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I. The natural basis--the doctrine of creation.
I. The Bible affirms, and perhaps it is the only book that does so, that all things, visible and invisible, have originated from God by a free act of creation.2 The Bible doctrine of creation is something more than the Mosaic cosmogony. For my present purpose it is indifferent how we interpret the first chapter of Genesis--whether as the result of direct Revelation,
2 Gen. i. 1; John i. 2; Col. i. 16; Heb. xi. 3. etc.
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or as the expression of certain great religious truths in such forms as the natural knowledge of the age admitted of. I believe myself that the narrative gives evidence of its Divine original in its total difference of character from all heathen cosmogonies, but this is a view I need not press.1 The main point is the absolute derivation of all things from God, and on this truth the Scripture as a whole gives no uncertain sound. Discussions have been raised as to the exact force of the Hebrew word (bara) used to express the idea of creation,2 but even this is of subordinate importance in view of the fact, which none will dispute, that the uniform teaching of Scripture is that the universe had its origin, not from the fashioning of pre-existent matter, but directly from the will and word of the Almighty.3 "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast."4
Not only is this doctrine of creation fundamental in Scripture, but it is of great practical significance. It might be thought, of what practical importance is it to us to know how the world originated? Is not this a question of purely speculative interest? But a moment's reflection will convince us that it is not so. The vital thing in religion is the relation of dependence. To feel that we and our world, that our human life and all that we are and have, absolutely depend on God,--this is the primary attitude of religion. For if they do not thus depend,--if there is anything in the universe which exists out of and independently of God,--then what guarantee have we for the unfailing execution of His purposes, what ground have we for that assured trust in His Providence which Christ inculcates, what security have we that all things will work together for good? But to affirm that all things depend on God is just in another way to affirm the creation of all things by God. They would not depend on Him if He were not their Creator. They do depend on Him, because they are created by Him. The doctrine of
1 Note A.--The Creation History.
2 Cf. Delitzsch's Genesis, ch. i. 1, and Schultz's Alt. Theol. pp. 570, 571.
3 "Creation out of nothing," says Rothe, "is not found in express words in Holy Scripture. . . . The fact itself, however, is expressed in Scripture quite definitely, since it teaches throughout, with all emphasis, that, through His word and almighty will alone, God has called into being the world, which before did not exist, and this not merely in respect of its form, but also of its matter."--Dogmatik, i. 133.
4 Ps. xxxiii. 9.
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creation, therefore, is not a mere speculation.- Only this conviction that it is "the Lord that made heaven and earth"1--that "of Him, amid through Him, and to Him, are all things"2--that He has created all things, and for His pleasure they are and were created,3--can give us the confidence we need in a holy and wise government of the universe, and in a final triumph of good over evil.
If the doctrine of creation is the only one which meets the wants of our religious nature, it may new further be affirmed that it is a doctrine consonant with reason, and consistent with all true knowledge. It is opposed, first, to all forms of dualism; secondly, to a merely logical derivation of the universe; and thirdly, to the atheistic assertion of the self-subsistence and eternity of the universe. Let us glance briefly at these various oppositions.
1. Partly on metaphysical, partly on moral grounds, some have revived the old Platonic doctrine of an eternal matter, or ether independent principle, which exists alongside the Deity, and conditions and limits Him in His working. Thus Dr. Martineau holds that, in order to afford an objective field for the Divine operations, we must assume something to have been always there, a primitive datum, eternal as God Himself;4 while the late J. S. Mill thought the difficulties of the universe could be best explained by supposing the Creator hampered by the insufficiency and intractableness of the materials He had to work with.5 Karl Peters, a disciple of the pessimistic school already mentioned, sets up space as a second eternal principle beside God;6 and others have held similar views. Philosophically, these theories are condemned by the fact that they set up two absolutes in the universe, which, if they really were absolutes, could never be brought into any relation to each other, much less be embraced in a single act of knowledge. Suppose this eternal matter to exist outside of God, how could it ever get to be known by God, or how could He ever act upon it, seeing that it has its being utterly apart from Him?
