330 
brought to absurd or contradictory conclusions. We can only 
say that as the regularity of nature indicates law, so the irre- 
gularity of nature, its infinite variety, its unsyinmetrical com- 
plexity, points no less distinctly to will acting, not without 
order, in accordance with law. But, indeed, no reasonable 
account can be given of a Divine will acting and then ceasing to 
act ; whereas an eternally active Will is involved in the very 
idea of God, and none will question that if Will has at all 
acted in the Creation of the Universe as it exists, it must be 
the Will of One who is both Eternal and Infinite. 
32. No doubt the difficulty which many scientific minds feel 
in regard to this question is, that it seems to them impossible 
that Will should determine results in the Universe, without 
being somewhat of the same nature as a physical force ; and 
from any idea of this kind the scientific mind recoils as an 
absurdity. But surely the analogy of the actual operation of 
the relations, whatever they may be, between organic life and 
law, ought to be of itself a sufficient reply to any such objec- 
tion. Much of the infinite variety of nature is due to the fact 
that besides the mechanical forces of the physical universe, 
there is what we understand by life. Nothing seems to be 
more clearly established by science than that life creates no 
force, that it adds nothing to the stock of material energies, 
but that in all the phenomena of life that which already exists 
is employed to produce the results. When a plant springs 
up from the earth and, apparently in defiance of the laws of 
gravitation, throws out its shoots into the air, and forms its 
leaves and blossoms and fruit according to the laws of its 
own growth, this is no contradiction to the laws of inorganic 
matter, nor are the material energies which produce this result 
something which did not exist before. It is merely that those 
physical agencies, for which the environments of the plant 
supply the materials, are called into its service ; for life is in 
some sense, and to some extent, quite beyond our knowledge, 
the master, while the material energies are its servants. 
33. Without in the least professing to explain that which 
to finite reason may be inexplicable, yet it may illustrate the 
meaning, or at least somewhat aid the conception of this, if we 
take simply the case of kinetic energy, which, as is known, is 
in proportion to the square of the velocity, and is measui’ed 
by half the product of this quantity into the mass. Now, 
by the law of the conservation of energy, the sum of all the 
energies of a system can neither be increased nor be dimi- 
nished by the mutual action of the parts of the system. 
In regard to this, life introduces no change whatever. But 
it must bo observed that this law is quite insufficient of itself 
