THE THEISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD.

AN ESSAY IN OPPOSITION TO CERTAIN TENDENCIES OF MODERN THOUGHT.

By B. F. COCKER, D.D., LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN; AUTHOR OF "CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY."

"Science discloses the method of the world, but not its cause; Religion, its cause, but not its method."—Martineau.

NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by

Harper & Brothers,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

[PREFACE.]

The present volume was announced in the preface to "Christianity and Greek Philosophy" as nearly ready for publication under the title of "Christianity and Modern Thought."

Several considerations have induced the author to delay its appearance, the most influential of which has been the desire to await the culmination among a class of self-styled "advanced thinkers" of what they have been pleased to call "the tendency of modern thought." No extraordinary sagacity was needed to foresee the issue, or to predict that it must soon be reached. The transition has been rapid from negative criticism of the Christian religion to direct assault upon the very foundation of all religion—the personality and providence of God. Distrust of a supernatural revelation, and denial of all authority to the teaching of the sacred Scriptures, has been succeeded by doubt of the existence of God in the proper import of that sacred name. The Theistic postulate is degraded to the rank of a mere hypothesis, which is pronounced inadequate to explain the universe. A "law-governed Cosmos, full of life and reason," eternal and infinite, must now take the place of a personal God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe. This is the "New Faith" which is to supersede the Old.

The question, "Are we still Christians?" has received a final answer in the words of Strauss: "If we would speak as honest, upright men, we must acknowledge we are no longer Christians."[1] And in giving this answer he is confident he speaks in the name of a large and rapidly increasing number of men who once believed in the truth of Christianity—"The We I mean no longer counts only by thousands."[2] The further question, "Have we still a Religion?" (understanding by religion "the recognition and veneration of God, and the belief in a future life") is also answered in the negative. Religion "is a delusion, to abolish which ought to be the endeavor of every man whose eyes are open to the truth."[3] The only question which now remains for the speculative intellect is, "What is our conception of the Universe?"—the conception which henceforth must take the place of a personal God. The answer of Strauss is explicit, and in his estimation final: "The conception of the Cosmos, instead of that of a personal God as the finality to which we are led by perception and thought, or as the ultimate fact beyond which we can not proceed, ... assumes the more definite shape of matter infinitely agitated, which, by differentiation and integration, develops itself to ever higher forms and functions, and describes an everlasting circle by evolution, dissolution, and then fresh evolution."[4]

This may be called pantheism or atheism, materialism or idealism, just as we please; Strauss has no solicitude about mere names. "If this be considered pure, unmitigated materialism, I will not dispute it. In fact, I have always tacitly regarded the contrast so loudly proclaimed between materialism and idealism (or by whatever term one may designate the view opposed to the former) as a mere quarrel about words. They have a common foe in the dualism which pervaded the conception of the world throughout the Christian era, dividing man into body and soul, his existence into time and eternity, and opposing an eternal Creator to a created and perishable universe."[5]

The end is reached at last—no soul, no God, no providence, no immortality! We have waited for a culmination, and now we are called upon to look, "not into the golden Orient, but vaguely all around into a dim, copper firmament pregnant with earthquake and tornado." Or, rather, we are called to look into an abyss, and, "shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, receive no answer" save "the Everlasting No." It only remains for us to listen to Strauss's De Profundis and retire. "The loss of the belief in providence belongs, indeed, to the most sensible deprivations which are connected with a renunciation of Christianity. In the enormous machine of the universe, amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening crash of its ponderous stamps and hammers, in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, man—a helpless and defenseless creature—finds himself placed, not secure for a moment that on some imprudent motion a wheel may not seize and rend him, or a hammer crush him to powder. This sense of abandonment is at first something awful. But, then, what avails it to have recourse to an illusion? Our wish is impotent to refashion the world; the understanding clearly shows that it indeed is such a machine. But it is not merely this. We do not only find the revolution of pitiless wheels in our world-machine, but also the shedding of soothing oil. Our God [the world-machine] does not, indeed, take us into his arms from the outside, but he unseals the well-spring of consolation within our own bosoms.... He who can not help himself in this matter is beyond help, is not yet ripe for our stand-point."[6]

There is a weighty and solemn lesson in this illustration of the "tendency of modern thought"—a lesson which even Strauss intended to teach the age, viz., that there is no discernible via media between "the Old Faith and the New"—between the belief in a personal God and the impersonal All. The "New Faith" must at last be the faith of all who reject providence, that providence which is pre-eminently revealed in history, instituting a kingdom of God upon earth by a supernatural guidance and grace.

The issue, now so sharply and clearly defined, between a God and no God, has determined a change in the plan of our work, and justifies, we trust, the attempt we have made to restate and defend "The Theistic Conception of the World."

Those who have done me the honor to read "Christianity and Greek Philosophy" will detect in the present volume a radical change of views concerning the concepts Time and Space. This change of position is the result of patient reconsideration of this branch of the discussion, and we allude to it here simply to guard against the charge of unconscious inconsistency. The views presented in this volume must stand or fall on their own merits.

The author has to acknowledge many obligations to his friend, Dr. Bernard Moses, for material aid rendered in getting this work through the press.

University of Michigan, July, 1875.

[CONTENTS.]

"To such readers as have reflected on man's life; who understand that for man's well-being Faith is properly the one thing needful; how with it martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it worldlings puke up their sick existence by suicide in the midst of luxury: to such it will be clear that for a pure moral nature, the loss of religious belief is the loss of every thing.

"All wounds, the crush of long-continued destitution, the stab of false friendship and of false love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again had not its life-warmth been withdrawn.

"Well mayest thou exclaim,'Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his universe and seeing it go?' 'Has the word Duty no meaning; is what we call Duty no Divine messenger and guide, but a false earthly phantasm made up of desire and fear?' 'Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction others profit by?' I know not; only this I know, If what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. 'Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the universe is—the Devil's.'"—Carlyle.

[CHAPTER I.]
THE PROBLEM STATED.

As Archimedes demanded only one fixed point in order to move the world, so Descartes desired to find one certain and indubitable principle upon which he could plant his feet and lift himself out of the universal doubt which environed him. He found it in the proposition—I exist. This for me is the most direct, immediate, and certain of all intuitions. I can not doubt, I can not deny my own existence. Whatever else I doubt, I can not doubt that I, the doubter, exist. This I that thinks, that is conscious, is the fundamental reality.[7]

I see around me a plurality of personal existences who are self-conscious and self-manifesting beings—beings who think and feel, and display their activities in time and space, as I do; and I can no more doubt their existence than I can doubt my own. This combination of the content of external perception with that of internal perception gives the immediate consciousness of external reality.[8]

Besides these personal existences analogous to my own, there are other objects which exist in relation to my corporeal organism—relations of position, distance, and direction, which are purely objective. These existences offer resistance to my muscular effort to displace them in space, and defy all my mental effort to reduce them to the category of subjective phenomena. These objects have specific properties or exist in certain conditions which, in their mutual relation with my sensitive organism, produce in me certain vital affections, as heat, light, color, and sound. These affections presuppose a force or energy outside of my consciousness, and distinct from myself. Thus I am constrained to believe that the earth on which I tread, the heavens that shine upon me, the forms and movements which surround me, are not vain shadows, unreal phantoms of my own creation, but real entities. The totality of existence called the universe is for me a reality.

The phenomena of the universe are in ceaseless flow and change. Bodies are aggregated and dissolved. Plants are evolved from germs, they live and grow, then decay and perish. Animals and men are born and developed to maturity, then they sicken and die. The earth itself is in constant change. The storms of heaven, the erosion of the atmosphere, the gnawing of the tidal wave, the mountain torrent, the flowing river, the earthquake and the volcano, are perpetually changing the aspect of the globe. There is perpetual genesis, ceaseless becoming, incessant change.

Beneath all these changes there is an enduring "something." There are abiding constants as well as fleeting changes; enduring realities as well as unstable phenomena. The same forms and relations, the same forces and laws, the same analogous functions, and the same archetypal ideas, remain amid all individual changes. There is an enduring substance which is the subject of all these changes. There is a permanent force, or power, which is the cause of all change. There are constant numerical proportions, determinate geometrical forms, specific ideal archetypes, and special ends, which give the law of all change. The universe is not a mere aggregation of phenomena, a mere concourse of things in time and space with accidental resemblances: it is a unity, a cosmos, a harmonious whole, both in its contemporaneous and successive history.

So much is and always has been known, with more or less clearness and distinctness by all men, and known by a spontaneous and immediate intuition. This intuition, like every intuition, even the commonest intuition of sense, has had a gradual development both in the consciousness of the individual, and in the consciousness of the race. It has always been immanent in human thought even when not articulately expressed in human language. To the native common-sense of our race, the world is a reality, not a dream; to the universal reason of mankind the universe is a harmony, not a chaos. Men have instinctively apprehended some ideal relations, some causal connection, some adaptation and purpose in nature, and they have always had some intuition, however dim and shadowy, of an all-pervading unity, and an ultimate causative principle.

But when the universe has become the object of reflective thought, when man has attempted a colligation of the individual facts, and an ideal construction and rational interpretation of the phenomena, when he has sought to grasp the manifoldness and diversity of nature in a higher unity of thought, and, above all, when he has attempted to pass beyond phenomena and their relations, and form a conception of the absolute reality and ultimate cause—then it is that difficulties have arisen and questions have presented themselves which have perplexed the discursive reason, and taxed the genius of the ablest thinkers of every age.

1. First of all, there have arisen the fundamental questions: Has the universe always existed, or had the Cosmos, with its changes and constants, its forces and laws, its forms and relations, a Beginning? Is its present condition but one link in an endless chain, one phasis in a series of changes, which had no beginning and shall have no end? Is the universe limited both in space and duration, or is it unlimited, unbeginning, and endless?

2. If the universe had a beginning, what is the ἀρχῆ—the originant, causative Principle in which or from which it had its beginning? How are we to conceive aright that First Principle of all existence and of all knowledge? is it material or spiritual, intelligent or unintelligent?

3. What conception are we to form of the nature and mode of that beginning? Was it a pure supernatural Origination—an absolute creation? or was it simply a Formation out of a first matter or first force—an artistic, architectonic, demiurgic creation? Was that beginning determined by necessity or by choice? Was it an unconscious emanation from, or a necessary development of, the First Principle; or was it a conscious forth-putting of power for the realization of a foreseen, premeditated, predetermined plan—a mental Order.

4. A supernatural Origination being assumed, then, from that first initial act of absolute creation, has the process of formation been gradual, continuous, and uniform—a progressive Evolution from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from lower to higher forms, according to a changeless law of uniformity and continuity? or have there been marked, distinct, and successive stages of formation—creative epochs which may be called "new beginnings?" Is the historic unity of creation a unity of Thought, an ideal consecution? or is it simply a physical unity grounded in a material nexus—a genetic connection resulting from the necessary action of physical causes?

5. What is the relation of the Creator to the existing creation? Is the Deity, in any sense, immanent in, or does he dwell altogether apart from, and out of all connection with, the universe? Has any finite thing or being an independent existence? Have the forces of nature any reality apart from the Divine efficiency? Did the Creator, in the beginning, give self-being to the substance of the universe, and endow it with properties and forces, so that it can exist and act apart from, and independently of, the First Cause? or is God still in nature upholding all substance, the power of all force, the life of all life, shaping all forms, and organizing all systems? Is God not only the Creator but the Conservator of all things?

6. Is there any Ethical meaning, any moral significance in the universe? Is the physical order of the universe subordinated to a moral order in which freedom exists? Are there any indications that the existence of moral personality is the end toward which all the successive changes of nature have tended, and the progressive types of life have been a preparation and a prophecy? Was the earth designed to be a theatre for the development of moral character, the education and discipline of moral beings? Does the course of history reveal "a power that works for righteousness," and aims at the highest perfection of rational and free beings? In a word, is there a Providential Government of the world?

7. Does man stand in a more immediate relation to God than the things of nature? Is each individual the charge of a providence, the subject of a moral government, and the heir to a future retribution? Has man a spiritual and immortal nature? Has he the power so to determine his own action and character that he can justly be held accountable, and treated as the proper subject of reward and punishment? In the final issue of things, will every human being meet his righteous deserts, and be rewarded or punished according to his works? In short, is man under Moral Government?

These are the great, the vital questions of to-day. In one form or another they have engaged the attention and stimulated the earnest thought of the ablest and best of minds in past ages; and, whether from the inherent demand of reason, or the promptings of instinctive curiosity, they have a deeper hold on the mind of this, than of any preceding age.

We approach the discussion of these questions with a profound conviction of their magnitude and difficulty, and an oppressive foreboding that our essay will be pronounced ambitious and vain. Their vastness seems to defy our admeasurement, and their complexity and difficulty may defeat our feeble efforts at solution. "The mer-de-glace of the Infinite is covered with myriads of philosophic insects which have been carried up there and lost." May we hope for any better fate? Do the problems permit any solution at all?

Of one thing, at any rate, we are sure: these questions are native to the human mind. They arise spontaneously in presence of the facts of the universe. However much of human effort to solve these problems has ended in failure and defeat, the human mind has never lost confidence in the possibility of their ultimate solution, and humanity has never abandoned them in despair.[9] A few impatient souls have plunged into Pyrrhonism and taken refuge in universal skepticism; while others have sought to organize nescience into a science. But patient, earnest souls have never cast away their faith in the integrity of universal reason, and have never ceased to believe that its ideas and laws are, in truth, the ideas and laws of the universe. These problems are the great problems of all philosophy, and all religion; and unless philosophy be a dream, and religion an illusion, they are capable of such a solution as shall satisfy the reason of man.[10] This conviction, which is common to the mass of thoughtful men, will justify every attempt of philosophy to attain to an ultimate unity of thought. The ultimate harmony of physical, philosophical, and religious truth is the faith of all noble minds.

The signs of the times are propitious. To-day the conflict between reason and faith, science and religion, presents many hopeful indications of an approaching conciliation. Candid men in both fields are earnestly working, and patiently watching, and hourly catching clearer glimpses of the everlasting harmony which pervades the universe of being and of thought. Every, even the smallest, contribution made with an honest purpose to give confidence and collimation to this movement, will be welcome to all earnest minds. This may be our apology for attempting a task that belongs to stronger intellects than ours.

It is obvious, at first thought, that the questions before us admit of no loose and desultory treatment. Abysses are not to be concealed by laurel screens, or chasms bridged by flowers of rhetoric. If we are to reach any satisfactory conclusions, our procedure must be rigidly systematic and logically exact. We must have a fixed point of departure, and, if possible, a faultless method of advance. The fundamental question must be determined. The central problem must be ascertained, and we must deal with all correlative questions in their logical connection with the one fundamental inquiry.

First of all, then, can we place that central problem clearly before our mental vision? Amid the diverse questions which spontaneously arise in presence of the diversified phenomena of nature, and the wonderful evolutions of humanity, can we fix upon the one question in which all others are involved—the grand underlying problem which comprehends them all?

A little reflection will make it apparent that the problem of all problems is this—

How shall we conceive aright the FIRST PRINCIPLE and ORIGIN of all things, itself unoriginated and unbeginning, the source of all beginnings? Or again, what is that FIRST PRINCIPLE which, being assumed, shall be found a sufficient explanation of the motion and change, the order and adaptation, the life and feeling, the consciousness and reason, we call, collectively, the universe?

This is clearly the fundamental question on which all the others are grounded, and in the solution of which they have their solution.

The universe presents itself to sense and sense-perception as a perpetual genesis, "a vast aggregation and history of phenomena conditioned in time and space which, by its diversity and mutability, is disqualified from being regarded as independent and self-existent." To our experiential knowledge, to our physical science in its highest generalizations, the universe is a product, an effect. And it is an effect for which the reason demands an explanation and a cause. It is a manifoldness and diversity which the logical understanding is ceaselessly endeavoring to reduce to a unity. Indeed, every movement of thought, from the first rude attempt at classification on the simple basis of resemblance, upward to the recognition of more profound ideal relations and uniform laws, until its culmination in the highest integration of reason, is but the effort of the mind to grasp the individual facts of nature in a unity of thought, and interpret the universe according to principles and ideas which the reason supplies.

The moment reflective thought is directed to the phenomenal world, the questions spontaneously arise—Out of what does the phenomenal come? By what agency or efficiency does it arise? Why does it present itself in this order rather than another? Or, more specifically—What is the abiding reality which sustains the array of phenomena? What is the invisible power which effects all the changes we see around us? What is that unseen presence which determines the forms, relations, and adaptations which every where present themselves to the reason of man? In a word, What is that ultimate principle—the last or remotest in the order of analytic thought, the first in the order of being and of reason—which sustains and moves and organizes and governs all—that fundamental, abiding primus which is everlastingly present behind the scenery and changes of the world—that which always was, and now is, and ever shall be FIRST? Or if we permit ourselves to regard the present order of things as a necessary out-birth from the past, still we are compelled by a laborious effort of regressive thought to climb upward through a series of changes to an absolutely FIRST of the series conditioning all the other members, but itself unconditioned. Few will now claim that this is the natural and adequate cosmical conception; but, even under this mode of conception, we can not but feel that a development without a beginning of the process, a series without a first term, is impossible. "The absolute infinity of a series is a contradiction in adjecto. As every number, although immeasurably and inconceivably great, is impossible unless unity is given as its basis, so every series, being itself a number, is impossible unless a first term is given as its commencement." Therefore the question still returns—What is that First Principle of all things?

In obedience to this demand of reason, or impelled by an innate "wonder"—"the feeling of the philosopher"—men have in all ages attempted an ideal construction and rational interpretation of the universe.[11] The Mythologies, Cosmogonies, Philosophies, Religions of the ancient world were the simple products of this innate tendency. Beyond the circle of thought illuminated by Divine revelation, the first movement of reflection was unmethodical and incomplete. Pursuing the inquiries objectively, that is, in the realm of outward nature, and not subjectively in the realm of reason, the human mind was perpetually entangled with dualistic conceptions. There were contrarieties, polarities, antagonisms, which the logical understanding could not cancel. Hence we have, as an early, perhaps the earliest, form of construction, an Oriental Dualism—as in the Adonis and Moloch of the Phoenicians, the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the Persians, the Chaos and Love of Orpheus, the Plenum and Vacuum (Matter and Space) of Democritus, and even some lingering taint in the God and Necessity of Plato's "Timæus."