1 Ps. cxxi. 2.
2 Rom. xi. 36.
3 Rev. iv. 11. Revised Version reads: "For Thou didst create all things; and because of Thy will they are and were created."
4 Study of Religion, pp. 405-408; Seat of Authority, pp. 32, 33.
5 Three Essays on Religion, pp. 178, 186. Cf. Plato, Timaeus, p. 51 (Marg. Jowett's Plato, iii.).
6 Willenswelt, pp. 335--344.
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Or, if it is not out of relation to His intelligence, by what middle term is this relation brought about? This, which applies to two absolutes, applies, of course, much more to a theory which starts from an infinity of independent atoms-- that is, from an infinite of absolutes. But these theories are weighted with difficulties of another kind. An absolutely quality less matter, or u52lh, such as Plato supposes,1 is unthinkable and impossible. Plato himself is compelled to describe it as a mh\ on, or nothing. It is a mere abstraction.2 Is Dr. Martineau's eternal matter, which has no properties of any kind till the Creator bestows them upon it, in any better case? When, again, Mr. Mill identifies this eternal element, not with naked matter, but with the matter and force which we know-- with constituted matter, clothed with all its existing properties and laws--are we not in the new predicament of having to account for this matter? How came it there? Whence this definite constitution? Whence these powers and properties and laws which, in their marvellous adjustments and inter- relations, show as much evidence of design as any other parts of the universe? To suppose that "the given properties of matter and force, working together and fitting into one another"3--which is Mr. Mill's own phrase--need no explanation, but only the uses subsequently made of them, is to manifest a strange blindness to the fundamental conditions of the problem.
2.If the Scripture view of creation is opposed to dualism in all its forms, it is not less opposed to every theory of a mere logical derivation of the universe--whether, with Spinoza, the universe is supposed to flow, with logical necessity, from an absolute substance;4 or with Hegel, to be the development of
1 Cf. his Timaeus, pp. 27, 35, 50, 51.
2 Dr. Stirling says: "A substance without quality were a non-ens, and a quality without a substance were but a fiction in the air. Matter, if to be, must be permeated by form; and equally form, if to be, must be realised by matter. Substance takes being from quality; quality, actuality from substance. That is metaphysic; but it is seen to be as well physic,--it is seen to have a physical existence; it is seen to be in rerum natura."--Phil. and Theol. p. 43.
3 Three Essays, p. 178. I may refer for further development of this argument to two articles by myself in The Theological Monthly (July and August, 1891), on "John Stuart Mill and Christianity."
4 Cf. Spinoza's Ethics, Part I. Prop. 29.--" Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the Divine nature." Prop. 33.--"Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained."
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an impersonal Reason; or with Green, to arise from a Reason that is self-conscious. It is this doctrine of a necessary derivation of the universe which takes the place in modern times of the old theories of emanation; but I shall only make two remarks on it. (1)It involves an amazing assumption. The assumption is that this universe, which exhibits so much evidence of wise arrangement, and of the free selection of means to attain ends, is the only universe possible, and could not, by any supposition, be other than it is. Such a theory may be the only one open to those who hold the ground of the universe to be impersonal; but it is not one which a true Theism can sanction, and it is unprovable. Why should infinite wisdom not choose its ends, and also freely choose the means by which they are to be accomplished? Which is the higher view--that which regards the Divine Being as bound down to a single system--one, too, which wisdom, love, and freedom have no share in producing, but which flows from the nature of its cause with the same necessity with which the properties of a triangle flow from the triangle; or that which supposes the universe to have originated in a free, intelligent act, based on the counsels of an infinite wisdom and goodness?1 (2) As in this theory no place is left f or freedom in God, so logically it leaves no place for freedom in man. Freedom implies initiative, control, a choice between possible alternatives. But, on this theory we are considering, freedom can never be more than a semblance. Whether the individual recognises it or not, all that he sees around him, and all that takes place within him, is but the working out of an immanent logical necessity.2 Things are what they are by a necessity as stringent as that which obtains in mathematics, and as little room is left for human initiative as on the most thorough-going mechanical or materialistic hypothesis. History, too, shows that the step from the one kind of determinism to the other is never difficult to take. The consciousness of(pg126-127 missing)
