IMPLICATIONS AT LARGE 119 



]from a refusal to give adequate consideration to the 

 phenomena of life, mind, and moral responsibility. 

 The other solution does justice to these phenomena, 



land most adequately accounts for the diverse forms 

 of being and life. It indeed raises a baffling problem. 

 If God created all things, and this excludes the pan- 

 theistic idea that they are substantial parts of His own 

 essence. He must have created them without the use 

 of pre-existing materials, or ex nihilo, as it is somewhat 

 misleadingly expressed. How can this act have been 

 achieved? We cannot answer; for such an event hes 

 wholly outside of human experience and is unique. 

 Therefore it lies beyond the sphere of imagination. 

 But an eternal past for the universe is equally un- 

 imaginable and equally unexperienced. The mystery, 

 therefore, since it clings to either solution, leaves 

 unimpaired the superiority of behef in creation over 

 an acceptance of pantheistic or materialistic monism. 

 The Christian doctrine of creation is to-day as valid 

 for higher thought as it ever has been.^ 



(c) We come next to the question of biblical infaUi- 

 bility.^ If, as historical Christianity has maintained 

 from primitive days, the Bible is the veritable Word of 



1 In saying this, I do not concern myself with the questions raised 

 by disputable exegesis, and by the view that the writer of Genesis 

 was inspired to give a scientific account of the method of creation. 

 Cf. the author's Being and Attributes of God, ch. v. §§7, 10, and 

 the references there given — especially Profeit, Creation of Matter; 

 Flint, Theism, pp. 101-118. 



2 Cf . the writer's Authority, Eccles. and Biblical, ch. vii. §§ 5, 6. 

 Also pp. 13-16, above. 



