3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



compelled to discover that the question is not so much of a creation, 

 as of a rational conception of the creation — not of the fact, but of the 

 method. 



Religious faith does step in, where science fails, to say how the 

 Cosmos began, and is ordered and sustained in perpetual harmony. 

 Physical science, of course, has nothing to do with first and final 

 causes, and therefore answers : " We cannot tell whether the Cosmos 

 is eternal, or began in time." It is a higher philosophy that comes in 

 to answer, with the ii-resistible definitions of a higher logic, that it 

 began in tinie. According to the very terms of the proposition, mat- 

 ter is bounded by space and time, and exists only in, by, and through 

 these limitations. Consequently, it is even a contradiction in terms 

 to ask the question, whether it is eternal or not. It is the same ab- 

 surdity as to ask if the finite be infinite ; if the limited be ubiquitous ; 

 if the conditioned be unconditioned. 



Again : Religion, sustained also by a true philosoj^hical ontology, 

 asserts that the relation of the infinite to the finite — of the eternal to 

 the limited — is that of a Creator. For, if this is not so, then they must 

 be of the same substance — that is, identical, which again is absurd by 

 the very terms of the proposition. 



Having the creation — the basement-matter — let us proceed to its 

 metamorphoses. And here, coy as sea-born Thetis, it will take the 

 valor, the skill, and the passionate pursuit of heroes worthy to wed 

 immortal brides, to follow K'ature through her protean form and into 

 her concealed recesses. 



These metamorphoses depending upon the elements of the Cosmos 

 — upon the laws with which matter is endowed (and it would not be 

 matter, remember — this Cosmos which we know — without them) — the 

 investigation is strictly, and without the least irreverence, the legiti- 

 mate province of rational physical science. It is as religiously a duty 

 to make use of the reason to comprehend and "justify the ways of 

 God to man," as it is, through faith and love, to adore him. 



The method of creation, then, it is, and not t^iefact, that natural 

 science deals with. It invites our attention to physics, simply, and 

 leaves metaphysics to a higher school. 



When, therefore, these doctors of the new school tell us that they 

 are about to overthrow religion in one of its old dogmas — namely, as 

 they define it themselves, that the Creator came here, and, like a pot- 

 ter upon his wheel, out of distinct lumps of clay, in certain definite 

 periods, produced certain definite forms, which forms, in organic creat- 

 ures, are species, and which may perish or endure, but cannot change — 

 it is easy to see that they have not themselves risen above that anthro- 

 pomorphic conception of Deity which they assume to condemn. They 

 are still struggling with eyes half open to realize whether it is Santa 

 Claus or papa in his nightcap. In a word, they have not arri-ved at the 

 conception of the Creator as infinite and eternal, and that his acts are 