But all this was unsatisfactory to human reason, which is a unity, and which makes its imperious demand that absolute unity shall stand at the fountain-head of being. It has never been able to rest in an Ultimate which was not an Absolute—that is, a unity which by its very idea and conception is the negation of all plurality and mutability; a unity which is unconditioned, and yet which conditions all; an "eternal constancy," the voluntary cause of all genesis and all change.[12] It is a law of reason, under which alone it can maintain its integrity, that the First Cause must be ONE, and not many. An absolute cause must be one in order to be absolute; two absolutes is a contradiction. With more or less clearness, men in all ages have apprehended that "the First Principle must be one or nothing."

This is tacitly conceded in all modern systems of thought. Büchner, the materialist; Spencer, the dynamist; Hegel, the idealist; Cousin and Coleridge, the spiritualists, know no divergence here. Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism alike commence with unity at the fountain-head of being—a unity which is incomposite, absolutely continuous, every where present and eternal. Every system of philosophy is essentially an effort to show how the universe that now is has been originated by, or evolved out of, or has emanated from, a First Principle, an absolute Unity. To determine whether this absolute First Principle can be known, and, if known, how conceived and expressed aright, is the ultimate problem of all philosophy and all religion.

All the answers which have been given, and, indeed, all which can be conceived, are contained in the following four propositions:

1. In the beginning was MATTER—matter as the original substance or substratum, with its inherent, essential, and necessary attribute of force; this alone is eternal and infinite. "No force without matter—no matter without force." "Matter and its immanent force is immortal and indestructible." "The world is unlimited and infinite."[13] Matter, with its primary forces of attraction and repulsion, cohesion and affinity, is fully adequate to the explanation of all the phenomena of the universe, physical, vital, and mental.

2. In the beginning was FORCE—force homogeneous but unstable, and necessarily tending to differentiation and heterogeneity; splitting into opposites, standing off into polarities, ramifying into attractions and repulsions, light, heat, magnetism, and electricity; and mounting up through the stages of physical, vital, and neural to the mental life itself, with all its varied and endless phenomena, as revealed in the languages, laws, institutions, arts, sciences, and religions of the world. Force is "the ultimate of all ultimates," the "Absolute Reality," the "Unconditioned Cause."[14]

3. In the beginning was THOUGHT—thought as an eternal process of self-manifestation and self-actualization, which in its necessary evolution reveals itself as force, and expresses itself in the varied types of existence and laws of phenomena, natural and spiritual. "The Absolute Idea," as a perpetual process, an eternal thinking, is the supreme principle of all reality. "The idea of the Absolute Spirit comprehends the entire wealth of the natural and the spiritual world; it is the only substance and truth of this wealth, and nothing is true and real except so far as it forms an element of its being."[15]

4. In the beginning was WILL—an unconditioned Will as the indivisible unity and perpetual differentiation of Reason and Power and Love. This Unconditioned Will is the causative principle of all Reality, all Efficiency, and all Perfection—a causative principle containing, predetermining, and producing all the manifold forms and relations, forces and laws of the universe in reference to a final purpose. This Absolute First Cause is a living personal Being, "from whom, in whom, and to whom are all things."[16]

The first and second of these propositions coalesce with the creed of Atheism, the third with the creed of Pantheism, the fourth is the creed of Theism, and, as we hope to prove in subsequent chapters, the only rational and adequate explanation of the facts of the universe.

[CHAPTER II.]
GOD THE CREATOR.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."—Gen. i. 1.

"God that made the world and all things therein.... He is Lord of heaven and earth."—Acts xvii. 24.

"The Eternal Will is the creator of the world as He is the creator of the finite person."—Fichte.

God is the first principle, the unconditioned cause of all existence. This is the answer of Christian doctrine to the great problem presented for solution in the preceding chapter. Whether this fundamental presupposition shall be finally accepted as the only adequate solution of the problem of existence will depend in a large degree upon our apprehension of the Christian idea of God. We shall, therefore, open the discussion by asking the question—What is the content of our conception of God?

Dogmatic theology might rest satisfied with the simple affirmation,"God is God,"[17] as against all the captious demands of science, were it not necessary to render an account to itself of what, at first sight, might be pronounced a "sublime tautology." For, while it is hereby confessed that God in his essential being is incomprehensible and ineffable, so that to the Christian as well as to the philosopher he is "the great Unknown," still it is not hereby admitted that it is absolutely impossible to know God. To affirm that God is absolutely "the Unknowable" is simply to assert his unreality. Mr. Martineau has finely observed that this term is self-contradictory; for we affirm by the use of it that we know so much that He can not be known. Nay, it assumes the existence of God, and in the same breath separates us from Him forever. But if it be admitted that God is, it can not be absolutely impossible to know what He is. The knowledge of existence and the form of existence mutually condition each other. There must be something in the understanding answering to the term in the language of mankind, and there must be something in the realm of being which is the ground of the idea in the reason of Man. The heathen have a presentiment, a dim intuition of the "unknown God," and the inspired teacher may so "declare Him" in human language that his hearers may receive a definite notion, and attain to a practical knowledge of God.

The idea of God is a common phenomenon of the universal intelligence of our race, and must have been present to the thought of man even before he uttered the name of God.[18] The moment man becomes conscious of himself, and knows himself as distinct from the world, that same moment he becomes conscious of a Higher Self—a living Power upon which both himself and the world depend. For this Higher Self all nations have found a name. All languages have a term cognate with the Saxon "God," which expresses that spontaneous consciousness of a supernatural power which is common to all minds—that intuition of a supramundane existence which is the ground and reason of all other existence. Even Polytheism has a name for the abstract of all the gods, which sets forth the ideas of being, power, causality, and personality. And in Christian lands the term God, without any periphrasis, at once represents the idea of a Being distinct from self and the world, who is the Maker of the world and the Father of humanity. For all practical ends it is enough to say God is God. It is only when reflective thought seeks to express some more specific and determinate conception of the Supreme Being that we find ourselves under the necessity of adding other expletives to this term God.

It is therefore desirable that we should set down, in a provisional form, the general conception of God as it exists in the mind of the Theist and the Christian. I can not do this better than by selecting from the writings of three men of diverse schools of thought—one a Physicist, another a Metaphysician, the third a Theologian; and all in a greater or less degree influenced by the teaching of the Christian Scriptures.

My first selection will be from the "Meditations" of Descartes, who is regarded as "the father of modern philosophy." "By the name of God," says he, "I mean an infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, omniscient, omnipresent substance, by which I and all other things which are have been created and produced."[19]

My second selection is from the "Principia" of Sir Isaac Newton, a work which, by the general consent of the scientific world, is the greatest contribution ever made to science. Sir Isaac Newton was a Physicist rather than a Metaphysician; he will therefore represent to us the conception of God entertained by the scientific Theist. At the close of this his great work he writes: "The true God is a living, intelligent, powerful Being, and, from His other perfections, it follows that He is Supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, His duration reaches from eternity to eternity, His presence from infinity to infinity. He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite. He is not duration or space, but He endures and is present. He endures forever, and He is every where present; and by existing always and every where, He constitutes [or causes] duration and space. Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is every where, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things can not be never and nowhere.... God is the same God, always and every where. He is omnipresent, not virtually [potentially] only, but also substantially; for virtue can not subsist without substance. In Him all things are contained and moved, yet neither affects the other. God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. It is allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity exists always and every where.... We know Him only by His most wise and excellent contrivances of things and final causes; we admire Him for His perfections; but we reverence and adore Him on account of His dominion. A God without dominion, providence, and final causes is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind mechanical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing."

My last selection is from the "Grammar of Assent," by John Henry Newman, formerly a Protestant, now a Catholic divine. Prior to his change of theological position he published a remarkable work "On the Development of Christian Doctrine in Aid of a Grammar of Assent," the design of which is to exhibit the influence of philosophic thought upon the evolution of Christian doctrine, and to bring it into harmony with the theories of Cosmical, Physiological, and Historical development, which seem for the present to be in the ascendant. For this reason I choose to employ his words, as setting forth the conception of God which is generally entertained by thoughtful men. At page ninety-seven of his last work, "The Grammar of Assent," I read:

"There is one God, such and such in Nature and Attributes. I say 'such and such,' for, unless I explain what I mean by one God, I use words which may mean any thing or nothing. I may mean a mere anima mundi; or an initial principle which once was in action and now is not; or collective humanity. I speak then of the one God of the Theist and of the Christian: a God who is numerically One, who is Personal; the Author, Sustainer, and Finisher of all things, the Life of Law and Order, the moral Governor. One who is Supreme and Sole; like Himself, unlike all things besides Himself, which all are but his creatures; distinct from, independent of, them all. One who is self-existing, absolutely infinite, who has ever been and ever will be, to whom nothing is past or future; who is all perfection, and the fullness and archetype of every possible excellence, the Truth itself, Wisdom, Love, Justice, Holiness; One who is All-powerful, All-knowing, Omnipresent, Incomprehensible. These are some of the distinctive prerogatives which I ascribe unconditionally and unreservedly to the great Being whom I call God."

These statements of the Theistic conception will be regarded by most men as adequate and satisfactory. They will be accepted by the scientific Theist and approved by the dogmatic Theologian. They present the idea of God within the sphere of Christian thought; that is, reflective thought informed and illuminated by the revelations of God which are given in the Christian Scriptures. At the same time it must be confessed that they are defective in scientific form, philosophical development, and logical articulation. They do not present the conception of God in harmony with any principles of Rational Integration. They show no attempt to combine the various elements of this conception in the unity of an Absolute Principle, an Ultimate and Fundamental Idea.

The aim of all true philosophy is to attain to the insight of First Principles, yea, to the insight of the Absolute First Principle from which whatever now is must be derived, and in which whatever is must have its intelligible ground and sufficient reason. There exists in man, as the essential characteristic of his humanity, a power or faculty of intelligence, best named the Reason, which awakens in him the desire and furnishes to him the law that enables him to fulfill the inherent desire of combining all his manifold knowledges in the unity of such Absolute First Principle; and the one fundamental law of this faculty is the Law of Sufficient Reason, which has been thus enounced by Leibnitz: "Whatever exists, or begins to be, must have a sufficient reason for its existence, and why it is as it is, and not otherwise;" or, to give the principle a fuller, and at the same time a legitimate expansion—For all genesis, or beginning, there must be an adequate Cause; beneath all appearance, all changeful and fleeting phenomena, there must be a permanent Being or Reality; beyond all the diverse and manifold, there must be an ultimate Identity, an incomposite indivisible Unity; and in all order and special adaptation, there must be a unifying Thought, a definite Purpose and End.

The Reason of man can find satisfaction and harmony only in the recognition of an Absolute First Principle which shall comprehend and unite all these universal and necessary ideas which are the correlates of the facts of experience; that is, an Absolute First Principle which shall be the Ultimate Reality, the Ultimate Cause, the Ultimate Unity, and the Ultimate Reason of all existence. In other words, the Reason is not and can not be satisfied without "the clear insight of a Causative Principle containing, predetermining, and producing all the actual results we see around us, with their orderly relations in reference to a final purpose, reason, or end; and which causative principle exists not only as the originative and constructive, but also as the conservative energy of all things;" a Being who "is before all things, and by whom all things consist," "from whom, in whom, and to whom are all things."

And now what is this Absolute First Principle, causative of all existence, which the spontaneous reason has always intuitively apprehended, and which the reflective reason has always found to be the adequate, and only adequate explanation of the universe? I answer in a word, it is AN UNCONDITIONED WILL OR SELF-DIRECTIVE POWER, SEEING ITS OWN WAY, AND HAVING THE REASON AND LAW OF ITS ACTION IN ITSELF ALONE. This always and every where has been intuitively apprehended, with more or less clearness, as standing at the fountain-head of all existence.

This, then, we shall postulate as the fundamental axiom of all rational integration, viz., AN UNCONDITIONED WILL, the principle of all Reality, all Efficiency, and all Perfection.

1. An unconditioned Will which realizes itself in IPSËITY—self-potency and self-affirmation; expresses itself in that august name of God "I AM;" and constitutes ABSOLUTE REALITY.

2. An unconditioned Will which manifests itself in ALTERITY—pluri-efficiency; utters itself in the "I WILL" of the creative fiat; and constitutes INFINITE EFFICIENCY.

3. An unconditioned Will which returns to itself in TOTALITY—a complete Ideal to be realized in Creation; which expresses its satisfaction in pronouncing all things "very good," and constitutes PERFECT PERSONALITY.

The changeless correlation and inherent harmony of these ideas of the reason (Reality, Efficiency, and Personality) may be rendered more obvious by the following formula, after the method of Coleridge's "polar logic."[20]

PROTHESIS
UNCONDITIONED WILL
/ | \
/-----------------/ | \------------------\
THESIS / MESOTHESIS \ ANTITHESIS
/ | \
IPSËITY-----Efficient CAUSALITY Efficient----ALTERITY
\ | /
\ Final /
\-----------------\ | /------------------/
\ | /
TOTALITY

Prothesis expresses the absolute identity or eternal co-inherence of Reason, Love, and Power (the Divine Essence). Thesis expresses Power in the form of Love (the Divine Self-sufficiency and Self-potency). Antithesis expresses Reason in the form of Power (the Divine Efficiency). Synthesis expresses the diversity in unity of Reason, Love, and Power (the Divine Perfection). And Mesothesis expresses the essential correlations which integrate the whole (the Triunity of the manifested God). Thus Absolute Reality, Infinite Efficiency, and Perfect Personality are all, as a triplicity, contained in the fundamental unity of an unconditioned Will, which has Love as its motive, Power as its agent, and Reason as its light and law.

And now let us retire within our own consciousness, and see if this fundamental axiom of rational integration—Will as the principle of all Reality, Efficiency, and Perfection—is not reflected in our reason, and evolved in our inner experience. Do we not find that the central point of our consciousness—that which makes each man what he is in contradistinction from every other man—that which expresses the real essence of the soul apart from its formal processes and regulative laws—is the WILL? Without Will man would fall back from the elevation which he now assumes to the level of impersonal nature: in a word, he would be a thing, and not a power. Power, spontaneity, causality, will—these, or similar forms, express, as nearly as can be, the essential nature or principle of the human soul.[21] Furthermore, it is obvious that mere Power or Energy does not suffice for the notion of Will—there must also be Reason and Affection.[22] Indeed, "Will is contemplated universally as the inseparable union and perpetual differentiation of Intelligence and originative Power, and as such the sole ground of the intelligibility of all causation."[23]

A volitional act, a moral and responsible act, must be one which is performed under the influence of motives, and for which, when called to account, we can assign valid reasons. All true volition supposes a purpose or end to be realized, an inward appetency or motive which makes the end desirable, and the selection and adaptation of means to accomplish that end. Power divorced from reason is simply blind force, and can not be dignified with the name of Will. The mind of man is sometimes in a predominant state of knowing, sometimes in a predominant state of feeling, and sometimes in a predominant state of determination. To call these separate faculties, however, is altogether beside the mark. No act of intelligence can be performed without some determination of the Ego, no act of determination without some cognition, and no act of the one or the other without some amount of feeling being mingled in the process. Thus, while each mental state may have its distinctive characteristics, there is unity at the root—the identical Ego, spirit, WILL.[24]

Sensibility is the condition, Reason is the light, Will is the centre of human consciousness. Consciousness is a threefold phenomenon in which feeling, knowing, and self-determination are reciprocal elements, and in their connection and simultaneousness, and at the same time their differentiation, they compose the entire intellectual life.[25] The finite spirit or will unfolds itself, first, subjectively, in the spontaneous affirmation of self-being or self-potency (IPSËITY); secondly, objectively, in the exertion of power to produce motion, change, phenomena (EFFICIENCY); thirdly, synthetically, in the unity of motive and intention, purpose and act, means and end (PERSONALITY).

Thus does "Will present the middle point, which embraces thought on the one hand and force on the other; and which yet, so far from appearing to us to be a compound arising out of them as an effect, is more easily conceived as the originative prefix (prothesis) of all mental phenomena.... It carries with it, in its very idea, the co-presence of thought as the necessary element within whose sphere it has to manifest itself; its phenomena can not exist alone; it acts on preconceptions, which stand related to it, not however as its source, but as its conditions, and are its co-ordinates in the effect, rather than its generating antecedents."[26]

Psychological analysis leads us inevitably to this conclusion, that all things are issued by Will, whether in the sphere of the finite or the infinite, and therefore we postulate an UNCONDITIONED WILL, A PERFECT MIND, at the source of all becoming. Thus, as Martineau truly remarks, between the FORCE of the physical atheist and the THOUGHT of the metaphysical pantheist, we fix upon WILL as the true balancing-point of a moral theism.

The intelligent reader scarce needs to be reminded that this is the conclusion reached by reflective thought in that best and fullest exhibition of it which is found in Greek philosophy. The great problem of Greek philosophy, as of all philosophy, was, "What is the ἀρχῆ, the First Principle—the ground and cause and reason of all existence?" The final answer of that age is found in Plato, for Platonism was the culmination, the ripened fruit of the ages of earnest thought which preceded Plato. He gathered up, co-ordinated, and grasped into unity the results bequeathed by the mental efforts of his predecessors. The Platonic answer to this great question of philosophy is clear and unequivocal. A perfect MIND is the primal source of all being—a Mind in which Intellect, Efficiency, and Goodness are one and identical. "Mind is the most worthy ἀρχῆ." "God is the most excellent of causes."[27] "Mind is king of heaven and earth."[28] "Motion and life and soul and mind are present with absolute being. We can not imagine being to be devoid of life and mind, remaining in awful unmeaningness and everlasting fixture."[29]

"Whatever begins to be, must necessarily be produced by some cause; for nothing can have its generation without a cause." "The Maker and Father of the universe ... had no beginning of his being." He formed the universe according to the eternal model or archetype which his own reason supplied, and for motives which his own essential goodness proposed. "Let us now tell for what cause the Maker of this creation and this universe made it as it is. He was good; and he who is good grudges no advantage to any creature. Being thus free from envy, He willed that the universe should be good like Himself; and this, the special ground of the creation and the world, which we receive from the wisest philosophers, we must accept."[30]

It would be easy to show that the recognition of intelligent Will, as standing at the fountain-head of all the force which is manifested in the universe, is common to the first Physicists of this age.

