The Theistic Conception of the World - An Essay in Opposition to Certain Tendencies of Modern Thought

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Title: The Theistic Conception of the World - An Essay in Opposition to Certain Tendencies of Modern Thought
Author: Cocker, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin)
Language: English
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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.

Page

CHAPTER I.

THE PROBLEM STATED 13

CHAPTER II.

GOD THE CREATOR 27

CHAPTER III.

THE CREATION 56

CHAPTER IV.

CREATION.--THE GENESIS OR BEGINNING 97

CHAPTER V.

CREATION: ITS HISTORY 127

CHAPTER VI.

CONSERVATION.--THE RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD 172

CHAPTER VII.

CONSERVATION.--THE RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD 202

CHAPTER VIII.

PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN HISTORY.--THE RELATION OF
GOD TO HUMANITY 244

CHAPTER IX.

SPECIAL PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER 292

CHAPTER X.

MORAL GOVERNMENT.--ITS GROUNDS, THE CORRELATION BETWEEN
GOD AND MAN 344

CHAPTER XI.

MORAL GOVERNMENT.--ITS NATURE, CONDITION, METHOD, AND
END 366

"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.

THE THEISTIC

CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD.

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
Phœnicians, 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_

_SYNTHESIS_

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 cœli
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,
Phœnicians, 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 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."

The world, then, was created to be a revelation of God, and especially
to be a revelation of the perfections of the Divine nature which are
grounded in and deducible from Love; and it exists as the
self-manifestation and self-communication of God to personal creatures
who can know Him and love Him in return. "That which can determine God,
absolutely sufficient in Himself, in the production of beings distinct
from Himself, is _Love alone_; consequently the creation is nothing else
than the free self-communication of God Himself, who could be
exclusively in Himself, but wills that others may have being and, in
fellowship with Him, eternal life."[182] The world-creating,
world-preserving Love of God has this for its ultimate purpose, _that
there shall be beings who, in the completeness and perfection of
personal existence, shall know and love and resemble God, and have
fellowship in his blessedness and joy_ (Matt. v. 8; 1 Cor. xiii. 12; 2
Peter i. 4; 1 John iii. 2).

The realization of a perfected humanity in fellowship with God is, then,
the final end of creation. We find some intimations of this grand
purpose in the sublime record of creation which is given by Moses. We
there learn that every thing was created with a view to man--to "man in
the image of God." The inorganic world exists for the vegetable kingdom,
the vegetable exists for the animal kingdom, and all exists for man (ch.
i. 26-30). All its successive changes were a preparation for the
appearance of man.[183] The more comprehensive revelation of the New
Testament teaches that man exists for the realization of that perfected
humanity of which Christ is the model, and which is attained in and
through Christianity. The idea of man is the teleological principle of
the world, the idea of Christ is the teleological principle of humanity.
All things were created _by_ Christ and for Christ. "The good pleasure
(εὐδοκία = the benevolent purpose) of the Divine Will" is, in the
fullness of time, to gather together in one all things both which are in
heaven and which are on earth, even in Christ, that in the final
consummation _God may be all in all_ (Eph. i. 9, 10; 1 Cor. xv. 28).

This purpose of Divine Love is an "_eternal purpose_," ordained before
the foundation of the world, and progressively unfolded in the creation,
government, and redemption of the world. Thus the world, as an actual,
temporal world, reposes on an eternal ideal world which has always been
present to the Divine cognition. The visible creation is but the
realization of the Divine ideal in such modes and under such conditions
as shall constitute it a manifestation of God to finite
intelligences--the external expression of the mind and character of God,
the language of the Deity.

Assuming this as a fundamental principle of Christian theology that
Creation is the self-manifestation of God, and that the final cause of
this manifestation is the communication of the Divine blessedness to
intelligent, personal being, we may logically infer the following
intermediate principles as _Laws of this Manifestation_.

1. _This manifestation must be_ GRADUAL, _not instantaneous. In other
words, it must be unfolded in successive steps or phases, so as to be
adapted to the nature and capabilities of the being to whom it is made.
The determinations of nature, like those of consciousness, must conform
to the law of progressive development._

Divine omnipotence was, no doubt, adequate to the production of new
beings without any pre-existing materials or any prearranged conditions;
but creation is not mainly or primarily a revelation of omnipotence. The
Deity might have brought the phenomena of the universe into instant
being without any succession and independent of all means, but a
universe thus instantaneously produced and simultaneously presented
would reveal no purpose to, and could not be understood by, a finite
mind. Finite consciousness can be developed only under conditions of
plurality, difference, and succession, and therefore the objects of
cognition must be successively presented. We may be sensible of the
external reality by immediate intuition, but we can _understand_ only
through experience; and experience supposes a gradual process--a
succession not simply in our mental states, but a succession of external
phenomena. This experience of succession constitutes our consciousness
of _time_. Therefore, in order that the Divine manifestation may be
understood, it must have a _history_.[184]