1 Cf. Veitch's Knowing and Being, pp. 290, 291.
2 Lotze discusses "the conception of the world" as "a necessary, involuntary, and inevitable development of the nature of God," and says regarding it: "It is wholly useless from the religions point of view, because it leads consistently to nothing but a thorough-going determinism, according to which not only is everything that must happen, in case certain conditions occur, appointed in pursuance of general laws; but according to which even the successive occurrence of these conditions, and consequently the whole of history with all its details, is predetermined."--Outlines of the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 71, 72 (Eng. trans.).
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freedom, however, is a fact too deeply rooted in our personality; too many interests depond on it to admit of its being this put aside at the bidding of any theory, metaphysical or other; and so long as human freedom stands, this view of the origin of the universe can never gain general acceptance.
3. In the third place, the doctrine of creation is opposed to the atheistic assertion of the self-subsistence and eternity of the universe. I may here point out the indications which science itself gives that the universe is neither self-subsistent nor eternal. Science, indeen, cannot prove the creation of the world, but it may bring us to that point at which we are compelled to assume creation.
(1) In the analysis of nature, science compels us to go back to primordial elements. The atomic constitution of matter seems one of the surest results of science,1 and it is not yet suggested that these primordial elements are developed from one anoher by any process of evolution, or that their homogeneous structure and identical properties are to be accounted for by natural selection or any similar cause. Here, then, is one limit to evolution, and it is important that those who are disposed to regard evolution as all-embracing should take notice of it. But science not only tells us that the universe is built up of atoms, it finds that each of these atoms is a little world in itself in intricacy and complexity of structure;2 and the fact that all atoms of the same class are exactly alike, perfect copies of each other in size, shape, weight, and proportion, irresistibly suggests the inference that they have a common cause. "When we see a reat number of things," says Sir John Herschel, "precisely alike, we do not believe this similarity to have originated except from a common
1 Professor Clifford said: "What I wish to impress upon you is this, that what is called 'the atomic theory'--that is just what I have been explaining--is not longer in the position of a theory, but that such of the facts as I have just explained to you are really things which are definitely know, and which are no longer suppositions."--Manchester Science Lectures on "Atoms," Nov. 1872. Cf. art. "Atom" in Ency. Brit., and Stallo's Concepts of Modern Physics, pp. 28, 29.
2 The authors of The Unseen Universe say: "To our minds it appears no less false to pronounce eternal that aggregation we call the atom, than it woudl be to pronounce eternal that aggregation we call the sun."--P. 213. Cf. p.139. Professor Jevons believes that "even chemical atoms are very complicated structures; that an atom of pure iron is probably a vastly more complicated system than that of the planets an their satellities."--Principles of Science, ii. p.452.
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principle independent of them." Applying this to the atoms, he observes, "the discoveries alluded to effectually destroy the idea of an eternally self-existent matter, by giving to each of its atoms the essential characters at once of a manufactured article and a subordinate agent."1 This reasoning, I think, will command general assent, though fastidiousness may be offended with the phrase "manufactured article" as applied to a work of Deity.
(2) Science compels us to go back to a beginning in time. No doctrine comes here more powerully to our support than the doctrine of evolution which some suppose to be a denial of creation. If the universe were a stable system,--i.e. if it were not in a condition of constant development and change,--it might with some plausibility be argued that it had existed from eternity. But our knowledge of the past history of the world shows us that this is not its character; that, on the contrary, it is progressive and developing.2 Now it lies in the very thought of a developing universe that, as we trace it back through narrower and narrower circles of development, we come at last to a beginning,--to some point from which the evolution started.3 The alternative to this is an eternal succession of cycles of existence, a theory which has often recurred, but which brings us back to the impossible conception of a chain without a first link, of a series every term of which depends on a preceding, while yet the whole series depends on nothing.4 Science can give no proof of an eternal succession, but so far as it has any voice on the subject points in an opposite direction, by showing that when the universe has parted with its energy, as it is in constant procedss of doing, it has no means of restoring it again.5
1 Quoted in Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, p.105, and endorsed by Professor Clerk-Maxwell--art. "Atom," Ency. Brit.; and by the authors of The Unseen Universe. The latter say: "Now, this production was as far as we can judge, a sporadic or abrupt act, and the substance produced, that is to say, the atoms which form the substratum of the present universe, bear (as Herschel and Clerk-Maxwell have well said), from their uniformith of constitution, all the marks of being manufactured articles."--P. 214.
