natural laws, they are, through His Immanence, literally God, who was, and is, and is to come. Science does this already for all who think clearly.”

Biology, p. 270.

Sir Wm. Hamilton employs the following language:

"But if you can thus conceive neither the absolute commencement nor the absolute termination of anything that is once thought to exist, try, on the other hand, if you can conceive the opposite alternative of infinite non-commencement, of infinite non-termination. To this you are equally impotent."

"But what is a creation? It is not the springing of nothing into something. Far from it:-it is conceived, and is by us conceivable, merely as the evolution of a new form 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 cannot imagine. . . . All that there is now actually of existence in the universe, we conceive as having virtually existed, prior to creation, in the Creator."

66

'Change must be within existence: it must be merely of phenomenal existence. Since change can be for us only as it appears to us-only as it is known by us; and we cannot know, we cannot think, a change either from non-existence to existence, or from existence to non-existence; the change must be from substance to substance: but substances, apart from phenomena, are inconceivable, as phenomena are inconceivable apart from substances. For thought requires as its condition the correlatives both of an appearing and of something that appears." -Hamilton's Metaphysics, pp. 549, 553, 692.

God evolved all things out of His own eternal selfexistent substance. Το pass from the conditioned to the unconditioned—from finite conceptions to infinite conceptions is beyond the power of the human intellect. In the backward stretch we must stop somewhere; and though it is the duty of the scientist to remove the First Cause to a distance as remote as possible; and though it is the duty of the theologian to prove that, however distant may be the pavilion in which He hides Himself, His existence is an eternal fact, evidenced by the growing grass and by the falling sparrow-it is possible for the scientists and the theologian to rest in this as an ultimate

fact in reference to the origin of matter,-It is an effluence from the Infinite One.

Evidences are already accumulating, however, that even if theology should content herself in the acceptance of this theory, science would not. Boscovitch and others rid themselves of the idea that matter is substance or stuff, regarding it as merely a phenomenon of force. For the solid vortex-atom of Lucretius, and for the mobile vortex-atom of Thomson and Helmholtz, they substitute a geometrical point, a center of energy.

If it shall be proved that matter is a simple and necessary phenomenon of force, and that consequently it needs no other originator, being as really a phenomenon of force as extension and weight are phenomena of matter, then the theist is prepared to assert, and to prove, as we believe, that force is the simple exponent of an Infinite Personal Will, and is increatable, indestructible, inaugmentable, and indiminishable. Of course, if it is

impossible to create matter or to annihilate matter, and consequently impossible to either augment or diminish its quantity, it is certainly no less impossible to create or annihilate force, and therefore impossible to either increase or lessen its sum. Consequently, the First Cause, an Unconditioned Will, is all and in all. There is but one mystery, the existence of God: all other mysteries resolve themselves into this.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONTINUITY.

HAVING endeavored to ascertain what is the remotest principle in the order of analytic thought, and having shown, as we apprehend, that it is, and must be, the Unconditioned Will of Deity, we now address ourselves to the following questions:

I. From the initial act of absolute creation has there been a continuous, uniform progression, or have there been occasional breaks, creative epochs, new beginnings?

II. Admitting that the general continuity is a necessary result of the continued operation of physical causes, how are we to account for the "new beginnings"?

There was a time in the remote past, scientists tell us, when the chaotic materials which ultimately formed the solar system were but an undivided portion of those material elements which pervaded immensity. Was there no break in continuity when a definite portion of these began to evolve into the existing solar system? What force separated them from the limitless ocean of matter?

There was a time when the earth had as yet no individual existence, its elements being an indistinguishable part of the heaving sea of homogeneous matter which filled the space now occupied by the solar system-at least an equal space, not the same, for the system in its totality is moving incessantly,-a space whose diameter is five billions of miles. Was there no break in con

tinuity, when a section of this mass set up for itself? What new force came into operation? or how came pre-existing forces to differentiate ?

The earth, or rather the material which was to form it, was as yet in a gaseous state. Was there no break in continuity as it passed into a molten mass? Was this a simple result of the loss of heat? Are gases condensed into red-hot masses as they cool down?

Whatever answer physicists may give to these and similar questions, they concede that this gaseous state was incompatible with life, as was also the succeeding or molten state.

Gradually, the surface of this mass became sufficiently cooled to permit the condensation of vapor into water. In the lapse of ages continents emerged from the previously shoreless ocean. By degrees they became fitted to sustain vegetable life; still, no plant existed, not even a lichen. The sun poured down its rays upon treeless plains and shrubless mountains. The rain watered barren wastes. The rivers flowed onwards between verdureless banks to an untenanted ocean. The air was incessantly moving in currents and counter currents, but no winged creature, bird or insect, sported itself therein. A lifeless world!

A time came, however, when the surface was teeming with vegetable life-plants existing of almost countless varieties, "each yielding seed after its kind." What agencies produced this change? Was there no break in continuity, no new beginning when vegetable life appeared? What force produced it? Did matter evolve it? Was a germ wafted to the earth from some other world, the difficulties connected with separate creations being removed by the origination of one living organism capable of communicating life to the universe? They who

are disposed to answer either of these questions in the affirmative are logically forced to concede that there has been a break in continuity, a thing apparently inconceivable unless there is a Personal Will back of nature. That force should originate life, or that matter should, is at variance with the uniform testimony of experience that life is invariably from pre-existing life.

As yet no animal existed, not even a moneron on an ocean-bed. Gradually the earth became fitted to sustain this form of life-millions of years being needed for the transformations. In time, lo, earth and air and sea, are teeming with myriads of living creatures, swarming everywhere! What agencies produced these changes? Whence came animal-life? Was it evolved from vegetable existences? Was it generated spontaneously in the laboratories of nature? Did it fall from some adjacent planet? Again, there must have been a break in continuity.

Though life was rolling over the earth in swelling billows, like the waves of a ceaselessly agitated ocean, there were no human beings, no intelligent personalities possessing "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing." Lo, the scene changes, and man exists: he is toiling, hating, loving, fearing, hoping, dying! By what agencies was this change effected? Was man evolved from the monkey? Again, there has been a break in continuity.

Prof. Huxley says:—

"It has ceased to be conceivable to any person who has paid attention to modern thought, that chance should have any place in the universe, or that events should follow anything but the natural order of cause and effect."

We have, therefore, the authority of Prof. Huxley for the assertion that these sudden leaps could not have occurred