Grove concludes his admirable essay on "The Correlation of the Physical Forces" with these words: "In all phenomena the more closely they are investigated the more are we convinced that, humanly speaking, neither matter nor force can be created or annihilated, and that an essential cause is unattainable [by science]—Causation is the WILL, Creation is the act, of God."[31] Sir John Herschel has not hesitated to express his conviction that "it is but reasonable to regard the Force of Gravitation as the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or a WILL existing somewhere."[32] Dr. Carpenter, with his usual sagacity in penetrating to the essential point, remarks that the WILL "is that form of Force which must be taken as the type of all the rest;" "Force must be regarded as the direct expression of WILL."[33] "If," says Wallace, "we have traced one force, however minute, to an origin in our own WILL, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of force, it does not seem an improbable conclusion that all force may be WILL-FORCE, and thus the whole universe is not only dependent on, but actually is the will of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence."[34] In short, the present attitude of science in relation to this great problem is, I think, fairly represented by the Duke of Argyll: "Science, in the modern doctrine of the Conservation of Energy and the Convertibility of Forces, is already getting hold of the idea that all kinds of Force are but forms and manifestations of some one Central Force issuing from some one Fountain-head of Power." "This one Force, into which all others return again, is itself but a mode of action of the Divine Will."[35] Even Spencer concedes that "the Force by which we ourselves produce changes, and which serves to symbolize the cause of changes in general, is the final disclosure of all analysis ... all other modes of consciousness are derived from our consciousness of exerting Force."[36] "The order of nature is doubtless very imperfect, but its production is far more compatible with the hypothesis of an intelligent will than with that of blind mechanism."[37] Physical science is surely coming into harmony with metaphysical thought. It looks upon nature with the eye of reason as well as the eye of sense. And it reduces the phenomena to unity, not simply by comparative abstraction, which classifies under resemblance, co-existence, and succession, but by that rational integration which operates under the necessary laws of substance, causality, intentionality, and absolute unity. It regards the forces of nature as the product or manifestation of a higher force—a force which is not merely dynamical in its nature—a force which can compass not merely concurrent and antagonistic motions in space, but which is able so to adjust these concurrences and antagonisms as to construct agencies which shall realize designs—a force, therefore, which is thoughtful and percipient: in one word, intelligent—a force, in fine, which is not a mere mechanical dynamism in space and time, but a true Power existing in its type and fullness: in one word—God.[38]

Thus does all reflective thought, whether directed to the phenomena of the human mind or the phenomena of nature, confirm the à priori intuition of an unconditioned Will unfolding itself in Thought and Power, and completing itself in a harmonious Totality, as the First Principle and Originative Cause of all existences and of all relations, of all individual beings, and of that harmonious whole men call the Cosmos.

And now we pass to the important question—How are we to bring all our acquired conceptions of God into harmony with this fundamental idea? Assuming that we have certain conceptions of God which are derived from verbal instruction, and ultimately from Divine revelation, can we bring these into unity under this First Principle? Or, in other words, can we logically evolve the attributes and perfections of God out of this fundamental Idea, and find the result in harmony with the Christian doctrine?

As the object of thought, even of Christian thought, God must necessarily be conceived by us under the fundamental categories of Being, Attribute, and Relation. All objects of thought must come under these categories, and out of or beyond these categories we can not think at all. Furthermore, we can not think of God as the unconditioned Being conditioning Himself, without conceiving Him as Reality, Efficiency, and Personality. These constitute the conception of the Divine essence whereby it is what it is. When we think of the Attributes of such a Being, we must necessarily conceive them as Absolute, Infinite, and Perfect.[39] And when we think of the Relations of God to finite existences and finite consciousness, we are constrained to regard Him as the Ground and Cause and Reason of all dependent being.

In the unity and completeness of this categorical scheme of thought, we can not fail to recognize the following logical order:

BEING (Essentia) REALITY } EFFICIENCY } PERSONALITY }
ATTRIBUTE (Related Essence) ABSOLUTE } INFINITE } PERFECT }
RELATION (Free Determination) GROUND CAUSE REASON OR END

In the Absolute Reality we have the ultimate ground; in the Infinite Efficiency we have the adequate cause; and in the Perfect Personality we have the sufficient reason or final cause of all existence.

1. Being or Essence, as Reality, Efficiency, and Personality. The intuition of Being is the most fundamental and the most abstract of all ideas. After every property and relation has been eliminated, there still remains the affirmation that something is. Non-existence, except as the negation of being, is inconceivable. But, at the same time, pure being is the most indeterminate of all ideas. Simple being, without attributes, and out of all relation to other ideas, is a notion without contents, and consequently indescribable and unknowable. For us, therefore, pure abstract being is equal to non-being, and the paradox of Hegel has some truth: Pure Being = Nothing. Distinction—differentiation, determination—is the condition of all reality. Real being must be determined, only pure nothing can be undetermined. The least determined being is the least real; the most determined is the most real, the most perfect being. Exactly in proportion as the nature of beings is differentiated and complicated do they rise in the scale of being. The vegetable has more determinations than inanimate matter; the percipient animal has more determinations than the vital plant; rational man has more determinations than the percipient animal, he is the most complicated, the most determined, and therefore the most perfect being in creation. An absolutely perfect being must be the most determined of all beings; he must contain within himself a fullness of determinations.

The pantheist Spinoza tells us that determination is negation—that is, limitation. "Omnis determinatio negatio est." Nothing can be falser or more arbitrary than this principle. Its fallacy consists in the confusion of two things essentially different, namely, the limits of a being, and its determinate characteristics. A pure Ego, by determining itself to thought, affection, or action, is not thereby limited. The limitation or the illimitation depends simply upon the character of the thought, affection, or act as perfect or imperfect. "I am an intelligent being, and my intelligence is limited; these are two facts equally certain. The possession of intelligence is the constitutive characteristic of my being which distinguishes me from the brute. The limitation imposed upon my intellect, which can only see a small number of truths at a time, is my limit, and this is what distinguishes me from the Absolute Being, from Perfect Intelligence which sees all truths at a glance. That which constitutes my imperfection is not certainly my being intelligent; therein, on the contrary, lies the strength, the richness, and the dignity of my being. What constitutes my weakness and my nothingness is that this intelligence is inclosed in a narrow circle. Thus, inasmuch as I am intelligent, I participate in being and perfection; inasmuch as I am only intelligent within certain limits, I am imperfect."[40] Determination differs from limitation as much as being differs from nothing.

The Causative Principle of all reality must itself be real, that is, it must be a self-manifesting and self-conscious power, for there can be no reality without consciousness. Being which is not known to itself, and can not manifest itself, is as though it were not. Intuition, sui conscia, is the essence of reality. Here being and knowing are identical. It must also contain within itself a fullness of determinations, must be rich in ideas, must be the archetype of all possible existences. All forms and relations, all ideas and laws, all individual and special adaptations, all harmonious systems, must be present to the Absolute Reality. "Uncreated must be Mental Being. This seems an invincible necessity of all thought. Whatever else, or whatever more it is, it must be Mental Being" = REASON.

The Causative Principle of all efficiency must itself be power, pluri-efficiency, it must be self-determined and self-moved, and perfectly adequate to the production of being, motion, change, life, and intelligence objective to itself; in a word, it must be adequate to the realization of all the ideals which reason supplies; it must be unlimited Infinite Efficiency = SPIRIT.

The Causative Principle of all personality must itself be personal—that is, it must have a self-conceived, self-determined purpose; must freely choose and wisely adapt the means to realize that purpose; above all, it must have a worthy motive, a best and highest reason for both purpose and act; and must make all conform to and result in a moral order in harmony with the blessedness and worthy the approbation of the All-perfect One. Intuition and choice, affection and conscience—these are the grand momenta of personality.

The necessary demand of reason is that the first and originative cause of all finite personality shall be Himself a person. Consciousness can not arise out of unconsciousness, reason can not be generated from unreason, personality can not have its birth from impersonality, no more than something can be born of nothing. There must be intelligence answering to our intelligence, freedom answering to our freedom, feeling responding to our feeling, and moral sentiment unisonant with our moral sentiment: in short, personality correlated with our personality, in the cause and author of finite responsible being. That perfection which is mirrored in our finite personality exists in all its fullness in the unconditionally perfect Being, the Perfect Personality whose name is LOVE.[41]

God, then, is the Absolute, Infinite, and Perfect Being in whom, by whom, and for whom the finite has existence and consciousness. He is the unconditioned, conditionating Will. The Divine Essence can not be apprehended or expressed in a higher universal. This is the first dim intuition of spontaneous reason, and the final goal of all reflective thought. The Divine Being is He who is before all, and who originates, destines, and conditions all. The Biblical idea of the unconditioned Being is in perfect harmony with the philosophical idea. In the language of Scripture, "the Will of God" stands for the remotest, inmost essence of the Godhead—a will which is the absolute identity, the eternal co-inherence of reason, power, and love. The Divine Will as efficient cause is never dissociated from the Divine Will as the formal cause and the final cause. That will is at once cause and law and reason of all things. God "effectuates all things according to the counsel (τὴν βουλὴν = deliberation, purpose, design) of his own Will" (Eph. i. 11). And not only according to the counsel, but "according to the good pleasure (τὴν εὐδοκίαν = the benevolent affection) of his own will" (ver. 5); a "good pleasure which He hath PURPOSED (προέθετο) in Himself" (ver. 9). He "created all things, and for his own pleasure (θέλημα = will) they are and were created." Here "Will" is clearly more than power, more than efficiency: it is thought or purpose; it is reason or end; in a word, it is the identity and co-inherence of reason, power, and love. The unconditioned Will as revealed to us in Scripture is an intelligent Will—a will that thinks, deliberates, counsels, designs; and it is also a benevolent Will—a will that loves and delights in and desires the good of being. And in thinking and desiring it effectuates, for thinking and operating, desiring and doing, are one with God. "He speaks and it is done, He commands and it stands fast." Creation is a speech of God, a language in which He reveals his thoughts, his purposes, his benevolent designs, his will—that is, Himself. Every revelation of God is the development in us of the consciousness of the REAL BEING (τὸ ὄντως ὄν). All the proofs of the being of God—the etiological, the cosmological, the teleological, and the moral—are centred in the ontological: this is first and last. And just as our consciousness of the indivisible identical EGO as the unity and co-inherence of reason, feeling, and power is the exact arresting-point of psychological science, beyond which thought can not pass, so our intuition of the unconditioned BEING as the absolute identity of Reason, Power, and Love is the exact arresting point of Theological science, beyond which nothing can be known. Spirit, Light, Love—these designate essence or being. "God is spirit" (πνεῦμα = Spirit, not a Spirit—John iv. 24), the self-moving, efficient, animating principle, the unity and life-motion of the creative divine activity; ἡ ζωὴ αἰώνιος—vita absoluta—underived, eternal Life (John v. 26; xi. 25; 1 John v. 20). God is light (1 John i. 5), the self-manifesting, intuitional, revealing principle = ὁ λόγος; the Eternal Reason, in which Spirit becomes objective to itself, and God is revealed to Himself (John i. 1; 1 Tim. vi. 16). God is love (1 John iv. 8, 16), the self-complete, self-sufficient, self-satisfying principle = τὸ τέλος, the Perfect One (Matth. v. 48). This Divine Love finds its fullest satisfaction in the κόσμος νοητός, the intelligible world as revealed and rendered objective to Himself in "the WORD." Reason, Spirit, Love are the simplest elements in the conception of the unconditioned Being: Reason as Reality, Spirit as Efficiency, and Love as Perfection.

The unconditioned Being is revealed, may we not say "incarnated,"[42] in the κόσμος αἴσθησις—the sensible world: 1, by the incarnation of the Spirit in the moving and animating forces of nature; 2, by the incarnation of the Reason in the typical forms and permanent laws or relations of the universe, by which reality becomes known to finite minds; 3, by the incarnation of Love in the final causes, the benevolent purposes, which are realized in the completed Cosmos and the life of Humanity.[43]

2. Attribute or Related Essence. The knowledge of the Divine Essence is the root of the knowledge of the Divine Attributes, for in every conception of an attribute the Divine Essence is, in some mode or other, supposed. We may therefore define an attribute as a conception of the unconditioned Being under some relation to our consciousness. That conception may be either positive or negative, and the relation may consequently be one of causation or abstraction.

When we conceive of the Divine Essence as reality, our conception is in some measure determined by our consciousness of reality. The intuition of reality is immanent to our own consciousness. We know self as a reality, an indivisible, identical Ego—a unity, but yet a conditioned and dependent reality, which must have its ground and cause in an independent and unconditioned reality. Thus the pure intuition of reality is a preluding for the affirmation of absolute reality. We can not, however, affirm such reality on purely subjective grounds. To the eye of reason, which is the organ of necessary and absolute truth, the Divine Essence abstracts itself from the limits of space and time, and absolves itself from all the determinations of objective being. It is a reality which is not conditioned by kind, a reality which is independent of, absolved from, undetermined by any other antecedent or contemporaneous being—absolute reality.

Furthermore, when we conceive the Divine Essence as power or efficiency, our conception is in some measure determined by our consciousness of power. We know ourselves as a power, a cause of our own volitions, and a power which can control and modify external nature, but yet a limited and finite cause. To the eye of reason the Divine efficiency transcends all limitation and mensuration. It is a power which is not conditioned by quantity. It is limitless power, spaceless, all-mighty presence, self-directive power, carrying its own light and seeing its own way—infinite efficiency.

And, finally, when we conceive of the Divine Essence as personality, again our conception is in some measure determined by our consciousness of personality. We are conscious of desiring and purposing, of determining and doing, of approving and delighting in our artistic and ethical creations, and in these we stand out from the plane of nature as persons and not things. But we are also conscious of limitation and imperfection. We fall short even of our own ideals; we feel we have unsatisfied longings and daily wants. The Divine Essence reveals itself to reason as exempt from all limitation by degree. "Pure personality is no more limited than absolute being, but it is deeper by all the contents of perfect consciousness." It is a personality which has no defect and no want: unconditioned, unlimited perfection—perfect personality.

Our conception of the Attributes of God may thus be formed through some relation to our consciousness, but by a process of immediate abstraction—the negation of all limitation by kind, by quantity, or by degree.

1. As related to our intuition of real being; by abstraction from all other being and personality—the Immanent attributes of God.

2. As causally related to finite, dependent existence; by elimination of all necessary limitation—the Relative or Transitive attributes of God.

3. As ethically related to finite personality; by elimination of all imperfection—the Moral attributes of God.

1. The IMMANENT attributes. The absolute reality (REASON) must necessarily be conceived as First, Supreme, and Sole; must be underived, and therefore eternal; must be absolved from all necessary relation to other being, and therefore independent; must be above all law of change, and therefore immutable; must have incomposite unity, and therefore indivisible; and must be the only one, for two absolutes would limit each other, and are thus inconceivable. Finally, absolute reality must be the fullness and archetype of all being in which every form and every relation, every totality and every harmony, conceivable or possible, must be ideally and eternally present.

Eternity (1 Tim. i. 17; vi. 15, 16; Rev. i. 4, 8; Heb. i. 8).

Immutability (James i. 17; Psalm cii. 26, 27; Heb. i. 12).

Unity (Isaiah xliv. 6; Eph. iv. 6; 1 Tim. ii. 5; John xvii. 3).

Ideality (Psalm cxxxix. 16; Rom. xi. 36; Acts xv. 18).

These are the immanent attributes of God.

2. The TRANSITIVE OR RELATIVE attributes. The Infinite Efficiency (SPIRIT) must necessarily be conceived as all-mighty, all-present, and all-knowing. The Infinite Spirit fills, penetrates, moves, and vitalizes the universe. He is in all, and through all, and transcends all. He can not be bounded in space or limited in power, therefore He is spaceless and infinite. "He is every where present, not virtually but substantially, for virtue can not subsist without substance." And as the All-mighty is present every where, present to all things, so all things exist "in Him," and are present to Him in an immediate and intuitive vision—He knows all things.

Omnipotence (Psalm cxv. 3; Jer. xxxii. 27; Rom. xi. 36; 1 Cor. viii. 6).

Ubiquity (Psalm cxxxix. 7-13; Jer. xxiii. 23, 24; 1 Cor. xv. 28; Matth. x. 29).

Omniscience (Psalm cxxxix. 1-6; Acts i. 24; Heb. iv. 13; Matth. vi. 8).

These are the relative or transitive attributes of God.

3. The MORAL attributes. Perfect Personality (LOVE) must by the very conception be wise and holy, righteous and blessed, for these are the attributes of personality, and may all be ultimately grounded in love. The reason of all existence and all personality is found, not in infinite causality, but in the free love of the perfect personality. This is the final cause of all existence. And if perfect Love be the final cause of all existence, it must know the end, and ordain the law and means. The highest end of the world is the perfect fellowship of man with God; the physical must therefore be subordinated to the moral order of the universe. The Perfect Personality must freely will to impart his fellowship to those who are obedient to his moral law; and it must be removed from fellowship with and deny itself to evil, which is antagonistic to the ends of Love. Or, in other words, it must establish a fixed and changeless relation between righteousness and blessedness in the creature. It must approve the good and condemn the evil. And in making the righteous "partakers of his joy," He must be "well pleased." The absolute blessedness of God is found in the fullness and harmony of the Divine life. He has in Himself the eternal and absolutely worthy object of his love. But there is a Divine satisfaction, "a good pleasure of God," which is found in the communication of Himself to the creature. "He rejoiceth in the habitable parts of the earth, and his delights are with the sons of men." "He taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in his mercy."

Wisdom (Job xii. 13; Rom. xi. 33, 34; Eph. iii. 9, 10).

Goodness (Psalm xxxiii. 5; xxxiv. 8; cvii. 1, 8).

Holiness (Deut. xxxii. 4; Psalm v. 5; James i. 13, 17).

Blessedness (1 Tim. i. 11; vi. 15).

These are the moral attributes of God.[44] They are also called by pre-eminence the Perfections of God, because they are free determinations of the Divine nature, an everlasting "BECOMING," rather than an eternal "BEING." The immanent attributes of God are a necessary inbeing; the moral attributes of God are a voluntary outgoing, an eternally free, alternative forth-putting of choice for the right and the good.[45]

The doctrine concerning God above presented, in which we fain would hope that philosophy and Christian thought are brought into harmony, may now be summarily presented in the following schema:

Fundamental Idea of Reason. Thought-Conceptions
Founded on Relations.
(Essence) {ETERNITY }
{as ABSOLUTE REALITY.... {IMMUTABILITY } Immanent
{UNITY } Attributes.
{IDEALITY }
UNCONDITIONED {OMNIPOTENCE } Transitive
WILL {as INFINITE EFFICIENCY.. {UBIQUITY } or Causal
{OMNISCIENCE } Attributes.
{WISDOM } Moral Attributes
{as PERFECT PERSONALITY {GOODNESS } (Relational).
{HOLINESS }
{BLESSEDNESS }

The references to the Sacred Scriptures already given will show the harmony between the conceptions of reason and the verbal revelations of God. Reason and Scripture unite in proclaiming that God is "the great and holy One that inhabiteth eternity," who "only hath immortality," "with whom is no variableness," and who "filleth all in all;" to whom "all his works are known from eternity," in whose book "all our members were written when as yet there was none of them," and whose "purposes," ideas, and plans are "eternal." These are mainly the immanent attributes of God, conceptions which flow from the very idea of the Absolute and Infinite Being. They are evolved from Real Being by the negation of all limit, all parts, all change; the canceling of time and space and matter, the recognition of God as pure Reason, pure Spirit, pure Love.