2 This does not necessarily mean acceptance of the nebular theory of development. See Note B.--Evolution in Inorganic Nature--The Nebular Hypothesis.
3 Professor Clerk-Maxwell says: "This idea of a beginning is one which the physical researches of recent times have brought home to us, more than any observer of the course of scientific thought in former times would have had reason to expect."--Address to Math. and Phys. Sect. of Brit. Assoc., 1870.
4 See Note C.--The Hypothesis of Cycles.
5 See passages quoted in Note C.
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(3) Finally, it is the view of many distinguished evolutionists, that the course of evolution itself compels us to recognise the existence of breaks in the chain of development, where, as they think, some new and creative cause must have come into operation. I may instance Mr. Wallace, a thoroughgoing evolutionist, who recognises three such "stages in the development of the organic world, when some new cause or power must necessarily have come into action," viz. (a) at the introduction of life, (b) at the introduction of sensation or consciousness, (c) at the introduction of man.1 With the view I hold of development as a process, determined from within, I do not feel the same need for emphasising these as "breaks." We have, indeed, at the points named, the appearance of something entirely new, but so have we, in a lesser degree, with every advance or improvement in the organism, e.g., with the first rudiment of an eye, or of a new organ of any kind. The action of the creative cause is spread along the whole line of the advance, revealing itself in higher and higher potencies as the development proceeds. It only breaks out more manifestly at the points named, where it founds a new order or kingdom of existence.2
While thus advocating, as part of the doctrine of creation, a beginning of the world in time, I am not insensible to the enormous difficulties involved in that conception. Prior to that beginning we have still, it may appear, to postulate a beginningless eternity, during which God existed alone. The Divine purpose to create was there, but it had not passed into act. Here arises the difficulty. How are we to fill up in thought these blank eternal ages in the Divine life? The doctrine of
1 Darwinism, pp. 474-476.
2 Mr. Gore has said: "The term supernatural is purely relative to what at any particular stage of thought we mean by nature. Nature is a progressive development of life, and each new stage of life appears supernatural from the point of view of what lies below it."--The Incarnation (Bampton Lectures), p. 85. Lange has expanded the same thought. "Each stage of nature," he says, "prepares for a higher; which in turn maybe regarded as above nature, as contrary to nature, and yet as only higher nature, since it introduces a new and higher principle of life into the existent and natural order of things. . . . Thus the chemical principle appeared as a miracle in the elementary world, as introducing a new and higher life; similarly the principle of crystallisation is a miracle with reference to the lower principle of chemical affinity; the plant, a miracle above the crystal; the animal, a miracle in reference to the plant; and man, over all the animal world. Lastly, Christ, as the Second Man, the God-Man, is a miracle above all the world of the first man, who is of the earth earthy."--Com. on Matt. p. 152 (Eng. trans.).
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the Trinity, with its suggestion of an internal Divine life and love, comes in as an aid,1 but, abstracting from the thought of the world, of the universe afterwards to be created, we know of nothing to serve as a content of the Divine mind, unless it be the so-called "eternal truths." So that here we are in, presence of a great deep. A yet greater difficulty arises when we ask, Since God purposed to create, why was creation so long delayed? Why was a whole eternity allowed to elapse before the purpose was put into execution?2 If it was a satisfaction to love and wisdom to produce a universe, why was creation not as eternal as the purpose of it? Why an eternity's quiescence, and then this transient act? Or rather, since in eternity no one moment is indistinguishable from another, why this particular moment chosen for creation? The very mentioning of these difficulties suggests that somehow we are on a wrong track, and that the solution lies--since solution there must be, whether we can reach it or not--in the revisal of the notions we set out with as to the relations of eternity to time.
