation and human speculation. This is mysticism. It is that combination of good and evil which constitutes the most deceptive and dangerous form of error. The minds of men who are not in subjection to the Spirit of God are now being stirred up in a remarkable degree to pry into the secret things which are beyond human comprehension, and to attempt to develop and to formulate into a system of philosophy the mysteries of the divine nature. And so we have the New Thought and the Newer Thought, modern adaptations of that speculative philosophy which has for many centuries been the bane of true religion. While crying out against pantheism and spiritualism in their grosser forms, these teachings are in themselves pantheistic and spiritualistic in their nature and tendency. In their methods of dealing with Bible truth they exhibit the very refinement of subtlety, and are well calculated to deceive those who are willing to follow into the field of speculative knowledge. We have a fresh illustration of this mysticism in a leaflet with the appropriate title, “Vain Philosophy,” which has recently come to our attention. Although it is distinctly stated in this leaflet that “pantheism is a false and absurd system of philosophy,” and that “it is a weak and fictitious philosophy, inconsistent and monstrous,” facts which we have no disposition to deny, yet the whole tendency of the argument is to confuse the mind concerning the real difference between the Bible teaching of the omnipresence of God and the pantheistic teaching of an immanent God. It really sets up a man of straw as a pantheist, and then knocks him over, but in knocking him over it gives genuine aid and comfort to the real pantheist who is content with the principles of pantheism without the name. The Oriental pantheist does not worship the tree or the flower as such, but his conception of the nature and being of God is such that God is to him an essence pervading all nature, and God and nature can not be separated except in imagination, and therefore in the objects of nature he sees such a revelation of God as calls for worship. For this reason he prostrates himself before the flower or the tree. Is there any essential difference between his philosophy and the teaching of this leaflet when it says, “We may worship God wherever we discern the evidence of his presence [italics ours]; but certainly we are not to worship the place nor the object in which we find him”? The fundamental error in all this teaching is that it perverts the essential truth of Christianity, namely, that in his Son Jesus Christ is the only sufficient revelation of God, and that only through the mediation of his Son Jesus Christ can acceptable worship be offered to God. “Neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.” “The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” “Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” “Through him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.” The Christian does not worship4God wherever he discerns the evidence of his presence. He recognizes the reality of the divine presence, but he has been taught to say in worship, “Our Father who art in heaven,” and he knows that there is a definite place, the heavenly sanctuary, to which his mind should be directed in worship. “As in that typical service the priest looked by faith to the mercy-seat which he could not see, so the people of God are now to direct their prayers to Christ, their great high priest, who, unseen by human vision, is pleading in their behalf in the sanctuary above.” The truth concerning the sanctuary and its services will save us from pantheistic delusions. The Bible teaches the omnipresence of God. “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” The Bible also teaches that there is a place where God is, in a sense in which he is not in any other place. It was to this place that Enoch and Elijah were taken, and to which Jesus ascended. It is there that he is preparing mansions for the redeemed. “I go to prepare a place for you.” Through his faith in the Word of God the Christian accepts both of these truths without attempting to explain the mysteries of the divine Being, or to prove the divine presence by such evidence as the senses can recognize. He simply believes God’s word and enjoys fellowship with God and with his Son Jesus Christ. In the modern attempt to explain and prove the omnipresence of God by the appeal to science, this Bible truth is perverted into a teaching which is pantheistic in its tendency. This has been well expressed by an English writer who says: “For want of the restraining guidance of a true religion, men to whom these thoughts of the nearness of God to man and to all that is, have come home, . . . have thrown them, sometimes (not always), into a pantheistic, and so untrue and dangerous form and connection; when they have so dwelt on the universal, ever and everywhere, present immanence of God in nature and in man as to identify and confound God with creation.” The omnipresence of God thus becomes “the immanence of God,” in the modern meaning of this phrase, and the God of the Bible is exchanged for “the immanent God.” The true teaching of the omnipresence of God is perverted into the false teaching that God is a Universal Presence. Thus the door is opened for the whole train of pantheistic and spiritualistic teachings which will inevitably follow. It is as true now as it ever was that “the world by wisdom” does not know God. And there is even greater danger now than ever before of being led astray by human speculations and so-called scientific reasonings, by “science falsely so called.” “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ.” Pantheistic Christianity, if we can use such a contradictory expression, is an apostasy from the truth. It is one of the delusions of these last days. The everlasting gospel in the threefold message of Revelation 14 is the one setting of the truth which will correct this false teaching. Those who really accept this message will neither teach nor believe this “vain philosophy.”