The Scriptures, however, deal more immediately with the causal, transitive, and relational aspects of the Divine attributes—that is, with the conception of God in his voluntary relations to finite being and finite personality. They speak of God in his historically known existence, as a Being who voluntarily conditions his Omnipotence and Sovereignty under concessions of self-reality, self-life, and freedom to finite beings, without Himself being conditioned by any thing—a self-limitation which in nowise detracts from the absoluteness and infinity of God—an unconditioned conditionating Will.[46]

The relation which God sustains to his works is not a necessary relation—it is a voluntary and self-imposed relation. Free Love is the highest determining principle for the efficiency of Divine Omnipotence. Power thus directed and conditioned by wisdom and love does not, can not detract from the perfection of God. The substitution of choice for necessity is, in fact, no real limitation; on the contrary, it ascribes to God the most absolute perfection.

The causal attributes of God, or those conceptions of God which are especially grounded upon his relation to the world and humanity, are properly divided into those which are Cosmical and those which are Ethical. The first, of course, embrace his relation to the world, the second his relation to personal, responsible beings. The content of the cosmological conception is Omnipotence, Ubiquity, Omniscience. The content of the ethical conception is Wisdom, Goodness, Holiness, and Blessedness. God as the Creator and Sustainer of the world, God as the Father, Teacher, and Ruler of humanity, are the two grand manifestations of the one infinite and perfect Being, and "Elohim" and "Jehovah" are his expressive and distinctive names, the first denoting the cosmical activity of God, the latter his government and kingdom among men.

These two grand aspects of the Divine manifestation are marked in the Elohistic and Jehovistic portions of the first revelation given to the Semitic race. They are still more distinctly recognized in Paul's discourse before the assembled Athenian philosophers, where Christian theology was for the first time presented to the Greek mind—God the Creator and Conservator of the world (Acts xvii. 24, 25); God the Father, Teacher, Ruler, and Judge of humanity (Acts xvii. 26-31).

[CHAPTER III.]
THE CREATION.

God is the Absolute, Infinite, and Perfect Being, in whom, through whom, and for whom are all things. This is the Christian conception of God; and it is the only conception which furnishes an adequate and satisfactory explanation of all the facts of the universe. Here we have a First Principle, an Originative Cause which is sufficient to account for all existence.

But what conception are we to form of the nature and mode of this Origination? Was it a pure, supernatural Origination, an absolute Creation? or was it simply a formation out of a first substance existing coeval with and independent of God? Was that act of creation determined by necessity? was it an unconscious emanation from, or a necessary development of that First Principle? Or was it a conscious, free exertion of power for the realization of a foreseen and predetermined plan—a mental Order? What is the Biblical conception of Creation? This is the question we must now endeavor to answer.

Until very recently it has been the practice of theologians to attempt the determination of the Biblical notion of Creation on purely philological grounds. It is now generally conceded that this method is inadequate and inconclusive. The Greeks probably never conceived the idea of an absolute creation (commonly, though we judge incorrectly, styled creation ex nihilo), and consequently the Greek language has no terms expressive of a primal origination, an absolute beginning of the world. Ποιεῖν, the term employed in the LXX. (Gen. i. 1), and also by St. Paul (Acts xvii. 24), means to endow with a certain quality (ποῖος = qualis)—to construct, make, form, build, and evidently conveys the notion of formation rather than origination, the production of qualitative phenomena rather than real entity; κτίζειν is also ordinarily used in the sense of forming, fashioning, building, and seems to imply pre-existing materials.

There is also a wide difference of opinion among Oriental scholars with respect to the precise import of the verbs בָּרָא (bara), עָשָׂה (aysah), and יִצֶר (yetsar), as employed in the Hebrew Scriptures. Some distinguished critics, as Parkhurst, Clarke, Lange, and Delitzsch, assert that בָּרָא means to originate de novo, to create in an absolute sense; and that עָשָׂה and יִצֶר strictly mean to fashion out of pre-existent materials.[47] But Pusey, Kitto, Tayler Lewis, and some of the Rabbinical commentators (Aben Ezra especially), affirm that בָּרָא, both by its etymology and its connections, indicates formation as much as origination, and is, in fact, indifferent and neutral either as to a supposed creation ex nihilo, or a creation, that is, a formation from pre-existing materials. Furthermore, it is affirmed that the three Hebrew verbs are used indiscriminately in the Mosaic record. It is said in Gen. i. 27 that God created בָּרָא man, and that statement is amplified and explained at ch. ii. 7: "And the Lord God formed עָשָׂה man out of the dust of the earth."[48] An appeal to the merely verbal expressions of Scripture does not, therefore, promise any satisfactory and conclusive results.

By what method, then, are we to determine the Biblical notion of Creation? Clearly, not by a critical study of the several words which are employed to express the creative act—not by confining our attention to the visible embodiment of the Divine word, and neglecting the informing thought. We must ground our conception of creation upon the fundamental ideas and principles of Divine revelation, and determine it in harmony with the Christian idea of God, and the Christian doctrine of the relation of the world to God.

These fundamental principles we have already presented. They may be succinctly restated in the following propositions:

(1.) God is the one only self-existent, independent, unconditioned Being, "who alone hath immortality," "the incorruptible or immutable God" (ἀφθάρτος Θεός), "with whom is no variableness or shadow of change."[49] (2.) God is the sole causality of the heavens and the earth, in the most absolute sense. Whatever is, and is not God, is the creature of God. "By Him were all things created which are in heaven and which are upon earth, things visible and things invisible"—the objects of sense-perception and of rational intuition. The origin, development, and end, the principle, law, and reason of all existence, are in God and from God—πάντα ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐν τῷ Θεῷ, εἰς τὸν Θεόν.[50] (3.) The all of the finite is in ceaseless and complete dependence on the Divine causality—"He upholdeth all things," and "by Him all things consist."

Our interpretation of the formal language of Scripture, especially of the verbs which are employed to denote the act of creation, must therefore be informed and determined by these fundamental principles. If God is the unconditioned Cause of all existence, then the Creation must be the absolutely free and self-determined act of God. As such, it can not have been conditioned by any immanent necessity in the Divine nature itself, nor by any necessary existence out of and extraneous to the Divine nature. By this conception of God, and of his relation to the world, we are debarred from supposing the coeval existence of any thing besides God (e. g., ἄπειρον, τὸ μὴ ὄν of Plato, the ὕλη of Aristotle, the "matter" of the modern Physicist) as the condition and medium of the Divine agency and manifestation. While, therefore, it is acknowledged that in Gen. i. 21, 27, בָּרָא (bara) denotes the formation of organic bodies out of pre-existent materials, we can not be restricted to this meaning of the term when dealing with verse 1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." We are compelled to believe that "bara" here means origination—origination de novo; first, because the primal act of creation must have been a supernatural, miraculous production of something which had not previously existed under any form—an unconditioned creation antecedent to nature; and, secondly, because we are informed that after this primal act of creation, "the earth was still without form and void." No possible ingenuity of criticism can construe that opening sentence of revelation to mean, "In the beginning God gave form to pre-existing matter." That first beginning is the principium principiorum, the beginning of all beginnings, and must be distinguished from the six new beginnings of the six days' work.[51] We must regard this sublime utterance, standing at the head of all God's communications, as affirming this foundation-idea of revelation—that God is the sole causality of the heavens and the earth in an absolute sense, the efficient cause of time, and all temporal relations; the all-mighty cause of space, and all spatial relations; the originator of the primordial substance, and all its qualities—in a word, the unconditioned Creator of all finite being, quality, and relation—"בְּרֵאשִית—ἐν ἀρχῆ—in principio—first of all (in the order of conception rather than the order of time) God originated, laid the foundations of, the heavens and the earth."[52]

And now that the Creation here affirmed was an absolute origination, a bringing into being of the primordial elements out of which the heavens and the earth were subsequently "formed," is the doctrine of the best Hebrew lexicographers. It is held by many of the best authorities that the particle אֵת (ayth) means "the very substance of," "the very or real essence." Fürst, in his recently published Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, gives "being, essence, substance," as the meaning of "ayth." Gesenius, in his Hebrew Grammar, says "'ayth' means being, substance" (p. 216). And furthermore, he says "'ayth' is a substantive derived from a pronominal stem, and signifies essence, substance, being." "The particle 'ayth,'" says Aben Ezra, "signifies the substance of a thing." Kimchi, in his famous "Book of Hebrew Roots," gives a similar definition. In the Syriac version, "yoth" takes the place of "ayth," and is very appropriately rendered in Walton's Polyglot, "esse coeli et esse terræ"—the being or substance of the heavens and the earth. It is not, therefore, a fanciful and altogether unauthorized reading of this opening sentence of Divine revelation which the Christian idea of God, and of his relation to the world, seems to demand—"In the beginning God originated, brought into being, the primordial elements of the heavens and the earth."

For manageable clearness, in dealing with the Mosaic primeval history, we shall find ourselves under the necessity of accepting the distinction made by theologians between creatio prima, immediata, and creatio mediata, formativa.

1. An absolute Creation, a pure supernatural origination—the Beginning of all beginnings.

2. An artistic, architectonic Creation, a supernatural formation out of a first substance—the production of new things or beings by aggregation, organization, and development according to pre-established laws and archetypal ideas.

The first notion of Creation is grounded on the Omnipotence of God, the second on the Infinite Wisdom of God, and both are united in and ultimately grounded on the unconditioned Will.

And now let us confine our attention to the first conception of Creation—creatio prima, immediata, or ABSOLUTE CREATION.

The fundamental Theistic conception which lies at the very root of the Biblical doctrine of Creation, and clearly distinguishes it from all Materialistic, Pantheistic, and Dualistic notions of the origin of the world, is that God is the Absolute Personality—the eternally self-conscious, self-complete, self-sufficient Being, all the determinations of whose nature and action are grounded in his absolute Will. The Divine essence, in its inmost, deepest ground, is not determined being, but unlimited power of self-determination. The primitive, root idea of the Godhead is an ever-living, unconditioned Will—an unconditioned Will as the indivisible unity and perpetual differentiation of reason and power, a will which realizes itself in self-affirmation (IPSËITY); manifests itself in self-determination and choice (ALTERITY); and completes itself in the actualization of a final purpose (PERFECTION).[53] The nature of God, as distinct from his essence, is absolutely his own act.[54] God, as the manifested God, is what He is by his own determination and choice. God is just, because He wills to be just; God is holy, because He wills to be holy; God is good, because He wills to be good, and not from any constraining, immanent necessity, otherwise He could not be the object of praise, adoration, and love. If God is not good by virtue of his own determination and choice, then there is nothing praiseworthy and adorable in his nature, and all the thanksgiving of sacred psalmody is meaningless; worship is groundless, religion has no significance, and love to God is impossible. A necessitated goodness can no more command our moral esteem than the uniform revolution of the planetary orbs, and where there is no moral esteem, there can be no love, no worship, and no praise.[55]

If, then, God is a personal Being, the Absolute Personality, another being can not proceed from Him except in virtue of his own free determination. Creation must therefore be a VOLUNTARY act.

And for the full comprehension of this fundamental principle, we must remember that volition is something more than a simple efflux of power, something more than a mere developing tendency—an evolution or process without motive and without design. A voluntary act is a designed, an intentional act, the act of a being who can previously contemplate the act in thought, who can have a reason or motive for the doing of the act, and who can determine and condition the deed. This conception of creation as a voluntary act is unmistakably presented in the oft-repeated language of the Mosaic record, "God said, Let there be—and there was!" "The speaking of God most certainly indicates the thinking of God, and it thence follows that all the works of creation are thoughts of God (idealism). But it indicates also a will making itself externally known, an active operation of God; and thence it follows that all the works of creation are deeds of God (realism). Thinking and operating, however, are one in the Divine speaking, the primal source of language—his personality making Himself known (personalism).... Through creating, speaking, making, forming, the world is ever and again denoted as the free deed of God."[56] Furthermore, creation is a voluntary act in the most absolute sense—that is, it is an act of God to which He was not determined by any inherent necessity or want of his own nature, and an act which was not conditioned, in a necessary manner, by any thing out of, distinct from, and extraneous to the Divine nature.

1. Creation was an act of God to which He was not determined by any inherent necessity or want of his own nature.

If God is the eternally self-conscious, self-complete, and self-sufficient Being, He is under no necessity to create other beings in order to realize perfect self-consciousness, or to secure his own perfect blessedness. He does not need "otherness"—that which is not Himself—in order to become manifest to Himself; neither does He "crave beings not Himself"[57] in order to his complete felicity. The antithesis of self and non-self—the ego and the non-ego—may be a necessary condition of finite personality, but it can not be a necessary condition of Absolute Personality. God is eternally revealed to Himself in an unconditioned manner as self-conscious Love, self-conscious Reason, self-conscious Energy—the Father, the Word, the Spirit; and He is from all eternity "the ever-blessed God," who has in the Divine Triunity the eternal and absolutely worthy object of his Love, independent of every relation to the world and humanity—"Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John xvii. 24), "before the world was" (ver. 5).[58]

If, then, creation be the act of an Absolute Personality, the act of a Being who freely and unconditionally determines his own nature and conditionates all existence, then the Will of God is the sole causality of the world, and in his Will alone we have the unlimited, infinite ground-principle of all reality. Absolute Personality tolerates no other transition from the idea of God to the idea of the world than that of a Will which freely conditions itself by Love. This Free Love is the highest determining principle for the Divine efficiency. Therefore, in order to derive the essential existence of the world from God, the Scriptures postulate nothing beside or beyond an ever-living, intelligent Will which has its reason or motive, but not its necessitating cause, in Love—"the benevolence (εὐδοκία) of his Will" (Eph. i. 5). The Creation is nothing else than the free self-communication of God, who is Himself eternally self-complete and self-sufficient, but who from love alone wills that other beings shall have existence and, in fellowship with Him, eternal life.[59]

It is only by holding fast to these principles in all their integrity that we can escape the seductions of Pantheism, that perpetual temptation of metaphysical minds. The fundamental idea of Pantheism is "an indeterminate principle which is necessarily determined to become successively every thing. Absolute necessity is the beginning, middle, and end."[60] We can escape its iron grasp only by distinctly recognizing and firmly holding the Absolute Personality of God—that is, by affirming a perfect self-consciousness which is not conditioned by an antithetical not-self; a perfect self-determination which is not conditioned by an antecedent natura naturans; and a perfect self-sufficiency which knows no want. The first affirmation rejects the dialectical necessity of Hegel, the second excludes the mathematical necessity of Spinoza, the third cancels the metaphysical necessity of Cousin.[61]

2. Creation as the free act of God was not conditioned by any thing out of and foreign to the Divine nature.

A moment's reflection will suffice to convince us that a limitation posited from without would be as fatal to the idea of God as a supposed inherent necessity determining the Divine causality from within. The idea of God as the Being who is absolutely self-grounded, self-sufficient, and self-determined, equally excludes both. If God is the sole causality of the heavens and the earth in an absolute sense—the efficient cause of time and all temporal succession—the all-mighty cause of space, and of all spatial relations—the sole originator of the primordial substance, and of all its qualities, then the creative act can not have been conditioned by Time or Space or Matter.

In his otherwise admirable essay on "Nature and God," Mr. Martineau asserts that we can have no conception of even the possibility of a creation except on the assumption of the coeval existence of something objective to God as the condition and medium of the Divine agency and manifestation. He therefore affirms the coeval and co-eternal existence of Space and Matter, Time and Number, "with Him, and yet independent of Him."[62] The idea of God's "supplying Himself with objectivity" is, in his judgment, "discredited by modern science." The creative act must therefore have been conditioned by something other than God, and independent of God.

Now it must be obvious to every thoughtful mind that this assumption tends to the invalidation of every proof of the existence of God. If it can be shown that any one thing exists aside from and independent of God—that any thing exists which was not created by God—then may we claim equal independence for every other thing, and He who claims to be the Creator of all things is discredited. As Herbert Spencer urges, with great force, "If we admit that there can be something uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for any thing."[63] With what reason can we say that some things do exist that never were created, but others can not so exist? If substances are eternal, why not attributes? If matter is self-existent, why not force? If space is independent, why not form? And if we concede the eternity of matter and force, why not admit the eternity of law—that is, uniformity of relations? And if so much is granted, why not also grant that a consequent order of the universe is also eternal? If we admit that any thing besides God is self-existent, that any thing exists independent of God as "the condition of the Divine agency and manifestation," then God is not the unconditioned Absolute Being. "A limitation posited from without directly destroys the idea of God, for it contradicts the idea of the Absolute."[64]

Mr. Martineau admits that the assumption of "the coeval existence of matter as the condition and medium of the Divine agency" "rests on quite other grounds than those which support our belief respecting space."[65] We can conceive the non-existence of matter, but we can not conceive the non-existence of space. The idea of space is absolutely necessary, therefore "no one asks a cause for the space of the universe."[66] In making this assertion, however, Mr. Martineau betrays some want of acquaintance with the history of the philosophy of space and time. Many able and thoroughly philosophic minds have "asked a cause," and have assigned a cause for "the space of the universe." Sir Isaac Newton held that "God endures always and is present every where, and by existing always and every where constitutes duration and space."[67] This doctrine, thus generally stated, is held by Saisset to be incontestible.[68] McCosh also believes that time and space are not independent of God: "I am not necessarily obliged to believe that the infinity of space and time is independent of the infinity of God.... Who will venture to affirm that space and time, being dependent on God, may not stand in some relation to God which is altogether indefinable and utterly incomprehensible by us."[69] Finally, Schleiermacher and Nitzsch do not hesitate to teach that "God is the all-mighty cause of space" and "the efficient cause of time."[70]

The question whether the idea of space is conditionally or unconditionally necessary can only be determined by the solution of the deeper question whether space is a real entity or a relation. If space is a real entity, it must have properties or attributes, but what philosopher of any reputation has ever attempted to set down the properties or attributes of space? They who assert that space is an uncreated, independent, and indestructible entity, ought to be able to define it and tell what it is. Dr. Porter tells us that space can not be defined, "We can not form a concept of this entity by means of generalized attributes or relations."[71] Can that be for us an entity of which we can form no concept, and which we can not determine in thought by any attribute or relation? The writer of the article on "The Philosophy of Time and Space," in the North American Review,[72] is an earnest defender of the objective reality of space as an independent and indestructible entity, and he has defined and analyzed the concept. "Space is absolute vacuity" (p. 91). "The idea of space is a triple synthesis ... of three negative notions—receptivity, unity, and infinity; the first is the negation of matter, the second is the negation of divisibility, the third is the negation of limitation" (p. 95). Do these words convey any knowledge? Absolute vacuity is void, empty, inane. Absolute vacuity is pure nothing, and of course there is nothing to be divided and nothing to be limited. Absolute vacuity is a negation, and unity and infinity are negations of a negation—that is, they are predicates of nothing. "Negative notions" must be predicates of something, otherwise they are a mere negation or absence of thought, and convey absolutely no knowledge. We may, if we please, assert with Hegel, that "Nothing is the same as Being," and then amuse ourselves with making affirmations concerning vacuity, nihility, and unreality to the disgrace of philosophy; but the common-sense of mankind will repudiate our absurdities. We can not think about nothing; all thought must be positive. Thought must have an object, and that object must be either an entity, or the attribute of an entity, or a relation between entities.

