HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 347 



of creation in every fonn, and to show you, further, 

 that the present marked tendency of the new philo- 

 sophic theology to take refuge in some species or 

 other of monism, can only end in disappointment 

 and the wreck of that great moral interest from 

 which the new movement takes its rise. Out of 

 the digression let us return now to the main ques- 

 tion : Since every form of applying efficient cau- 

 sality to state the causal relations of God to minds 

 is inconsistent with moral reality, is there any mode 

 of causation consistent with this, and capable of dis- 

 tinguishing, in the moral world of eternal minds, 

 between God and souls, between every soul and 

 every other, and of stating, in a way suitable to the 

 essential freedom of spirits, that great Divine func- 

 tion which we try dimly to symbolise by the word 

 "creation" ? 



V 



The required mode of causation, if any such there 

 be, must be one that operates in and through the 

 spontaneous life of the free being himself. Is 

 there a causality that does so operate .-* 



Yes, unquestionably there is. Its nature was di- 

 rectly suggested in what I said when describing, 

 some minutes ago, the active self-consciousness of 

 any member of an eternal moral world. We then 

 found every soul to be causa sui — at once its own 



