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Nature in the poet's heart is limned In little, as in landscape stones we see The swell of land, and groves, and running streams, Fresh from the wolds of Chaos; or perchance The imaged hint of antemundane life,— A photograph of preexistent light,— Or Paradisal sun.

Antemundane, an-te-mun′dān, adj. before the existence or creation of the world.

Blest Spirit! whether the supreme, Great antemundane Father! in whose breast Embryo creation, unborn being, dwelt, And all its various revolutions roll’d 100 Present, though future; prior to themselves; Whose breath can blow it into nought again; Or, from his throne some delegated power, Who, studious of our peace, dost turn the thought From vain and vile, to solid and sublime!

The creation of God, the Church, as it is of an antemundane and heavenly nature, will also attain its true existence only in the Æon of the future, the Æon of the kingdom of Christ.

Mr. Spencer, therefore, in accounting for the origin of the universe and all its phenomena, physical, vital, and mental, rejects Theism, or the doctrine of a personal God, who is extramundane as well as antemundane, the creator and governor of all things; he rejects Pantheism, which makes the finite the existence-form of the Infinite; he rejects Atheism, which he understands to be the doctrine of the eternity and self-existence of matter and force.