If pure space is regarded as "absolute vacuity"—pure nothing—then we may readily dispose of the argument on which Prof. Stewart relies with so much confidence. "Divine omnipotence can not annihilate space,"[73] therefore it must be an independent reality. We have simply to answer—the notion of annihilating nihility is an absurdity and a contradiction. There is nothing to be annihilated, and Omnipotence even must be inadequate to the annihilation of nothing.

If, with Leibnitz, Lord Monboddo, Calderwood, and many modern physicists,[74] we reject the notion of "absolute vacuity"—infinite space—and regard space as a relation—the relation of position, distance, direction—then, like all the quantitive relations of mathematics, it may be regarded as conditionally necessary—that is, bodies being given, they must necessarily have place, distance, and direction.[75] Space as a necessary relation is a reality, but a reality which is conditioned and conditional, and "God is the all-mighty cause of space." If all bodies were annihilated, there would be no position, no distance, no direction, and consequently space would be annihilated. There would remain nothing but the timeless, spaceless, Infinite One, who is the efficient cause of all existence, all qualities, and all relations. This, again, would be a sufficient answer to the sophism of Dr. Clark, quoted and indorsed by Stewart—"God can not annihilate the space in this room!" Annihilate the room, and the relative space in the room is no more—that is, the distance between the inclosing walls. Of "pure space" apart from the relations of bodies we have no conception, can have no conception; for to annihilate all bodies, in thought, we must annihilate our own body, and to a disembodied spirit there can be no here and no there. Place is a relation belonging to extension, and extension is a property of matter only.[76]

There has been so much confusion of thought generated by the mere word-jugglery of philosophers in the use of the terms time and space, duration and extension, eternity and immensity, that a revision of the whole terminology in the interest of true science is demanded. It is perilous to launch out upon this ocean of equivocal phraseology, called the philosophy of time and space, before taking our bearings, amid notions so closely related, yet so dissimilar, and endeavoring to fix some definite meaning to these terms, which, like points of the compass, shall enable us to find our position.

1. Let us commence our effort with SPACE, EXTENSION, and IMMENSITY. Some philosophers—Cousin,[77] Hamilton,[78] Spencer,[79] McCosh,[80] for example—confound space and extension, and all of them confound both with absolute immensity.[81]

Now if space is identical with extension, it must be cognized by the senses and the sensuous imagination. This is unhesitatingly affirmed by Hamilton: "We see extension," and "by the name extension we designate our empirical knowledge of space."[82] So also McCosh: "Of space in the concrete we have an immediate knowledge by the senses, certainly by some of them, such as the touch and sight."[83] Space in this connection can not therefore be regarded as an à priori cognition. It is equally obvious that if space is identical with extension, it must have color and form. This also is admitted by Hamilton: "I can easily annihilate all corporeal existence [in imagination]. I can imagine empty space. But there are two attributes of which I can not divest it—that is, shape and color."[84] Now if space has "shape," that is, figure, it must have dimensions, and accordingly we find almost all philosophers speaking of the three dimensions of space—length, breadth, and depth. That which has length, breadth, and depth must be divisible, must have parts and proportions, must have susceptibilities of exact measurement, and therefore must be finite. This again is the doctrine of Hamilton: "Space is finite, and a finite, that is, a bounded space constitutes a figure"—a sphere.[85] The fundamental doctrine of Hamilton is that "space, like time, is only the intuition or the concept of a certain correlation of existence—of existence, therefore, pro tanto, as conditioned. It is thus itself only a form of the conditioned."[86] But if space be only a correlation of conditioned, and therefore finite existence, how can he speak of it "being conceived as infinite,"[87] and, above all, how can he speak of "the absolute totality" and "the infinite immensity of space."

McCosh, also, though evidently with some hesitation, teaches that "we can conceive proportion in space, and if we take any of these proportional sections, and divide it into two, thought will compel us to say that the two make up the whole. In this sense the parts make up the whole—that is, the subsections make up the section. If the question be extended beyond this, and it be asked, Is infinite space made up of parts? I answer, that as we can have no adequate notion of infinite space, so we can not be expected to answer all the questions which may be put regarding it. It is certain that neither infinite space nor finite space is made up of separate parts. We can speak intelligibly of proportions in finite space, and determine their relations to each other and the whole. I tremble to speak of the proportions of infinite space, lest I be using language which has or can have no proper meaning, and the signification attached to which by me or others might be altogether inapplicable to such a subject. Still there are propositions which we might intelligibly use. It is self-evident that any proportion of space must be less than infinite space. And if infinite space can be conceived as having proportions, and we could conceive all these proportions, then these proportions would be equal to the whole!"[88] Well may the author say that he is "in a region dark and pathless;" for the language here employed "can have no proper meaning" in regard to infinite space. Well may he "tremble to speak of the proportions of infinite space," for what can proportion (pro, for portio, a part) mean except a numerical relation of parts? Proportions—numerical relations—are measurable quantities, therefore finite quantities, and no addition of finite quantities, can make the infinite. What confusion and contradiction is here wrought by this word-jugglery with "the whole and parts" of space!

Cousin, also, falls into the same inaccuracy and confusion. He tells us that "human reason can conceive of a space determined and limited,"[89] therefore divisible, measurable, and finite; and yet at the same time he teaches that "space is illimitable, absolutely continuous, an indivisible unity."[90]

And now let us note the contradictions which flow from this confounding of space with extension, and both with immensity. Space is cognized à posteriori, space is cognized à priori. Space has parts and proportions, space has no parts or proportions. Space is divisible, space is indivisible—an absolute unity. Space is finite, space is infinite. Space is susceptible of exact measurement, space is immeasurable—that is, absolute immensity.

Space and extension are not identical. Extension is simply an attribute of body—the continuity of matter. Space is place, distance, direction, relations of bodies. Space is a certain correlation of finite existences. Immensity is the attribute of the unconditioned Being, the absolute Spirit—that is, God. He is incorporeal, boundless, spaceless, infinite.

2. The same confusion pervades the writings of philosophers in regard to TIME, DURATION, and ETERNITY.

Succession is confounded with duration,[91] duration with time,[92] and time with eternity.[93]

If succession and duration are identical, then, there is no permanent substance underlying the fugitive phenomena of the outer world, and no personal existence which remains the same through all the changes of our mental states. The human mind is simply "a series of feelings," a succession of mental states without any enduring ground principle constituting our personal identity, and we are thus landed in the constructive Idealism of John Stuart Mill.[94] On the other hand, if there be a permanent substance or essence underlying all mental phenomena, whose continuance in existence is measured by phenomenal change, time succession, then duration can not be identical with time, any more than permanence can be the same as change. With finite duration there is necessarily given change; the past is like the future—always a minus in relation to the present.

Furthermore, if time is synonymous with eternity, then eternity is divisible, measurable, it has limits and parts. Time, say the philosophers, has one dimension, while space has three. "We," says McCosh, "represent time as a line,"[95] it must therefore be divisible, and, if divisible, it is legitimate to speak, with Hamilton, of "time and its parts." "Time has succession, or priority and posteriority."[96] And yet this same writer in the same work tells us, "Time has no limits," and "Time can not be divided into separable parts."[97] If time and eternity are identical, eternity has a past, a present, and a future—"eternity ab ante and eternity a post."[98] The eternity past is bounded by the present, it ends now; the eternity to come begins now. We may with propriety ask, How can that which has succession, which is capable of exact measurement, which has a beginning and an end, be infinite? That which had a beginning can not be unbeginning, that which will come to an end can not be endless. Is not the "eternity of time" a contradiction in terms? Is not "absolute time" an absurdity?

Mark, then, the contradictions which flow from the confounding of succession and duration, time and eternity. Time has limits, time has no limits. Time is divisible, time is indivisible. Time is finite, time is infinite. Time is relative, time is absolute. Time is moving, "it flows;" time is immovable, "it does not flow."[99]

Duration and succession, eternity and time, are not identical. Duration is the continuance in existence of finite creatures, a continuance which is measured by the equable motion of planetary orbs, and imperfectly by phenomenal changes in our mental states. Succession is simply an order of phenomena, the recurrence, at regular or irregular intervals, of like changes, or the series of different states in the same existence. Time is a certain correlation of successive existences. Eternity is an attribute of the absolute Being—the timelessness of God. He is not subject to the law of change, and therefore not to the law of time, therefore his absolute being can not be measured by successive epochs.

Let us now endeavor to dismiss from our thought all this perplexing necromancy of words, and humbly pray, with Themistocles, for "some sweet voluptuous art of forgetting." Let us fix our mental gaze upon the objects of thought which are denoted by the terms time and space, and ask what are they? Are they existences or attributes, are they ideal or real, are they entities or relations? Have we any clear and definite notions of which these are the unequivocal signs? The solution of these questions is the essential condition of a true philosophy of time and space.

First of all, is it not self-evident that, if time and space are for us the objects of thought, they must be conceived under the categories of Being or Quality or Relation? If they can not be thought as real existences, or as attributes of existing things, or as relations among existing things, they can not be thought at all—they are non-entities, and we can not think about nothing. "Thought can only be realized by thinking something ... this something must be thought as existing ... and we can only think a thing as existing, by thinking it as existing in this or that determinate manner of existence; and whenever we cease to think of something as existing—something existing in a determinate manner of existence—we cease to think at all."[100]

McCosh asserts that time and space are "neither substances, modes, nor relations."[101] What, then, are they? He answers, "They seem to be entitled to be put in a class by themselves, and resemble substances, modes, relations only in that they are existences, entities, realities."[102] But if they are entitled to be put in a class by themselves, what is the name of that class, and by what characteristic marks shall we distinguish it? If they are realities, they must have being, or inhere in something that has being, or be relations of something in being. If they are existences, they must be the objects of sense perception, or rational intuition, or immediate judgment, otherwise they can not be cognized at all, for "the mind can not create objects of its own cognition."

We ask again, What are space and time? McCosh and Dr. Porter both answer: 1. They are not substances. This no one will dispute. They are not material substances having sensible qualities which can be the objects of sense perception. Space and time are not perceived by the senses.[103] Neither are they spiritual substances. We do not know them as having power and performing acts. 2. They both reply, They are not attributes or qualities of matter or spirit. This, also, no one will dispute, if the word "time" is not used as a synonym for "eternity," and the word "space" is not used as a synonym for "immensity," because "eternity" and "immensity" are attributes of the absolute Spirit. 3. They both assert, They are not relations. This is disputed by many: by Leibnitz, by Hamilton, by Saisset, by Calderwood, and by others. Leibnitz says, "Space is the order of things co-existing. Time is the order of things successive."[104] Hamilton says, "Space, like time, is only the intuition or the conception of a certain correlation of existence."[105] Calderwood defines time "as a certain correlation of existence," and "space as the recognized relation of extended objects."[106] And Saisset regards time and space as standing in the same category with mathematical relations.[107] These are, to say the least, distinguished names in philosophy. The opinions of men who have for years pondered these profound problems are at any rate entitled to proper consideration, and if in opposition to their views it is affirmed that time and space as understanding-concepts are not relations, some reasons should be assigned. All the proof offered by Dr. McCosh is that "we know no two or more things which by their relation could yield space and time" (p. 211). We answer, promptly, duration and change do yield the relation of time. "The consciousness of succession in our mental states is in reality our consciousness of time."[108] The co-existence of two or more extended objects must yield the relation of space, for "empty space is nothing more than the relative distance of extended objects from each other, measured on a standard similar to that which applies to the bodies themselves. In this way it is equally accurate to say that there is a certain specified distance between the bodies, and that there is nothing between them, because space is nothing but their relation to each other."[109] Annihilate all finite existences, and what remains? Nothing but the immensity of God. Let one atom of matter be created, and we have extension. Let a second atom be created, and there is now a relation of distance, position, direction—that is, there is space.

The only remark made by Dr. Porter which has a direct bearing on this important discussion is that "Space and time are neither relations nor correlations, but correlates to beings and events" ("The Human Intellect," p. 568). It may seem an act of presumption in one who has spent much less time on these studies than Dr. Porter to offer a criticism on this final deliverance. But when he tells us that space and time are neither relations nor correlations, after having through four pages "On the relations of space and time concepts to motion" labored to sustain the doctrine of Trendelenberg that "the categories of space and time are derived from the universal and all-pervading motion which is common to both" (p. 526), we confess we are amazed. Let it be granted that the spatial and temporal relations can be, in their last analysis, resolved into motion, still the question remains, How can we conceive of motion except as the result of force?—that is, of power actually exerted somewhere. In the last analysis, therefore, the relations of space, time, and motion are resolved into "the relation of causality." The conclusion seems inevitable that time and space are correlations of finite existences. Annihilate all finite existences and finite duration, and there is neither space nor time—that is, there is "pure nothing." Or, more properly, there is the Omnipotence, the Immensity, the Eternity of God, whose causation may give existence to finite beings with all their necessary as well as contingent relations. "Whoever maintains a beginning of the world must also adopt a beginning of time, for only worldly being, which according to its notion has not its ground in itself, but is an originated being, can at all have time for the form of its existence."[110]

And now, in summing up, let us see if we can clearly disengage three classes of distinct notions:

1. The notion of concrete and finite EXTENSION as the essential quality of matter; and the notion of finite DURATION as a quality of changeful dependent existence.

2. The notion of SPACE as the relation of co-existing material things—that is, the relation of position, distance, direction, hereness, thereness; and the notion of time as the relation of successive existence—that is, the relation of priority and posteriority, of past, present, and future.

3. The notion of IMMENSITY and ETERNITY—that is, an absolute continuity and illimitability of being, the absence of all limit, all quantity, all beginning and end, the attributes of the unconditioned Being. Let us endeavor sharply to define these notions, which unhappily are too often confounded.

1. The external senses in their different degrees, especially sight and touch, give us the knowledge of objects that are extended and figured. The body I grasp with the hand or survey with the eye has limits, outlines, angles, surfaces—that is, it has more or less EXTENSION. The inner sense gives us the knowledge of the changes and successions of our mental life. But, amid all these changes, I am conscious there is a something which endures. What is that permanent something which I apprehend under all the varying mental states? It is that principle of personal identity which I call I—myself. To feel and know that I am the same person under all modifications of my mental activity is to endure. Through the aid of memory, which enables me to recall past mental states, and the immediate consciousness of personal existence, through all these changes I obtain the notion of DURATION. The notions of Extension and Duration are clear to my mind.

2. Besides the notion of extended bodies, I have also the notion of position, distance, direction among extended bodies. They exist in various relations to each other; they are here or there, above or below, near at hand or indefinitely remote. It may be the distance between two particles of dust in the sunbeam, or the walls of the room, or between the earth and the sun, or between the sun and the outermost planet of our system, or between the earth and the remotest star which twinkles at the outposts of the universe. Position, distance, direction are all relations. And to all these relations I prefer, with Sir John Herschel, to give the generic name SPACE.[111] Then I have no confusion of thought, and no difficulty or contradiction in using the language of Cousin, Hamilton, and McCosh, when they speak of "determinate and limited space," "particular spaces," "parts of space," and "proportions of space."

Along with the notion of duration (and succession of different states in the same existence), I am conscious that this duration is capable of admeasurement by common standards, and ideally divided into periods of longer or shorter duration. This duration may be measured by successive states of consciousness, or facts of domestic history, or, better still, by the succession of day and night, or the relative position of the sun in the heavens, the revolutions of the moon around the earth, or of the earth around the sun. These are really world-measurements of duration. Since, then, duration can be measured from any point and in any proportions, it is clear that measurement is a purely relative thing—a relation. Of any such thing as "pure time" or "absolute time" we have no knowledge. Time is the measure of finite duration—the correlation of things successive. And if I confine myself to this usage, I am under no necessity of using the paradoxical language of many philosophers, "time is eternity!"

3. We come, lastly, to the notions or ideas of IMMENSITY and ETERNITY, and we ask, Are these necessary ideas of the reason, or can they be confounded with the relations of co-existence and succession on the one hand, or with the attributes of finite extension and duration on the other?

This is not a mere question of systems of philosophy or theology—it is a question of facts. Are the ideas of Absolute Infinity and Eternity necessary intuitions of the reason? The world of sense-perception, the world of science, is phenomenal and contingent. All that is offered to our observation is limited and temporal. The universe surrendered to our science is one of quantities and quantitative relations. It is conditioned by number and form. Its extensions, spaces, and motions are capable of admeasurement. Its worlds and systems are subject to numeration. The phenomena of the universe are all subject to change, they have beginning, succession, and end. But beyond the notions of the limited and the temporal, we find in consciousness the ideas of the illimitable and the eternal; the latter always appearing to reason as the necessary correlates of the former. The finite necessarily supposes the infinite; the temporal necessarily supposes the eternal. The two classes of notions are essentially different, and defy all attempts to generalize them under higher concepts. The infinite is not the totality of finite existences; eternity is not the prolongation of finite durations. Immensity and eternity are absolutely and unconditionally necessary ideas. I can easily conceive the non-existence of any finite thing. I can, without any contradiction, suppose the whole world to be destroyed. All which has a derived and a dependent existence may cease to be. But we can not conceive the source of all existence annihilated. There is one notion which it is impossible for me to annihilate in thought, and that is the notion of absolute being—underived, unconditioned, changeless, eternal being. Despite the destruction of all determinate extension and all finite duration, there remains a Supreme Reality, unlimited, unbeginning, and endless, as an absolute necessity of thought.

