EVOLUTION AND GENESIS III 



teorites that developed heat merely by the process 

 of self-condensation. But whence these original 

 atoms came, how these meteor swarms arose that 

 first traced their unknown path through those 

 measureless solitudes of space, science is not com 

 missioned to teach. Yet reason confirms what 

 Faith tells us in the opening of that great ac 

 count of the origin of all things that were made : 



In the beginning God created heaven and earth. 



The origin of both matter and life, as has 

 been shown, necessarily postulates a Creator, who 

 of His very nature must be self-existent. Evo 

 lution postulates Him no less, in the wonderful 

 laws that could have proceeded only from a Su 

 preme Intelligence and could have been applied 

 only by a being of transcendent power. Such is 

 the First Cause, God, simple and infinitely per 

 fect, without whom the world is inconceivable. 

 Right reason cannot but confirm this first lesson 

 of Holy Scripture: that the heavens and the 

 earth are not the work of blind chance, against 

 which our intellect revolts, but owe their exist 

 ence to God. Yet nothing is here stated for or 

 against evolution. 



The nebular hypotheses are naturally the first 

 to which we turn, to see how closely their evolu 

 tionary deductions conform with the Sacred 

 Books. Yet nebular hypotheses, too, have fol 

 lowed each other in rapid succession. Joseph 



