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the logical contradictions involved in the conception of matter as 
an inert, substantive entity, and yet making itself known, mani- 
festing itself to man by a power of resistance, which shows it to 
be not absolutely inert, we may assert that the admission of the 
conception makes Dualism, or the acknowledgment of the co- 
eternity of God and matter, well-nigh inevitable : for we may 
well question whether it is within the compass of omnipotence 
to create the absolute opposite of itself, any more than it can 
make two and two equal to five. I for my part prefer to hold 
that, as God created man in His own spiritual image, and as man 
is the microcosm, the sum and head of nature (as far as this 
planet is concerned), so his highest and truest, ix. his spiri- 
tual being, represents that which nature, or — let us say it boldly 
— matter, germinautly is. Atoms, whatever else they may be, 
have, as I believe, an ideal or spiritual aspect, which is "their 
fundamental and controlling one; and all force is reducible to 
will-power. This involves the imputation to “ atoms of a germ 
of consciousness/’ As compared with man, they are unconscious. 
But implicitly and germinantly they are conscious. Whatever 
orderly or intelligent things they, or any other creature inferior 
to man, may do without the consciousness of self, we have no 
reason to suppose that they do otherwise than in obedience 
to a law or laws originating with and enforced bv God 
Himself. 
Do we then identify God and the world? By no means. The 
world has its being in God, but is not God ; it is of divine origin 
and nature, but not of divine essence. God is in principle iude- 
pendeut of the world (transcendent), but in fact not separate 
from it (He is immanent in it, or rather it is immanent in Him); 
“He is not far from every one of us/’ The world, on the other 
nand, is absolutely dependent on God as the principle or source 
of its being and of its continuance. The nearest approach in 
the world to a form of existence in any sense independent of 
God, is found in finite personalities, which possess a relative 
freedom of the will, but the perfect use and development of 
whose freedom consists in complete conformity to the will of 
God, perceived by the reason and heartily embraced in love.* 
God is a perfect, personal spirit. We can have no concep- 
tion, and we are not justified by the logical laws of scientific 
* the continuity, .as above defined, of God and the world is impressively 
illustrated lor Christian philosophy in the central figure of Christianity, 
Jesus Christ, who is, on the one hand, the Son of Man, the very principle 
of our humanity and of the world s existence, and, on the other, the Son of 
God, “ in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” 