Here, then, are two absolute ideas found in the depths of consciousness—the ideas of IMMENSITY and ETERNITY; ideas as real, as natural, and as necessary as the notions of extension and duration. Immensity and Eternity are attributes of God. Extension and Duration are attributes of finite, dependent existence. Space and time are relations between co-existing things and successive events.

If by this somewhat abstruse and, perhaps, too lengthy discussion we have succeeded in proving that Time and Space are simply relations between co-existent things and successive events, which, apart from things and events, have no reality, and are "nothing but the bare possibility of body and change," then we have disentangled the Christian doctrine of absolute creation from the embarrassment occasioned by supposing "the coeval and co-eternal existence of Time and Space as the necessary conditions of the Divine activity." If Time and Space are relations between things and events, then God, as the almighty cause of things and relations, is the efficient cause of space and time, and the creative act was not conditioned by them.

The affirmation of the necessary existence of Space, Time, and Number as co-eternal with and independent of God,[112] prepared the way for and rendered plausible the further affirmation of "the coeval existence of matter as the condition and medium of the Divine agency and manifestation."[113] For if Space, Time, and Number are eternal, why may not Matter be eternal? But why stop with the assertion of the eternity of Space, Time, Number, and Matter? "If we admit that there may be something uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause of anything." If we admit the eternity of Matter, how can we deny the eternity of Force? We can not conceive of the existence of substance without some properties or qualities, and of all the properties of matter, gravitation or weight seems to approach nearest to an essential, necessary quality. And if we concede the eternity of matter and gravitating force, why not admit the eternity of law—that is, "uniformity of properties and relations;" uniformity in the results arising from the motions and changes of matter? And when so much is granted, why not grant that a consequent Order of the universe must also be eternal? why not grant that the universe is an infinite succession of orderly phenomena without a beginning and end? After the first concession that matter is uncreated and eternal, how can any one refute the doctrine of Hume that the universe never had a beginning, and that under some one or another possible phase—amid the infinite possibility of phases—it is both eternal and infinite? How, after this admission, can we deny that the universe is "a series of events existing eternally in a state of order without a cause other than the eternally inherent laws of matter?"

It would be easy to show that all those writers on "Natural Theology" who have made the least concession in regard to this fundamental question have involved themselves in entanglements and difficulties from which they could not logically extricate themselves.

Dr. Chalmers contends that the mere existence of matter with its properties and laws would not involve the affirmation of an Absolute First Cause. The proof, he says, lies solely in the disposition, collocation, and arrangement of these properties and laws in their relation to each other, so as to secure harmonious and beneficial results. So far as the argument for the existence of God is concerned, he provisionally concedes that matter, with all its laws, may be eternal.[114] True, he says that he grants the eternity of matter simply for the purposes of his argument. But what right has he to grant it for the purposes of his argument, and then to deny it in obedience to the decisive affirmation of a "well-accredited revelation?" If Divine revelation teaches the non-eternity of matter, this is for the Christian a truth—a fundamental truth; and whoever surrenders or compromises a fundamental position must finally fail in his management of the Theistic argument. The intuitions of reason and the doctrines of revelation are but separate rays from the one eternal fountain of light; and if we ignore or compromise the fundamental truths of revelation, reason will refuse to place her imprimatur upon and give her indorsement to our lame and halting proofs. This is strikingly illustrated by Chalmers's failure to "construct an argument for a God" that satisfies the reason, after he has affirmed "the eternity of matter for the purpose of bringing out his conclusion" (p. 79). But Dr. Chalmers can not stop with the simple concession that matter is eternal. Only grant its necessary existence, and "it is impossible to imagine that along with existence it should not have properties ... and laws" (p. 75). Now, if the admission that a finite, composite, divisible substance may be self-existent, and have eternal properties and laws, is not logically inconsistent, how can he show that these properties and laws in their eternal action and reaction are not adequate to the production of a series of phenomena which to our understanding may appear harmonious? Can eternal laws produce any thing but order? The existing order of things is the only possible order that could arise from the necessary operation of eternal laws, and there can be no choice, design, or purpose in the universe. Collocation, arrangement, adaptation, are only subjective anthropomorphic conceptions we impose upon nature. If matter and its laws are eternal, how will Chalmers extricate himself from this dilemma? By this admission he places a weapon in the hands of the anti-Theist, by which the latter may cut the teleological argument to pieces.

My esteemed friend, Dr. Mahan, in his zeal to overthrow the ontological proof of the being of God, and to vindicate for the etiological proof the sole claim to validity, has been betrayed into a similar inconsistency. That there is any à priori proof of the being of God is in his estimation a "wild chimera." "Formation from pre-existing materials" constitutes "the exclusive basis" of Natural Theology.[115] Matter, then, may be eternal, and an infinite series of events existing in a state of order is conceivable and possible. At page 85 of his "Natural Theology" he writes: "Mr. Hume has undeniably announced the truth as it is upon this subject, to wit, that the idea of a nature eternally existing in a state of order without a cause other than the eternally inhering laws of nature, is no more self-contradictory than the idea of an eternally existing and infinite mind who originated this order—a mind existing without a cause." After several pages disfigured by a labored effort to prove the possibility and logical consistency of an "infinite series of events existing in an orderly succession," he sums up with the imperious assertion that "the argument against the possibility of an infinite series of events stands revealed as a logical absurdity" (p. 88).

It is our deliberate conclusion, however, that the "logical absurdity" lies in the position of Dr. Mahan. "The idea of order in the Finite without a cause is no more self-contradictory than the idea of order in the Infinite without a cause." Mark the two points which stand out clearly in this strange assertion. First, the Finite here is nature—that is, matter and its laws. Secondly, the Infinite is the Supreme Mind. Dr. Mahan asserts that this finite may be conceived as eternally existing—that is, as existing through infinite time; in other words, the finite may be infinite. For a thing or being, or for a series of things or beings, to be at once "finite" and "infinite" Dr. Mahan says "is not self-contradictory." This is on a par with the logic of Hegel—"Contradictory opposites are identical." Again, we ask, Is there no difference between "finite matter" and "Infinite Mind?" Is not matter composite, extended, divisible, and limited? Is not Infinite Mind unextended, incomposite, indivisible, and illimitable? The mere existence of matter does not necessarily involve the idea of Order. There are nebulæ existing in the universe "utterly devoid of all symmetry of form, ... irregular and capricious in their shapes and convolutions to a most extraordinary degree."[116] Wherever order is presented, we instinctively and infallibly ascribe it to mind. Mind for all of us, and forever, is the analogon and exponent of Order in every sphere, irrespective of all knowledge on our part as to when or how it had a beginning.

Furthermore, on the main issue we affirm briefly—if matter is extended, it is measurable; if it is measurable, it must have definite limits; if it has definite limits, it can not be infinite. Now that which is finite, limited, quantitive, conditioned, can not be self-existent, can not be infinite. Infinitude is illimitation by kind, quantity, or degree—illimitation by temporal, spatial, or numerical relations. An "infinite series" is therefore a contradiction in adjecto. "As every number, although immeasurably and inconceivably great, is impossible without unity as its basis, so every series, being itself a number, is impossible unless a first term is given as its commencement.... Even if it should be allowed that the series has no first term, but has originated ab æterno, it must always at each instant have a last term; the series as a whole can not be infinite."[117] If one thing more can be added to the number of existing things in the universe, then it is not infinite in number or in extent. In short, a series implies a succession of terms, or members, or links; if there is a last term, there must be a first term; if there is a last link, there must be a first. Through an Unconditioned First Cause, originating and conditioning all the members thereof, is a series conceivable or possible. To apply to number or quantity the designation of infinitude is surely the "absurdity" in presence of which all others pale. We grant that the term "infinite series" is employed by mathematicians in a loose manner, to denote that which exceeds our powers of mensuration or conception, but which nevertheless has bounds or limits—the indefinite, but not the infinite;[118] such loose use of terms in philosophy, however, is inadmissible. The final reply of Dr. Mahan, "that the series under consideration is one which by hypothesis has no first," is the extreme of absurdity. It is as though a man should talk of a "round square" or a "bilinear figure," and when remonstrated with as to the contradictory character of these phrases, should reply, "Yes, but the 'square' under consideration is one which by hypothesis is 'round,' and the 'figure' is one which by hypothesis is formed by 'two lines!'" Men may make all kinds of strange hypotheses, but the strangest of all is that of an infinite-finite.

These incautious writers of "Natural Theology" all assert, as a fundamental doctrine, that God is the Absolute and Unconditioned Cause. We might ask, Whence do they derive this fundamental truth that God is "absolute and unconditioned," if not by an à priori rational intuition? We let that pass, however, to press the more pertinent question—How can God be "the absolute cause," if matter is coeval with and independent of Him? And how can He be the "unconditioned cause," if space, time, number, and matter necessarily exist as the conditions of the Divine agency and manifestation? If matter, with its essential properties and laws, exist independent of the Deity, do not these impose conditions upon the action of the Deity, and determine it to certain necessary modes? If so, God can not be the unconditioned Cause. Instead of one supreme, sole First Principle, there are at least two principles, God and Necessity, and may be more. No system of Natural Theology can maintain its integrity and consistency except by holding fast to the fundamental postulate—God is the Absolute and Unconditioned Cause of all things, of matter and form, quality and relation, purpose and law.

And now, in conclusion, we may properly ask, Whence arises the necessity for assuming the coeval and co-eternal existence of matter besides and independent of God? Why should the theologian feel himself under the necessity of prejudicing the Biblical conception of Creation by any such concession? The only reasons we have seen assigned are, first, that "creation out of nothing is discredited by the discoveries of modern science;"[119] secondly, that "an absolute origination is inconceivable and self-destructive."[120] In attempting an estimate of the weight of these reasons, we would first suggest that the question of absolute creation has been prejudiced by the persistent employment of the old formula of "creation out of nothing," as though "nothing" contained the cause of existence, and the universe was developed out of nothing. The Christian Fathers, who first employed the phrase κτίσις ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος, never indulged in such representations. The idea they sought to express was that the production of "otherness," the awarding of existence to something besides Himself, was an absolutely free act of God which was not conditioned by any thing external to Himself—in a word, that God is the positive original ground of all existence.

But who shall decide that this doctrine has been discredited by the progress of science? What special discovery of modern science has so revealed to us the ultimate constitution of matter, that we can affirm its absolute reality and its eternal existence? Nay, are the most advanced physicists and physiologists agreed as to whether, apart from our subjective, ideal conceptions, matter has any reality? If we are not utterly mistaken, the entire tendency of science is to reduce matter from the rank of entities to the rank of phenomena. "The old speculations of Philosophy, which cut the ground from Materialism by showing how little we know of matter, are now being daily reinforced by the subtle analysis of the physiologist, the chemist, and the electrician. Under that analysis matter dissolves and disappears, surviving only as the phenomena of Force."[121] We offer no opinion as to the validity of this new doctrine, but are sure it is the doctrine of modern science as represented by Faraday, Owen, McVicar, Bayma, Exley, Wallace, Poisson, Poyntong, Laycock, and, we think, Huxley. If modern science has resolved all our external sensations, even the feeling of resistance, into "phenomena of Force," then, according to the doctrine of Mr. Martineau, it had a beginning—"phenomena demand causation.... Supreme Entity needs no cause." "The universe resolves itself into a perpetual genesis," and "the Theist is perfectly justified in treating it as disqualified for self-existence."[122]

Sir William Hamilton contends that "an absolute commencement" is inconceivable. All the conception we can possibly form of Creation is "merely as the evolution of new forms of existence by the fiat of the Deity." "Let us suppose the very crisis of creation. Can we realize it to ourselves in thought, that the moment after the universe came into manifested being there was a larger complement of existence in the universe and its Author together than there was the moment before in the Deity himself alone? This we can not imagine."[123]

There are, we presume, very few Hamiltonians who are prepared to indorse this bold statement of their master. Mansel, the editor and annotator of his "Lectures," has very distinctly and emphatically expressed his dissent. "Whether it be true or not that we can not conceive the quantity of existence to be increased or diminished, there is at any rate no such inability as regards the quantity of matter. It may be true as a fact that no material atom has been added to the world since the Creation; but the assertion, however true, is certainly not necessary. The power which created once must be conceived as able to create again, whether that ability is actually exercised or not. The same conclusion is still more evident when we proceed from the consideration of matter to that of mind. Of matter, we maintain that the creation of new portions is perfectly conceivable—as a result, at least, if not as a process; of mind, we believe that such creation actually takes place. Every man who comes into the world comes into it as a distinct individual, having a personality and consciousness of his own, and that personality is a distinct accession to the number of persons previously existing.... Every new person that comes into the world is a new existence."[124] Hence we are not justified in asserting that all actual existences are only different modes of one identical reality. We can not merely conceive, but we know, as a primary fact of consciousness, that the sum of existence, of personal conscious being, which is the most fundamental reality, may be increased in the universe.[125]

We readily confess that the act of creation—that is, causing wholly new existence—is utterly incomprehensible to us; so are thousands of other things. I am told by the physicist that eight hundred billions of ether-impulses impinge on the retina of the eye in a second of time to produce the sensation of deep violet;[126] and I believe it, but at the same time it is to me incomprehensible. My reason affirms that the First Cause must be infinite; and I believe it, but I can not comprehend Infinity. No logician of the present day teaches that comprehensibility is a test of truth. Is our finite capacity of conceiving or of doing a standard for Omnipotence? The only question here involved is, Can Infinite Power produce that mode of being we call matter? Does such an exercise of Infinite Power involve a contradiction? I conscientiously submit this question to my own reason, and I confess I am unable to see any contradiction. To my experiential knowledge matter presents "the essential characteristics at once of a manufactured article and a subordinate agent."[127] "This," says the distinguished Prof. Maxwell, "precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent.... It must have been created."[128] The notion of its origination by a Power which is unconditioned and every way unlimited, satisfies my reason, and affords the best solution of the problem of its existence. That it is self-existent, independent, eternal—"a second other God"—is directly contradictory. The original, primitive fountain of existence is Mind. This must stand at the fountain-head. God is the sole and absolute Cause of all things—of time, and all temporal relations; of space, and all spatial relations; of the primordial element, and all its properties. The creative act was not conditioned by Time or Space or Matter.[129]

[CHAPTER IV.]
CREATION.—THE GENESIS OR BEGINNING.

"The laws of nature can not account for their own origin."—J. S. Mill.

Creation was the absolutely free act of God, unconditioned by any pre-existing thing. Matter with its properties and forms, its temporal, spatial, and numerical relations; Spirit with its life and feeling, its ideas and laws—these had all their origin in the creative Word of God. Whatever is, and is not God, is the creature of God. This is the Biblical conception of Creation.

Origination and formation are so immediately and inseparably united in the Biblical notion of Creation that the revelation of the one is the revelation of the other, and we can not deny the former without logically involving ourselves in the denial of the latter. He who gave to matter its forms must have given it its essential properties, upon which many of its forms depend; and He who gave to matter its essential properties must have given it origination, for how can we conceive of substance devoid of all attributes? Whether, therefore, the account in Genesis "be found to have in view, mainly or solely, a universal or a partial creation; whether the principium there mentioned be the particular beginning of the special work there described, or the principium principiorum,—the beginning of all beginnings—the Bible is in either case a protest against the dogma of the eternity of the world, or of the eternity of matter."[130]

This notion of Creation as a pure supernatural origination is the only one which reason can accept as adequate, satisfactory, and complete. Formation without origination is a conception of creation which is logically incomplete. It fails to meet the demand of reason for an Absolute First Principle adequate to the production and explanation of all existence. There are outlying elements of the problem which it can not grasp in the unity of a Fundamental Idea. Matter with its properties, Number, Time, and Space, with their relations, are still lying outside of its field, and setting themselves up as self-existent and independent realities, which by their apparent or conceded independence must necessarily impose conditions upon the Divine activity, and perpetually embarrass the human mind in its effort to think of God as the free and unconditioned Cause. Reason demands that absolute unity shall stand at the fountain-head of being, and every system of philosophy which allows of more than one self-existent and independent and underived reality bewilders and staggers the understanding, and vitiates all its processes of thought. After this concession every argument for the being of God seems to us a petitio principii.

Reason and Revelation, then, are agreed in the affirmation that the Universe, both as to its matter and form, had its origin in the creative Word and Will of God. How far this affirmation is sustained by the à posteriori inductions of physical science is a question of the deepest interest, and to this we now invite attention.

This question naturally divides itself into two subordinate inquiries, one relating to the form, the other to the matter of the universe, which may be thus presented:

1. Had the existing Order of the universe a beginning? Had the forms, relations, laws, and harmonies of the universe a beginning?

2. Had that which is the ground of all forms, the subject of all changes and relations, a beginning? Had the Matter of the universe a beginning?

In regard to the first question, we remark in general: The common conviction of our race in all ages has been that the existing order of the universe had a beginning, and will have an end.

It has been affirmed by some mental philosophers that mankind has an intuitive and natural belief in the uniformity of nature, and the consequent stability and permanence of the universe. Reid, the father of the Scottish school of philosophy, says, "God has implanted in the human mind an original principle by which he believes in and expects the continuance of the course of nature." It is a matter of surprise that so acute a thinker should have fallen into so flagrant an error. He has evidently confounded our natural belief in causation with our acquired experiences of uniformity. That "like causes will always produce like effects" is a native intuition; but that "the same causes will always continue in operation, and always operate with the same intensity," is a mere presumption. Our faith in the uniformity and permanent stability of nature is an induction from experience, and not a natural and necessary intuition of the mind.[131]

Far from entertaining a belief in the permanence and stability of the present order of nature, the great mass of mankind in earlier times regarded the system of things as liable to constant interference on the part of supernatural powers. In all ages of the world the existing order of nature has been regarded as temporal, and the flow of terrestrial and even of cosmical events has been conceived as liable to be broken up by universal revolutions. The historical evidence of this universal belief in "geological catastrophes" has been fully brought forward by Dr. Winchell in his "Sketches of Creation."[132] Traditions of a primal chaos and of periodic cataclysms are found among the Greeks, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Chaldæans, Hebrews, Persians, Arabians, Hindoos, South Sea Islanders, and the Aztecs. And among those nations in which the physical sciences have been cultivated the same conceptions are still entertained. As science has extended our acquaintance with natural phenomena in all parts of the earth, and beyond the earth into the celestial spaces, men have gradually attained a belief in the uniformity of nature. But the doctrine of periodical catastrophes has not been abandoned by scientific men. When men now speak of the uniformity of nature, they use that term in a very large sense, and even loose sense, as including catastrophes and convulsions of an intense and extensive kind;[133] and, as we shall presently see, the most advanced and exact modern science teaches us to contemplate a grand final catastrophe in which all life will be extinguished on the earth, and the globe itself shall be "ensepulchred in an extinguished sun." The attempt, therefore, to represent the belief in the uniformity of nature as a universal and necessary truth is vain. We have no à priori ground for believing in the permanence of the universe.

