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 