2. _This manifestation must be_ CUMULATIVE--_that is, it must afford an
increase of knowledge through successive additions; it must be an
advancing revelation of new principles and laws in an ascending line of
creative acts._

An evolution which is absolutely continuous, and in which the present is
the necessary outcome of the past, and that by degrees infinitely small,
may be a manifestation of unconscious force, but can not be a
manifestation of living Will. If nature be a manifestation of God--the
unfolding of an eternal purpose of Love--this manifestation must ever be
open to receive _new_ additions, the intercalation of new principles,
and the superinduction of new laws working for a nobler end. All
limitations from the scientific stand-point are illogical and absurd.
This law would determine our conception of the universe as an
aggregation of combined evolutions from several intermediate principles
or beginnings, rather than an evolution from a single first matter or
first force. _The creation of the new_, whether as primordial element,
or primary force, or principle of life, or rational soul, is the
fundamental idea of the _supernatural_--that is, the production of
something which is not a necessary out-birth from pre-existing
conditions and laws.[185] Therefore what is commonly, though perhaps
incorrectly, styled "miraculous interposition," must itself be a law of
the Divine manifestation, and the law of uniformity must be subordinated
to the more general law of progressive development, which subordinates
the inorganic to the organic, the physical to the moral world.

3. _This manifestation must be_ CONSECUTIVE. _Not only must it be a
succession of steps or phases, but the entire series must be so related
and concatenated as to present an Order of Thought--an ascending
development toward a foreseen and predetermined end._

If it were not so, every thing would be _isolated_ and _disconnected_,
and consequently unintelligible. There would be a succession of
phenomena, but no manifestation of thought; a series of dissolving views
presented to the sense, but no revelation to the understanding. Isolated
phenomenal changes might be continued through untold ages, but the past
would have no connection with the present, and would be unknown and lost
to all the future. A revelation of the Infinite Mind to finite
intelligences, made through the manifold and diversified phenomena of
nature, must be a connected and related whole, so that from phenomena
actually observed we may infer antecedent conditions, and anticipate
future evolutions; otherwise it could not be understood. To be
intelligible, a process of development must be the product of thought,
and it must reveal thought--that is, it must be _consecutive_.[186]

4. _This manifestation must be_ HARMONIOUS. _Notwithstanding its
multiplicity of parts and manifold stages, it must be a unity--a
Cosmos._

Beings the most varied in endowment, things the most diversified in form
and function, events the most remote from each other in time and space,
must all be related and connected in virtue of the ultimate and
all-embracing purpose for which the universe exists. An external purpose
revealed under time-relations must be an _all-harmonious evolution_ and
an _orderly totality_--a Cosmos.

Let us now turn to the record of creation as given in the Sacred
Scriptures--the Mosaic Cosmogony--and see how that account conforms to
the laws which on logical grounds we have deduced as the Laws of the
Divine Manifestation.

The fundamental prerequisite for a right interpretation of the sacred
narrative is a clear apprehension, first, of its general purpose, and,
secondly, of its special literary characteristics. On these two points,
therefore, we offer the following preliminary considerations:

1. _The design of the sacred narrative is to teach Theology and not
Science._ A cursory reading of the narrative will convince any one that
its purpose is not to enlarge men's views of nature, but to teach them
something concerning nature's God. It says nothing about the forces of
nature, the laws of nature, the classifications of natural history, or
the size, positions, distances, and motions of the heavenly bodies. From
first to last, every phenomenon and every law is linked immediately to
some act or command of God. It is God who creates, God who commands, God
who names, God who approves, and God who blesses. Strike out the
allusions to God, and the narrative is meaningless. Clearly, it was
never intended to teach science. It has obviously one purpose, to reveal
and keep before the minds of men the grand truth _that Jehovah is the
sole Creator and Lord of the heavens and the earth_; and it leaves the
scientific comprehension of nature to the natural powers with which God
has endowed man for that end.

All this is what we might legitimately expect. The narrative was
designed primarily and mainly for the instruction of the masses of men
who knew nothing or scarcely any thing of science; and if designed for
their instruction, it must be couched in language which they could
comprehend. A revelation made in the language of science would have been
unintelligible to the race for nearly six thousand years of its history,
and, practically, would have been no revelation at all. Scientific
language, moreover, is subject to modification and change as science
advances; but the narrative of Genesis was intended for all time, and
therefore needed to be couched in language not liable to change. "The
only language which possesses these two requisites of general
intelligibility and non-liability to change is the _language of
appearances_. The facts set forth must be described as they would have
seemed to the eye of man; that is, in a word, phenomenally, or the
cosmogony would fail of its purpose. All scrutiny or objection in the
matter of unscientific, or scientifically inaccurate language, then,
must be put aside as irrelevant."[187]

