A GNOS TICISM A ND E VOL UTION. 265 



Origin of the Universe. 



The great and perpetual crux for agnostics, as 

 well as for atheists, is the existence of the world. 

 For the theist, the origin of the material universe 

 offers no difficulty. He accepts as true the declara- 

 tion of Genesis, that: "In the beginning God created 

 heaven and earth," and with the acceptance of this 

 truth, all difficulty, based on the fact of creation, 

 vanishes forthwith. But to the agnostic, as well as 

 to the atheist, the query: Whence the world and the 

 myriad forms of life which it contains? is constantly 

 recurring, and with ever-increasing persistency and 

 importance. It is, as all must acknowledge, a fun- 

 damental question, and no system of thought is 

 worthy of the name of philosophy, that is not able 

 to give an answer which the intellect will recog- 

 nize as rational and conclusive. 



According to Herbert Spencer, there are but 

 "three verbally intelligent suppositions" respecting 

 the origin of the universe. "We may," he says, 

 "assert that it is self-existent ; or that it is self-cre- 

 ated ; or that it is created by an external agency. 

 That it should be self-existent is inconceivable, be- 

 cause this" implies the conception, which is an im- 

 possibility, of infinite past time. To this let us add, 

 that even were self-existence conceivable, it would 

 not in any sense be an explanation of the universe, 

 nor make it in any degree more comprehensible. 

 Thus the atheistic theory is not only absolutely un- 

 thinkable, but even if it were thinkable would not 

 be a solution, 