The common conviction of our race that the universe had a beginning, that it has been the subject of great catastrophal changes, and that it will finally come to an end, is not to be regarded as an insignificant fact. As Herbert Spencer justly remarks, "We must presume that beliefs that have long existed and have been widely diffused ... beliefs that are perennial and universal ... have some foundation, and some amount of verity."[134] Universal beliefs must rest on some common ground. That common ground can not be experience. A belief which was as clearly and confidently held four thousand years ago as it is held to-day can not have been gradually attained by successive generalizations. It is grounded on the fundamental antithesis between Becoming and Being, phenomena and reality, the changeful and the permanent, the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, which has been a necessary form of thought to all minds in all ages. The human mind has never been able to conceive these contradictory opposites as predicable of the same subject. The universe as presented to sense is a perpetual genesis, a ceaseless change; therefore it can not be permanent. It is a time-march of phenomena; therefore it can not be eternal. It is limited by quantity and quantitative relations; therefore it can not be infinite. Thus reason has always conceived the universe as having a beginning, and has confidently predicted that it will come to an end. All systems of philosophy, and, indeed, many systems of religion, have been attempts to explain "the beginning or origin of things"—that is, they have been "à priori theories of the universe."[135] Even Atheism itself comes under this definition: it is an attempt to explain the origin of the universe and of man on the à priori assumption of the self-existence of Matter, Space, and Motion. Thus all systems of thought, ancient and modern, have had their birth in the innate conviction that there is something to be explained, and that human reason is adequate to the task of furnishing an explanation. They all assume that the universe had a beginning, and their one, central problem is, "How are we to conceive aright the origin of things?"

In what does this differ from the problem of modern science? It is true that Comte would limit positive science to "the study of phenomena in their orders of co-existence, resemblance, and succession," an idea which the word "positive" by no means conveys. And Tyndall asserts that "the man of science, if he confine himself within his own limits, will give no answer to the question" as to the origin of things. At the same time he admits that "he can clearly show that the present state of things may be derivative."[136] The great masters of science, however, refuse to acknowledge any such arbitrary limitations. "The essence of science," says Sir William Thomson, "consists in inferring antecedent conditions, and anticipating future evolutions from phenomena which have actually come under observation."[137] If this be the essence of science, then we presume that it is competent to throw some light on the primitive condition of the universe, and give some prevision of its future destiny. Did not Comte himself teach that the solar system was once all nebula, and that it will yet collapse into an exhausted and extinguished sun?[138] Is it true, then, that physical science by its inductive inference of "antecedent conditions," does really furnish a solid confirmation of the à priori and native conviction of our race that the universe had a beginning? Then most assuredly even physical science is carrying us forward toward the ultimate unity of all truth—a unity which can be realized perfectly only by the constant mutual determination of à priori and empirical knowledge, a synthesis and equipoise of physical and metaphysical truths.

This is the most obvious tendency of modern science in its relation to the question under consideration. Nothing is more remarkable in the present aspect of physical research than what has been aptly called "the transcendental character of its results." As George Henry Lewes observes, "the fundamental ideas of modern science are as transcendental as any of the axioms of ancient philosophy."[139] Palætiological science in general has advanced by sure and steady steps, through careful observation and experiment, inductive inference, and the application of exact mathematical calculus to the recognition of the truth long ago announced by Paul: "The things which are seen are temporal, the things which are not seen are eternal." Dynamical Geology, Astronomical Palætiology, Cosmogony, Molecular Physics, Abstract Dynamics, have all landed in the same inevitable conclusion that "the existing order of things had a beginning." Sir William Thomson's doctrine of the "Dissipation of Energy" leads us, by sure steps of deductive reasoning, to the necessary future of the universe—necessary, that is, if physical laws remain unchanged—"so it enables us distinctly to say that the present order of things has not been evolved through infinite past time by the agency of laws now at work, but must have had a distinctive beginning, a state beyond which we are totally unable to penetrate—a state which must have been produced by other than the now acting causes."[140]

The science of Geology reduces all terrestrial phenomena to the great law of finite duration. If there be one scientific induction which may be fairly pronounced legitimate and irrefragable, it is this one—that the existing terrestrial economy had a beginning. "All organic existence, recent or extinct, vegetable or animal, had a beginning; there was a time when they were not. The geologist can indicate that time, if not by years, at least by periods, and show what were its relations to the periods that went before and that came after." He can carry us back to the time when man did not exist upon the earth, when no mammals existed; to the time when no birds, no reptiles, no fishes existed—when even Huxley's protoplasm had no being; "when all creation, from its centre to its circumference, was a creation of dead inorganic matter,"[141] and when there was not one spore or monad or atom of life throughout its dark domain. The form of the earth itself clearly reveals its history, and points us to that beginning. Its bulging equator and flattened poles, its pavement of congealed lava, which in some cases we name granite; nay, the oldest water-worn pavement composed of the detritus of the igneous rocks—all attest the emergence of our planet from a molten condition, and a temperature[142] in which no life could exist; so that even Tyndall admits "there are the strongest grounds for believing that during a certain period of its history the earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the theatre of life."[143]

The earth was once a molten mass heated to incandescence—a self-luminous globe. On this point there is scarcely any difference of opinion among scientific men. Furthermore, a large majority of modern scientists regard themselves as justified in the affirmation of a still anterior nebulous condition. If the nebular hypothesis is accepted, then we are required to contemplate a period when the earth did not exist, and when even the matter which now enters into its constitution was an undistinguished part of the nebula from which the whole solar system was evolved.

Many exact observations and mathematical computations as to the secular cooling of the earth give results which are in strict accordance with this theory of its primitive igneous condition. The observed facts clearly indicate that the earth is becoming, on the whole, cooler from age to age, and that the natural current of events is carrying it inevitably to a state of total refrigeration.[144] The fossil remains now found within the arctic circle indicate that at a period, not extremely remote, tropical vegetation flourished, and forms of animal life subsisted there which are now confined to the torrid zone. Mammoths lived in the now uninhabited polar regions, and tree-ferns and the tropical shell-fish found there a home.[145] The surface of the earth was then warmed by internal heat which since that period has waned; that heat has been gradually dissipated in the surrounding space, as a red-hot ball suspended even in the warm air of a room must, according to the well-known laws of radiation and absorption, necessarily part with its heat.

Many experiments carefully conducted in our time show that the temperature of the earth increases with the depth to which we penetrate: "In boring for the artesian well at Grenelle, which is 546 metres deep, it was observed that the temperature augmented at the rate of 1° Centigrade for every 30 metres. The same result was obtained by observations in the artesian well at Mondorf, in Luxemburg; this well is 671 metres in depth, and its waters 34° warm." As the result of many investigations in mines and borings, Sir William Thomson concludes that the average inference may be thus stated—there is on the whole about 1° Fahr. of elevation of temperature per 50 British feet of descent.[146] If this increase is uniform—and we have no reason to suppose the contrary—then at the depth of 50 miles there exists, says Helmholtz, a heat sufficient to fuse all our minerals.

The fact that the temperature of the earth increases with the depth necessarily involves a continual loss of heat from its interior by conduction outward into and through the upper crust, according to a well-known law of equilibrium of temperatures. "Hence, since the upper crust does not become hotter from year to year, there must be a secular loss of heat from the earth."[147] Thus it appears that from the surface of the earth and the ocean, from thermal springs, and from three hundred active volcanoes, the internal heat of the globe is incessantly radiated into space and is practically lost.

Now this average loss of heat may be at least approximately measured, and data are thereby furnished for determining the probable age of the earth, or, perhaps more correctly, its phase of life. If a man were to find a hot ball of iron suspended in a room, and if he were carefully to observe the distribution of heat in the ball, he would be able easily to determine whether the ball were becoming hotter or cooler. If he found that the inside were hotter than the outside, he would conclude that the ball was cooling, and had therefore been hotter than when he found it. So far common-sense would be his guide; but with the aid of mathematics, and some knowledge of the physical properties of iron and air, he could go much further, and be able to calculate how hot the ball must have been at any given moment, if it had not been interfered with. Thus he would be able to say, the ball must have been hung up less than, say, five hours ago, for at that time the heat of the metal would have been such that it would have been in a state of fusion, and hence not capable of hanging as a solid mass. Precisely analogous reasoning holds with regard to the earth: it is such a ball; it is hotter inside than outside. The distribution of the heat near its surface is approximately known—1° Fahr. of elevation in temperature for 50 British feet of descent.[148] The properties of the matter of which it is composed are approximately known. The temperature at which granite rocks are fusible has been found to be about 7000° Fahr. This must therefore have been the temperature of the earth in its primitive igneous condition. From these data, Sir William Thomson has, by rigid mathematical calculations, reached the conclusion that the consolidation of the earth's crust commenced 98,000,000 years ago.[149] The rates of increase of temperature inward in a great amount of average rock at various periods after the commencement of cooling, from the primitive heat of 7000° Fahr., are estimated by Sir William Thomson as follows:

"At 10,000 y'rs after commencement of cooling we should have 2° per ft.
At 40,000 " " " " 1° "
At 160,000 " " " " 1/2° "
At 4,000,000 " " " " 1/10° "
At 100,000,000 " " " " 1/50° "

It is therefore probable that for the last 96,000,000 years the rate of increase of temperature under ground has gradually diminished from 1/10 to about 1/50 of a degree Fahrenheit per foot, and that the thickness of the crust through which any stated degree of cooling has been experienced has gradually increased during that period from 1/5 of its present thickness to what it now really is."[150]

We freely admit our inability to sit in judgment on the validity of Sir William Thomson's conclusions. There are eminent geologists who entertain the opinion that the secular cooling of the earth has proceeded with much greater rapidity. It is, however, sufficient for our purpose that the most distinguished physicists of the day are agreed in teaching that the existing terrestrial economy had a beginning.

There are other terrestrial changes which engage the attention of the geologist, and which force upon him the conclusion that the existing terrestrial order had a beginning and must have an end. The surface of the earth has at intervals undergone great changes in the disposition of its land and water. That which is now dry land was once the ocean-bed, and the ocean waves now roll and murmur over what was once dry land. Sudden, or comparatively sudden, catastrophes have extinguished the then existing creations, and the earth has been repeopled by new orders of life. Changes are now in progress which are gradually reducing the populous regions of the earth to the condition of the Sahara of Africa and the Desert of Arabia. Upper and Lower Mesopotamia, the seat of the ancient monarchies of Chaldæa, Assyria, and Babylonia, now present "vast tracts of arid plain—yellow, parched, and sapless—which have now become a bare and uninhabited desert." That ancient continent drained by the Colorado, once as fertile as the Valley of the Mississippi, is now the Great American Desert. "Every freshet burdens the streams with a load of sediment; and the Mississippi bears daily to the Gulf material sufficient for a cotton plantation. From the slopes of the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, from the broad acres over which the Mississippi and the Ohio reach their silver fingers to filch from the land, the sediments are stolen and carried away to the sea. The Western States are slowly traveling toward the Gulf. The hills are melting, and even the mountain cliffs are lowering under the ceaseless conflict with storm and frost. The summits of the Alleghanies have come down 3000 feet from their original altitudes. Give time enough, and the inequalities of the land will disappear. The ocean will be filled, and again assert a triumph over the continents which in the beginning were wrested from his dominion." Thus by the storms of heaven, the erosion of the atmosphere, the blasting power of frost, the gnawing of the tidal wave, the mountains are being leveled, and the rocks and soils carried onward by the rivers to fill up the basin of the sea. The headlong rush of the avalanche, the murmuring of the brook, the roaring of the sea, the voice of the storm—all proclaim, "The things which are seen are temporal!"—"The existing order of things had a beginning and must come to an end!"[151]

Astronomical Palætiology reduces all celestial phenomena to the same great law of finite duration. It teaches that planets, stars, systems, have their birth, their process of formation, their maturity, and their slow, protracted decay. The ephemeron perishes in an hour, man endures his three-score years and ten; continents and islands have their ages and æons; the stars of heaven are not exempt from this universal law of change and decay. According to the Nebular Hypothesis, the formation of this our system of sun, planets, and satellites was a process of the same kind as that which is still going forward in the heavens. One after another, nebulæ condense into separate masses, which begin to revolve about each other in obedience to dynamical laws, and form systems of which our system is a matured example. The present aspect of this planetary system is, however, but a passing phase in the history of its fleeting life. Our planet was once a self-luminous orb; it has now become opaque, and shines only with a borrowed light. The moon is probably in a state of total refrigeration; its lunar air and lunar seas have been changed by intensity of cold into the solid form.[152] The sun itself is radiating heat into space in quantities incomparably greater than it receives, and, as Helmholtz affirms, "the inexorable laws of mechanics show that its store of heat must be finally exhausted."[153] The planets in their motions encounter resistance from the interstellar ether; they must, therefore, necessarily move in shorter and shorter orbits, and at last fall into the sun. Thus the Nebular Hypothesis, combined with the doctrine of a resisting medium, teaches us that the solar system is wending its way, through successive changes, from a past of vaporous unity to a future of consolidated reunion. "It was once all nebula; it will, if left to physical agencies alone, collapse into an extinguished and exhausted sun."

The astronomer who has been accustomed to regard every question relating to his favorite science as almost exclusively a problem in mathematics, will pronounce the above "a crude and adventurous" attempt on the part of the physicist to solve a problem which belongs to "the calculus of variations." Is the universe a Conservative or a Dissipative system? Under its present laws will it run on forever, or will these very laws in the end lead to its subversion? Will the mechanism of the heavens finally run down as surely as the weights of a clock run down to their lowest position, or are we authorized on scientific grounds to assert the permanent stability of the solar system? This question has been earnestly discussed by the most distinguished astronomers since the days of Newton. Until recently, the general conclusion—reached mainly on mathematical grounds—seems to have been that the universe is a thoroughly conservative system, and that the celestial machinery by a species of perpetual motion will run on forever. But must not all applied mathematical reasoning obtain its data from the exact observation of material facts? The mathematician must also be a good natural philosopher; he must lay his account with all the facts of the universe, otherwise his symbols have no contents, and his reasoning, however faultless in its processes, will be fallacious in its results. The discoveries of the present century respecting the correlation of the various forms of energy, the nature of the solar light and heat, the motions of comets, and especially the new doctrine of the "Dissipation of Energy," have introduced new elements into the great problem, which seem to indicate that gravitation is by no means the only force by which the motions of the heavenly bodies are influenced, and that causes are now in operation which are slowly but surely undermining the system. We now find, therefore, such high authorities as Whewell, Sir John Herschel, Sir William Thomson, Balfour Stewart, Prof. Maxwell, Dr. J. R. Mayer, Helmholtz, Tyndall, Littrow, Comte, Adolph Fick, asserting that the solar system is not a self-winding clock which may run forever, but that it is a dissipative system which must ultimately lose all motion, unless some power capable of controlling the laws of material nature interfere to preserve it. We have no more valid reason for concluding that the Deity intended the system should be eternal than that He intended the earthly life of man should be eternal.[154] A few general statements may assist the reader in appreciating the merits of the discussion.

It has been observed since the dawn of science that changes are taking place in the motions of the heavenly bodies. The eccentricity of the earth's orbit has been gradually diminishing from the earliest observations to the present time. The moon, also, has been moving faster and faster from the time of the first recorded eclipses, and is now in advance by about four times her own breadth of what her place would have been had she not been affected by these accelerations.[155] In a few thousand years she will be half a month ahead of the place she would be in if her month were to remain constant. The moon is, therefore, approaching closer and closer to the earth; and if these changes go on uninterruptedly, without any reaction or adjustment, sooner or later the final catastrophe must come, and the moon be precipitated on the body of the earth.

Toward the close of the last century, Laplace, in his great work, the "Méchanique Céleste," attempted by certain mathematical computations to show that, nevertheless, the solar system is stable and permanent. The planets, by their mutual attractions, produce perpetual perturbations in one another's movements. Laplace believed he could prove that these were periodic; they reach a maximum value and then diminish, oscillating between very narrow extremes. He therefore taught that the machine would go on by a kind of perpetual motion, without any winding up or adjustment from without; and, consequently, the eternal continuance of the solar system is insured.

All the investigations of Laplace, and the computations of Lagrange, proceeded on two assumptions: first, that the planets are moving in vacuo; and, secondly, that they are solid throughout their entire mass. The latter assumption is certainly in conflict with well-determined geological facts; and there is no à priori ground for assuming that the planetary spaces are void and empty. On the contrary, the general analogies of nature would lead us to the very opposite conclusion, and all attempts at producing a perfect vacuum have hitherto failed. Furthermore, the great body of modern physicists, and nearly all modern astronomers, hold that the celestial spaces are filled with a "material ether," which must by its very nature offer some resistance to planetary motion.

"Scientific men," says Mayer, "do not doubt the existence of such an ether." The presence of such "material ether—dense, elastic, and capable of motion—subject to and determined by mechanical laws,"[156] is demanded for the explanation of radiant heat, light, and actinism. No other theory ever proposed has so beautifully and completely accounted for all the facts. Its reality must be admitted, until the positions established by Huyghens, Young, Fresnel, Foucault, and Fiziau are shown to be untenable. All the prominent experimental physicists of the present day agree in teaching that light and heat are transmitted by vibrations or wave-like motions in a material medium universally diffused through space, and permeating all material bodies. Light and heat are the ceaseless thrill which the distant orbs collectively create in the ether, and which constitute what has been called the temperature of space. If the existence of such material medium as the assumed ether be denied, we can not account in any conceivable or rational manner for the transmission of light and heat from the sun. And now, if the space between the celestial bodies contain no other matter than that necessary for the transmission of light, "that alone," says Littrow, "is sufficient, in the course of time, to alter the motion of the planets, and the arrangements of the solar system itself; the fall of all the planets and comets into the sun, and the destruction of the present state of the solar system, must be the final result of this action."[157]

But it is further claimed by Helmholtz, Mayer, and Sir William Thomson that the phenomena presented by Encke's comet furnish "direct proof" of the existence of such resisting medium. The observations on this comet made during the past thirty or forty years show that the periods of its revolution are continually diminishing at the rate of 0.11° per revolution of nearly 3-1/3 years. In other words, the comet's mean distance from the sun is diminishing by slow and regular degrees. The solution which Encke himself proposed, and which Herschel informs us "is generally received,"[158] is that resistance is experienced from the medium in which the comet moves; such resistance diminishing its actual velocity and also its centrifugal force, thus giving the sun greater power to draw it nearer. It will, therefore, fall into the sun. A similar fate, says Helmholtz, threatens all the planets. "The analogies of nature, and the ascertained facts of physical science, forbid us to doubt that every star, and, indeed, every body of every kind moving in any part of space, has its relative motion impeded by the air, gas, vapor, medium, or whatever we call the substance occupying space immediately around them, just as the motion of a rifle-bullet is impeded by the resistance of the air."[159]

There are also indirect resistances, the effects of tidal friction, on all bodies which, like the earth, have portions of their free surfaces covered by liquids, which, so long as these bodies move relatively to neighboring bodies, must keep drawing off energy from their relative motions. "Thus, if we consider the action of the moon on the earth, with its oceans, lakes, and rivers, we perceive that it must tend to equalize the period of the earth's rotation on its axis, and of the revolution of the two bodies about their centre of inertia; because, so long as these periods differ, the tidal action of the earth's surface must keep subtracting energy from their motions."[160] As the tidal wave sweeps over the oceans and rushes into the numerous bays and estuaries, the motions which it produces in the waters necessarily involve an expenditure of power or vis viva in overcoming the resistance from friction. The energy of motion thus expended must be drawn from the set of machinery which produces the motions—that is, from the motion of revolution of the moon, and the motion of rotation of the earth. It can not be returned to the machinery, because all that is not spent in triturating the sand and other materials composing the ocean-bed, is transformed into heat and radiated into space.

