THE FIRST CHAITEK OP GENESIS. 



121 



whom the sight of the order and heauty of the universe raises 

 deep tlioughts and (juestions. " AVhence and how did this 

 mighty frame of things arise ? What was its beginning ? " 



The Beginning. Had the universe a beginning ? Some have 

 thought not. It is now, it was yesterday ; why not for 

 yesterdays without end ? May it not Iia\ e existed always { 



This is the doctrine of the eternity of matter, a doctrine that 

 appears under several different forms and names. Pure 

 Materialism recocrnizes matter as the onlv existence : Pantheism 

 professes to recognize the existence of God, but only as 

 inseparable from the material universe ; Monism asserts their 

 complete identity. 



But most thinkers are clear that these are unintelligent ways 

 of evading the very question which is raised by the presence of 

 the visible universe. Why should matter liave liad no 

 beginning / Human life, the liighest product of the changes 

 througli which the universe lias passed, certainly had a 

 beginning ; organic life in general had a beginning ; why not 

 the complete structure out of which they arose ? 



We may put back the beginning for millions of ages, and 

 these we may multiply by millions again, but still thought 

 en(j[uiies What came first of all ? " And even if we predicate 

 the eternity of matter, we have silenced, but not answered, tlie 

 question that is still insistent, " Whence came that eternal 

 matter ? " 



Another attempt to answer the question "What was the 

 beginning ? " likewise evades the question without answering 

 it. This attempt affirms that the universe is without 

 beginning ; not because it always existed, but because it never 

 did so. The universe is declared to be " the great illusion " ; we 

 have indeed a conception of it, but outside that conception it 

 does not exist ; the conception has no correspondence in reality. 

 Here again the ordinar}^ experience of men leads them to reject 

 this evasion, as it leads them to reject the evasion of materialism. 

 If we reason at all about the ordinary experiences of life, we 

 know well that we reason differently, and order our intellectual 

 operations according to different rules from those adopted by the 

 philosophers who assert, either that the universe has always 

 existed, or that its present existence is a mere phantasm. 



To most men who have thought on this subject, probably to 

 all in this room, it seems self-evident both that the universe 

 does exist, and that it had a beginning. 



We desire then to know how the universe came into 

 existence. Many who put this question desire, and indeed 



