CONCLUSION 175 



intelligent cause to account for them. We add to the 

 multitude of relationships between the three kinds of 

 entities a still greater number between them and a fourth, 

 and therefore requiring a fifth to produce them. And if 

 the fifth be of the same nature, much more is a sixth 

 required. And the farther we advance the requirement 

 grows. We are thus led to the conclusion that the 

 former of all things cannot be finite and relative, and 

 happening to exist from eternity of a constitution so 

 richly related and adjusted to three other entities as to 

 be able to act on them in an infinite variety of ways, but 

 must be infinite and absolute and able to act on any 

 nature and in any way whatever. 



A finite and related Maker or Builder of the universe 

 would have been entirely dependent on chance. He 

 could have done nothing of Himself. He could have 

 done nothing without finding material elements and 

 perceiving natures, ordered and related to each other, 

 and to His own powers, or in such a condition that His 

 own related powers could bring them into order and 

 relationship to each other. It was a matter of chance 

 that He should find a single particle of matter or ether 

 point or perceiving nature anywhere within His range or 

 limited sphere of action. It was a matter of contin- 

 gencies without number that He should find primal 

 elements sufficient to form the least drop of water, the 

 least grain of sand. How inconceivably vast the multi- 

 tude of contingencies involved in His finding them in 

 quantities sufficient for being built up into a world filled 

 with organisations and perceiving natures. The depen- 

 dence on chance, therefore, of such a being would have 

 been immeasurably, yea, infinitely great. Chance would 

 have played the all-important part, and the chances 

 against would have been, not merely as the number of 



