154 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



God as the living, wise, and almighty Creator, and 

 the loving Father of man. 



Herbert Spencer informs us that the verbally 

 intelligent suppositions respecting the origin of the 

 universe are three: (i) It is self-existent. (2) It is 

 self-created. (3) It is created by an external agency. 

 Of the first and second of these suppositions it can 

 scarcely be affirmed that they are even verbally 

 intelligent or conceivable as possible alternatives. 

 That which is self-existent cannot properly be said 

 to have an origin, and an eternal succession of 

 material things is wholly unthinkable. That anything 

 can be self-created seems to be a contradiction in 

 terms. The third supposition is therefore alone tena 

 ble, but it is imperfectly expressed, since the cause 

 or agency which produced the universe need not 

 necessarily be external, but may be operative within 

 all its parts as well as without. 



If, then, we understand Spencer s third alternative 

 to mean that the hypothesis of a First Cause, to 

 which he elsewhere truly says * we must commit our 

 selves, implies that the universe was created by a 

 power all pervading, and while not limited by the 

 universe still in it as well as without, it comes into 

 exact harmony with the first verse of Genesis, In 

 the beginning God created the heavens and the 

 earth. The writer of that sentence knew that the 

 universe cannot be eternal or self-existent. He 

 knew that it cannot have produced itself. To him, 