It is true that in the present state of science we have not exact data for estimating the relative importance of tidal friction, and of the resistance of the interstellar medium; but, whatever it may be, there can be, says Thomson, "but one ultimate result for such a system as that of sun and planets if continuing long enough under existing laws.... That result is the falling together into one mass, which, although rotating for a time, must in the end come to rest relatively to the surrounding medium."[161]

Another evidence that the solar system is temporal, and that the present cosmical order must come to an end, is found in the fact that the sun is radiating heat into space in quantities incomparably greater than it receives. If it were not so, we should receive, on the average, as much heat from every other quarter of the heavens as from the sun, and no vicissitudes of temperature would ever occur on the earth. Now, from what we know of the nature of heat, it is impossible that the supply contained in the sun should be inexhaustible. There is no apparent reason why the sun should form an exception to the fate of all fires, its only difference being one of size and time. It is larger and hotter than ordinary lamps, but is nevertheless a lamp in which invisible molecular energy is consumed, and consumed, too, at a rate which baffles all conception. From every square foot of its surface the sun gives out energy equal in amount to seven thousand horse-power. The total amount of heat sent off from the sun in one minute is "five thousand millions of millions of units": a unit of heat being the quantity of heat required to raise one kilogramme—or about one quart—of water one Centigrade degree.[162] This enormous consumption of energy must finally exhaust the original stock. Were the sun a solid block of coal, and were it allowed a sufficient quantity of oxygen to enable it to burn at the rate necessary to produce the observed emission of heat, it would be utterly consumed in five thousand years. Or if we suppose, with Thomson, that the initial form of the energy of the universe is the potential energy of gravitation in matter diffused through space, and if this potential energy (energy of position) is transformed into heat (molecular kinetic energy) by condensation or contraction of the sun, and this energy of molecular motion (heat) is again transformed into radiant energy and diffused through infinite space, it is obvious that this condensation can not be continued forever, and Thomson has shown in his article on the "Age of the Sun's Heat" that its power of radiation must come to an end. Various theories have been suggested for replenishing the solar heat, one of the most plausible of which is the falling of meteoric and cometary bodies into the sun. Prof. Thomson, who was one of the first to adopt this view, has now abandoned it, or at least has denied its adequacy to account for the maintenance of solar heat. Even were the hypothesis accepted as valid, the supply of fuel is still finite. Time will drain the entire space inclosed by the orbit of the planet Neptune of all the meteors and comets. Even the planets must at length be ensepulchred in the sun. "As surely," writes Sir William Thomson, "as the weights of the clock run down to the lowest position, from which they can never rise again unless fresh energy is communicated to them from some source not yet exhausted, so surely must every planet creep in, age after age, toward the sun." Not one can escape its fiery end. And, finally, the heat of the sun itself—that is, its molecular energy—must be transformed into radiant energy, and diffused and lost as a working force in infinite space. "Thus do the inexorable laws of mechanics indicate that the sun's store of heat, which can only suffer loss and not gain, must be finally exhausted."[163]

There are thus special geological and astronomical facts which have long been regarded as indicative of the principle that the existing order of the material universe is temporal—it had a beginning, and must have an end. But the modern Theory of Energy,[164] with its three great laws of Conservation, Transformation, and Dissipation, must be regarded as a comprehensive, complete, and final settlement of the question. It has been shown, first, that no system of machinery can create force any more than it can create matter; and that the amount of energy in the universe, or in any limited system which does not receive energy from without, or part with it to external matter, is a constant or invariable quantity. This is the Law of the Conservation of Energy. It has been proved, secondly, as an experimental fact that, in general, one form of energy may, by suitable processes, be transformed wholly or in part to an equivalent amount of another form; and the sole and only function of all possible machines is the conversion or transformation of energy. This is the Law of the Transformation of Energy. This law of Transformation is, however, subject to the limitations which are imposed by the Law of the Dissipation of Energy, the discovery of which is mainly due to Sir William Thomson. He has shown that every machine does its work against friction. "A material system can never be brought through any returning cycle of motions without spending more work against the mutual forces of its parts than it gained from these parts, because no relative motions can take place without meeting with frictional or other forms of resistance." No known process of transformation is exactly reversible. Whenever an attempt is made to transform and retransform energy by an imperfect process, part of the energy is converted into heat, and the heat is dissipated, so as to become useless because incapable of further transformation. It therefore follows that, as energy is constantly in a state of transformation, there is a constant degradation of energy to that final unavailable form of uniformly diffused heat; and this will go on as long as transformations occur, until the whole energy of the universe has taken this form.[165] The reader will find an extended discussion of this great question in Thomson and Tait's "Natural Philosophy," vol. i. pp. 188-304, in which it is shown that the present material system is not a dynamically conservative but a dissipative system, and therefore that in such a system "perpetual motion" is an impossibility.

Indeed, the Law of the Dissipation of Energy is an intelligent and well-supported denial of the chimera of perpetual motion. There is a loose idea that perpetual motion is impossible to us, because we can not avoid friction with its consequent loss of energy, but that nature works without friction, or that, in general, friction entails no loss, and so here perpetual motion is possible; but nature no more works without friction than we do, and friction entails a loss of available power. The supply of invisible molecular energy in the sun is no more infinite than the quantity of matter in the sun is infinite. The sun is daily lifting huge masses of water from the sea to the skies, yearly lifting endless vegetation from the earth, setting breezes and hurricanes in motion, dragging the huge tidal wave round and round the earth; performing, in short, the great bulk of the endless labor of this world and other worlds, so that the energy of the sun is continually being given away without any corresponding restoration. The loss of force in the shape of radiant light and heat can never be weaned back to any other mode of available energy. Carnot, Clausius, Thomson, and Rankine have all from different points of view been led to the same conclusion. We can make no use whatever of the energy represented by equally diffused heat. If one body is hotter than another, as the boiler of a steam-engine is hotter than the condenser, then we can make use of the difference of temperature to convert some of the heat into work; but if two substances are equally hot, even though their particles contain an enormous amount of molecular energy, they will not yield us a single unit of work. Energy is thus of different qualities, mechanical energy being the best, and universal heat the worst; in fact, this latter description of energy may be compared to the waste heap of the universe, in which the effete forms of energy are suffered to accumulate without any further conversion.[166] If, then, when mechanical force passes into heat, some of the heat can never be brought back to be mechanical force, and if the change from mechanical force to heat be ever going on, all the force in the universe must at last take the form of radiant heat. But if that be so, then at last all differences of temperature must disappear, and every thing end in a universal death.

"We are come," says Adolph Fick, "to this alternative: either in our highest, most general, most fundamental abstractions, some great point has been overlooked, or the universe will have an END, and must have had a BEGINNING; it could not have existed from Eternity, but must at some date, not infinitely distant, have arisen from something not forming a part of the natural chain of causes—that is, IT MUST HAVE BEEN CREATED."[167]

So far, then, the deductions of science are found to be in striking harmony with the teaching of revelation—the existing order of the universe had a beginning; the forms, relations, laws, harmonies of the Cosmos had a commencement in time. We may now proceed to the consideration of the second question: Had that which is the ground of all form, the subject of all changes and relations, a beginning? Had the matter of the universe a beginning?

That we may fairly present the answer which modern science offers to this question, we must premise, in general, that it confesses its inability, in the present stage of physical knowledge, to determine what is the ultimate or internal constitution of matter. Many scientists of to-day are of the opinion expressed by Grove[168] that "probably man will never know the ultimate structure of matter." Others, as, for example, Thomson, Bayma, McVicar, and Challis, entertain the opinion that physical science is competent to discover all the minutiæ of molecular actions, and when this has been achieved, the question as to the ultimate constitution of matter can be finally determined. There is one guiding principle, recognized alike by the physicist and the metaphysician, namely, that substances, ultimate entities, are known, and can only be known in and through their respective phenomena. An exact enumeration and careful colligation of all the phenomena are therefore indispensable prerequisites to the solution of the problem.

Meantime nothing is more remarkable, even in the present state of physical science, than the fact that, under the subtile analysis of modern physics, much that we have been accustomed to regard as phenomena of matter dissolves and disappears, surviving only as phenomena of Force. The phenomena of heat, light, color, sound, electricity, and magnetism are now "modes of motion"—manifestations of one and the same omnipresent energy, which is transferred from one portion of matter to another, and modified or transformed simply by the mechanical arrangements and collocations of matter. The opinion is rapidly gaining ground that even chemical action is a mode of motion, and Professor Norton does not hesitate in affirming that "all the phenomena of material nature result from the action of force upon matter."[169] All that we mean by a Material Force "is a force which acts upon matter, and produces in matter its own appropriate effects."[170] It is not an attribute of matter, not a quality inherent in matter, but a mode or state superimposed upon matter.

There is a large, influential, and daily increasing class of scientists, among whom may be named Faraday, Prof. Owen, Dr. Laycock, Wallace, Dr. Winslow, Prof. Huxley, who do not regard matter as an ultimate entity, and who believe that all the phenomena of matter (so called), even extension, resistance, and ultimate incompressibility, may be resolved into phenomena of force. In other words, matter is only phenomenal, and, like all phenomena, demands a cause.[171] These men are perplexed with no difficulties as to the origin of matter. As a phenomenon it must be a product of Creative Efficiency, and therefore had a beginning.

It is obviously unnecessary that we should here discuss the merits of this hypothesis which resolves matter into force. We shall encounter it at a subsequent stage of our inquiry, and may then attempt to gauge its merits. It is enough for our present purpose that Heat, Light, Color, Sound, Electricity, Magnetism, are recognized as forms of molecular Energy—phenomena of Force; that these forms of invisible molecular energy, together with all the energy of visible motions and positions, are regarded as flowing from one great central force, or fountain-head of power; and that there is a remarkable unanimity among the first scientific men of our age in acknowledging this power as the Creative Efficiency of God. These forces uniformly work in obedience to Law; and Law, whether viewed in the orderly movement of a planet or an atom, in the symmetrical arrangement of a crystal of the definite proportions of chemical combination, in the organization of a worm or of an elephant, is intellect, is reason. This is the ultimate principle upon which every condition of matter and form depends.

This conception of force will materially aid us in the conception of matter. It is simply "the recipient of impulses or energy"[172]—the mere passive condition for the exercise of power. "It does not generate the phenomena which it manifests. It is only the substratum—it does absolutely nothing but give to the phenomena their conditions of manifestation."[173] Every molecule of matter, every aggregation of molecules, every organism must be regarded as a machine upon which the forces of nature play, and by which they are transformed and rendered available for the performance of work. Thus matter, by its very conception, must have been created, and fitted for the fulfillment of a predetermined function. Before the mechanism of the universe was set in motion, there was a preparation and collocation of its materials, and an adjustment of its minutest parts. As Sir John Herschel justly remarks, "Chemical analysis most certainly points to an origin, and effectually destroys the idea of an external self-existent matter, by giving to each of its atoms the essential character, at once, of a manufactured article and a subordinate agent."[174] The numerical relations between chemical elements are the expression of creative ideas. The maxim of the Pythagorean philosophers is daily receiving new illustration from science, "The world is a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its repose." There can be no arithmetic without an Arithmetician, no geometry without a Geometrician. Thus in the very elements out of which the universe is built, the blocks of nature's temple, we see the indications not only of a fashioning but of an originating intelligence—a Creating God. Design as truly appears in the primitive nature of matter as in its secondary formations. The primitive purpose is stamped on the primitive article.

"Every molecule throughout the universe bears impressed on it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the metre of the Archives at Paris, or the double royal cubit of the Temple of Karnac.

"No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction.

"None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural.

"On the other hand, the exact quality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent."[175]

[CHAPTER V.]
CREATION: ITS HISTORY.

The universe had a beginning. It is not eternal either in its matter or form; it is neither self-originated nor self-sustained. The all of the finite, with its relations and laws, its adaptations and harmonies, had its origin solely and absolutely in the unconditioned will of God. This is the Christian doctrine concerning the world.

In the preceding chapters we have endeavored to show that this doctrine is in perfect agreement with the teachings of sound philosophy, and we have found that it is daily receiving fresh confirmation from the discoveries of modern science.

If the universe originated solely in the free determination of God, then we are assured there must be a sufficient and ultimate reason for its existence. This logically follows from the true conception of Will, for will is not unconscious force, neither is it groundless arbitrariness, but conscious, rational choice.

In the merely formal and indifferent sense of the word, an arbitrary action is one in which the agent yields to the blind impulse of caprice, and can assign no reason for his doing. An action is truly free only when the agent knows what he wills, and why he wills it. The self-conscious will is the only real will. Will is intrinsically something more than power, something more, even, than the power of spontaneous self-determination. Will involves precognition, deliberation, and alternative choice: it is the living synthesis of reason and power. "The mere moment of self-determination does not suffice for the notion of will, for this, in a certain sense, we must ascribe to unintelligent creatures, to the organic life of nature by virtue of its development from its own principle. Self-determination only thereby becomes will by its being a conscious determination—that is, the conscious subject is able to present to its own mind that which it brings to reality by its self-determination."[176] All real volition supposes a purpose or end to be realized, an inward motive or reason which renders the end desirable, and the choice and adaptation of means to accomplish that end. Consequently, if the universe is the product of the Divine Will, it must, both in its origination and its history, be the realization of an ultimate or final purpose, must have a perfect unity of plan; and the highest law of the universe must be a teleological idea to which all nature-forces and all causal connections are subordinated. This ultimate purpose forms, as it were, a complete network of higher teleological connections above the web of mere aiteological connections which pervades the universe.

This great principle that a teleological idea is the highest law of the universe has been recognized by all philosophers of the spiritualistic school from the time of Plato to the present day. Even Mr. Mill admits that "Teleology, or the Doctrine of Ends, may be termed, not improperly, a principle of the practical reason;"[177] and he advises those who would prove the existence of God "to stick to the argument from design." No saying of Bacon has been more often quoted or more grossly misunderstood and misapplied than his remark on final causes: "The search after final causes is barren, for like virgins consecrated to God they produce nothing." If, however, we refer to his writings ("Advancement of Learning," bk. ii. p. 142), we find him adding, "not because these final causes are not true and worthy to be inquired, being kept within their own province." A fair consideration of the context clearly shows that the remark was intended to apply to Physics, and not at all to Metaphysics. All that he intends to say is that in purely physical inquiries the search after final causes can have no practical application; and the error he would guard against is the assumption that what appears to man a final cause must be the ultimate final cause to the Infinite One.

The belief that a principle of adaptation to special ends pervades all existence, and that it must be assumed as the ground of the scientific explanation of the facts and phenomena of the universe, is avowed by the first scientists of the age. "We can not be content," says Dr. Laycock, "with simply determining the mere relations of things or events—an existence, a co-existence, a succession, or a resemblance—and not inquire into the ends thereof. Such a doctrine applied to physiology would, in fact, arrest all scientific research into the phenomena of life; for the investigation of the so-called functions of organs is nothing more than a teleological investigation."[178] "A law of design is the higher generalization of the great uniformities of nature."[179] In his inaugural address at the meeting of the British Association of Science at Edinburgh, Sir William Thomson said: "I feel profoundly convinced that the argument from design has been greatly lost sight of in recent speculations.... Overwhelmingly strong proofs of Intelligence and Benevolent Design lie all around us; and if ever perplexities, whether of a metaphysical or scientific character, turn us away for a time, they will come back upon us with irresistible force, showing us through nature the influence of a Free Will, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one ever-acting Creator and Ruler."[180]

Every enlargement of our knowledge of organic nature is an addition to the already numberless instances of recognized special adaptation which crowd us on every hand; and all scientific discovery is but an illustration and a verification of the à priori intuition of the reason that a principle of design is co-extensive with and the highest law of the universe. Not merely of each individual existence, but of the grand totality of existence, are we constrained to believe that it exists for a purpose. Above all special ends there is a great ultimate design of creation—a last or final end to which all intermediate ends are means; and though physical science can not fully compass that final purpose, yet in the light of its present knowledge of special ends it has abundant reason for assuming that there must be a final purpose, and that that final purpose is at once beneficent and wise.[181]

But while the final purpose of creation may not be discoverable by human science, we know that it has been revealed in the Christian Scriptures.

The most fundamental doctrine of Christianity is that God is Love (1 John iv. 8, 16), and that Love is the highest determining principle of the Divine efficiency. Creation, Providence, and Redemption are grounded in Love as the final cause (Gen. i. 31; Isa. lxiii. 9; John iii. 16).

The gravitating point of the Christian doctrine of "God the Creator" is not Omnipotence, nor yet Wisdom, but always Love. Omnipotence, in itself considered, possesses no moving or determining principle. God does not create the world to reveal his infinite power. Infinite Wisdom devises the best means and methods for the Divine efficiency, but it does not supply the ultimate reason why the world exists. The Love of God is the moving principle of his wisdom and power in that it appoints the end to which omnipotence is related as the efficient, and wisdom as the formal cause. Whatever displays of power or of wisdom may be made in the created universe, they are all subordinated and made subservient to the purpose of Love. The highest law of the universe is Love. "The conservation of Love is the loftiest conservation of Force."