While earnestly maintaining that the inspired history of creation was
given for the instruction of unscientific persons, and is therefore
theological and not scientific, we also believe that all truth is one,
and that all revelation, whether in Scripture or in nature, must be
ultimately harmonious. Science in its last generalization must be
Theology. Theology in its proper development must be Science. They are
twin children of heaven, vestal virgins which can not be wedded to
error. We are, therefore, justified in the expectation that the
revelation in Scripture, when rightly interpreted, will contain nothing
that is inconsistent with the scientific interpretation of nature. While
we hold that there are no untimely anticipations of scientific discovery
in Genesis, yet we expect that when the scientific discoveries are made,
the congruity and dignity of the moral and religious lesson shall not be
defeated and marred. Nay, more, we maintain that the Mosaic cosmogony
presents the great principles which really lie at the basis of a truly
scientific interpretation of nature. It teaches that God is before all
things and the Creator of all things--that He alone is unbeginning, and
that all things had a beginning in his creative word and will. It
presents the universe as one harmonious whole, the product of one
designing Mind, the project of his thought, the transcript of his
plan--a plan evolved through successive stages toward a foreseen
terminus or goal. And, finally, it teaches that man is the end toward
which creation was tending, that he is the last and crowning work of
God, and that he is the child and charge, not of a blind, impersonal
force, but of a living, loving God.

2. _The sacred narrative is poetic, symbolical, and unchronological._ It
is a noteworthy fact that the early literature of the most ancient
nations was poetic--the natural, spontaneous product of that earliest
stage of mental development in which the conceptions of God and of
nature were determined by subjective feeling and native sentiment, and
not by reflective thought. The "Vedas" of the Hindus, the "Iliad" of the
Greeks, the "Eddas" of the ancient Germans, were each the product of an
age in which "prose was unknown, as well as the distinction between
prose and poetry." The earliest Hebrew compositions are of the same
character; and it is reasonable to assume that a primitive revelation to
the progenitors of our race would be accommodated to this earliest phase
in the development of mind.

The Book of Genesis opens with a _Psalm_--"the inspired Psalm of
Creation"[188]--"a grand symbolical Hymn of Creation." "The rhythmical
character of the passage, its stately style, its parallelisms, its
refrains, its unity within itself, all combine to show that it is a
_poem_."[189] Here is the same organic unity which marks the 104th
Psalm, or the Lord's Prayer, or the parable of the laborers in the
vineyard. Or, if we go out of the Bible for illustration, it combines
with lyric breadth of treatment and stateliness of movement all the
compactness of a "solemn sonnet freighted with a single thought from
beginning to end." Analysis of its interior structure exhibits a most
artificial synthesis, founded upon well-known sacred numbers. It has,
first, an _Exordium_, the proemial part. Then it is articulated into six
_Strophes_. Finally there is the _Epode_, or peroration. The six
strophes separate naturally into two groups, in which there is a balance
and correlation of parts celebrating the first three and the last three
concordant steps in the creative movement--the _Strophe_ and the
_Antistrophe_.

The exordium states briefly the subject of the poem: "In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth."

The first three strophes unfold the creative development of the
receptacles:

1. A. The luminiferous ether. } "The heavens
2. B. Waters and the firmament between the waters. } and the earth."
3. C. Dry land above the waters, with plants. }

The second three strophes (or, more correctly, antistrophes) unfold the
creative development of the occupants:

4. A. The light-bearers: sun, moon, and stars. } "And all the hosts
5. B. Water-animals and birds. } of them" (Gen. ii. 1).
6. C. Land-animals and man. }

The epode, or peroration, fills up the sacred number 7--the symbol
always of permanence and repose. "Thus the heavens and the earth (the
receptacles) were finished, and all the host of them (the occupants);
and on the seventh day God put period to the work which he created by
fashioning," etc.[190]

_THE SYMBOLICAL HYMN OF CREATION._

EXORDIUM.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

FIRST STROPHE.

And the earth was formless and empty;
And darkness was upon the face of the abyss.
And the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the vapors.[191]
And God said, Let there be light:
And there was light.

REFRAIN--_And God saw the light that it was good._

And God called the light Day:
And the darkness He called Night.
And there was evening and there was morning: one day.

SECOND STROPHE.

And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters,
And let it be a division of waters from vapors.
And God made the expanse,
And divided the waters which were below the expanse from the waters
which were above the expanse:[192]
And it was so.
And God called the expanse Heavens.
And there was evening and there was morning: a second day.

THIRD STROPHE.

And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered
into one place,
And let the dry ground appear:
And it was so.

And God called the dry ground Land;
And the gathering of the waters He called Seas.