WHAT IS CREATION? 229 



the facts of natural science. Even if we have got 

 no farther than to show that the abstract idea of 

 the Creator's existence is a logical necessity, essential 

 to the scientific and satisfactory explanation of 

 Nature, we have placed that doctrine in the same 

 category with all other great dominant ideas of 

 science which are accepted as true and immutable, 

 because, without them, the phenomena which they 

 account for would remain unexplained. Space, Time, 

 Gravitation, all the fundamental principles that 

 underlie astronomy, chemistry, and indeed every 

 natural science, are abstract ideas, vast inferences; 

 and yet they are believed in, and regarded as indis- 

 pensable to the superstructure of doctrine and law 

 which has been reared upon them. The existence 

 of a Creator having been shown to be a phase of 

 the universal law of causality, cannot be disregarded 

 as being non-scientific. Those who evade the force 

 of our argument by denying the necessity of an 

 efficient cause of phenomena and maintaining the 

 feeble and exploded dogma that causation is mere 

 sequence, must take the responsibility of explaining 

 how the first atom began to be, or else of solving 

 the dense mysteries surrounding the belief in the 

 eternity of matter. 



It follows then from what has been advanced 

 that what may be called a doctrine of Creation, or 

 a belief in the fact of Creation, implies a complete 

 negation of the views of the Materialist, the Atheist, 



1 the Agnostic, and is an absolute antithesis to 

 their conception of Nature. To hold any doctrine 

 of Creation is to accept the existence of a Mind in 