First, some have sought to cut this knot by the doctrine of an Eternal Creation. God, it is thought, did not wait through a solitary eternity before He called the world into existence-the act of creation is coeval with His Being, and the world, though a creature and dependent, is eternal as Himself. This was the doctrine of Origen in the early Church, of Erigena in the Middle Ages, and has been revived by Rothe, Darner, Lotze, and many others in modern times. It is carefully to be distinguished from the doctrine of a pre-existent eternal matter formerly referred to. But I do not think it solves the difficulty. It is either only the doctrine of an eternal series of worlds in another form,. and is exposed to all the difficulties of that assumption; or it seeks to evade these difficulties by the hypothesis of an undeveloping spiritual world, standing, as Dorner says, in the light of eternity, antecedent to the existing
1 Cf. Professor Flint, in Anti-Theistic Theories, pp. 438, 439. He remarks: "Although Omnipotence cannot express itself fully in the finite world to which we belong, the Divine nature may be in itself an infinite universe, where this and all other attributes can find complete expression. . . . The Divine nature must have in itself a plenitude of power and glory, to which the production of numberless worlds can add nothing."
2 This objection was early urged against the doctrine of creation. Cf. Origen, De Principiis, Book iii. 5; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book xi. 5.
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one--an hypothesis which leaves the origin of the temporal and developing world precisely where it was. Besides, how is the purpose of God ever to be summed up into a unity, if there is literally no beginning and no goal in creation?1 Secondly, another form of solution is that of the speculative philosophers, who would have us regard the distinction of time and eternity as due only to our finite standpoint, and who bid us raise ourselves to that higher point of view from which all things are beheld, in Spinoza's phrase,sub specie aeternitatis.2 The meaning of this is, that what exists for our consciousness as a time-development exists for the Divine consciousness as an eternally complete whole. For God, temporal succession has no existence. The universe, with all its determinations, past, present, and future, stands before the Divine mind in simultaneous reality. Language of this kind is found in Spinoza, Fichte, Hegel, Green,3 and is to be met with sometimes in more orthodox theologians. It is, however, difficult to see what meaning can be attached to it which does not reduce all history to an illusion.4 For, after all, time-development is a reality. There is succession in our conscious life, and in the events of nature. The things that happened yesterday are not the things that are happening to-day. The things that are happening today are not the things that will happen to-morrow. The past is past; the future is not yet come. It is plain that if time is a reality, the future is not yet present to God, except ideally.
1 See See Note D.--"Eternal Creation."
2 Spinoza's Ethics, Part II. Prop. 44, Cor. ii.--"It is the nature of reason to perceive things sub quadam aeternitatis specie."
3 A good illustration is afforded by Mr. Green in a fragment on Immortality. "As a determination of thought," he says, "everything is eternal. What are we to say, then, to the extinct races of animals, the past formations of the earth? How can that which is extinct and past be eternal? . . . The process is eternal, and they as stages in it are so too. That which has passed away is only their false appearance of being independent entities, related only to themselves, as opposed to being stages, essentially related to a before and after. In other words, relatively to our temporal consciousness, which can only present one thing to itself at a time, and therefore supposes that when A follows B, B ceases to exist, they have perished; relatively to the thought which, as eternal, holds past, present, and future together, they are permanent; their very transitoriness is eternal."--Works, iii. p. 159.
4 Hegel, indeed, says: "Within the range of the finite we can never see that the end or aim has really been secured. The consummation of the infinite aim, therefore, consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. . . . It is this illusion under which we live. . . . In the course of its process the Idea makes itself that illusion, by setting an antithesis to confront it; and its action consists in getting rid of the illusion which it has created."--Wallace's Logic of Hegel, p. 304.
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The events that will happen to-morrow are not yet existent. Else life is a dream; all, as the Indian philosophers say, is Maya,--illusion, appearance, seeming. Even if life is a dream, there is succession in the thoughts of that dream, and time is still not got rid of. I cannot see, therefore, that without reducing the process of the world to unreality, this view of it as an eternally completed fact can be upheld. In an ideal sense the world may be, doubtless is, present to the Divine mind; but as regards the parts of it yet future, it cannot be so actually.1 What other solution, then, is possible? The solution must lie in getting a proper idea of the relation of eternity to time, and this, so far as I can see, has not yet been satisfactorily accomplished. The nearest analogy I can suggest is that of the spiritual thinking principle within ourselves, which remains a constant factor in all the flux of our thoughts and feelings. It is in the midst of them, yet it is out of the flux and above them. It is not involved in the succession of time, for it is the principle which itself relates things in the succession of time-for which, therefore, such succession exists. I would only venture to remark, further, that even if the universe were conceived of as originating in an eternal act, it would still, to a mind capable of tracing it back through the various stages of its development, present the aspect of a temporal beginning. Before this beginning, it would be possible for the mind to extend its vision indefinitely backwards through imaginary ages, which yet had no existence save as its own ideal construction. But God's eternity is not to be identified with this thought of an indefinitely extended time. Eternity we may rather take to be an expression for the timeless necessity of God's existence; and time, properly speaking, begins its course only with the world.2 A few words before leaving this part of the subject on the motive and end of creation. If we reject the idea of metaphysical necessity, and think of creation as originating in a free, intelligent act, it must, like every similar act, be conceived of
1 Cf. Veitch's Knowing and Being, chap. vii.; Seth's Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 180-184; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilosophie, iii. pp. 293-295 (Eng. trans.); Lotze, Microcosmus, ii. p. 711 (Eng. trans.); and see Note D. to Lect. III.
2 See Note E.--Eternity and Time.
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as proceeding from a motive, which includes in it at the -same time a rational end. And if God is free, personal Spirit, who is at the same time ethical Will, what motive is possible but goodness or love, or what end can be thought of but an ethical one? In this way it may be held that, though the universe is not the product of a logical or metaphysical necessity, it arises from the nature of God by a moral necessity which is one with the highest freedom, and thus the conception of creation may be secured from arbitrariness. It is an old thought that the motive to the creation of the world was the goodness of the Creator. Plato expresses this idea in his Timaeus,1 and points to a yet more comprehensive view when, in the Republic, he names "the Good" as the highest principle both of knowledge and of existence.2 Since the time of Kant, philosophy has dealt m very earnest fashion with this idea of "the Good"--now conceived of as ethical good, but likewise as including in it the highest happiness and blessedness--as at once the moving cause and end of the world. Start from the postulate of Kant, that moral ends are alone of absolute worth, and the inference is irresistible that the world as a whole is constituted for moral ends, and that it has its cause in a Supreme Original Good, which produces the natural for the sake of the moral, and is guiding the universe to a moral goal.3 Hence, from his principles, Kant arrives at the notion of an ethical community or "Kingdom of God," having the laws of virtue as its basis and aim, as the end to which creation tends.4 Lotze takes up the same thought of a world ordered in conformity with the idea of "the Good," and having its source in a Highest-Good Personal, and from him chiefly it has entered into Ritschlian theology.5 But Christian theology from its own standpoint arrives at a similar result. We have but to ask, with Dorner, What is the relation of the ethical nature of God to the other distinctions we ascribe to Him? to see that "the non-ethical distinctions in and
1 Timaeus, p.29--"Let me tell you, then, why the Creator created and made the universe. He was good, and no goodness can ever have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, He desired that all things should be as like Himself as possible."--Jowett's Plato, iii. p. 613.
2 Republic, Bk. vi.
3 See last Lecture, pp. 108-109.
4 In his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Bk. iii. Cf. Seth's From Kant to Hegel, pp. 123, 124; Caird's Philosophy of Kant, pp. 611-613.
5 Cf. Microcosmus, ii. p. 728 (Eng. trans.); Outlines of Metaphysic, pp. 151, 152 (Eng. trans.).
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the nature of God are related to the ethical as means to an end; but the absolute end can only lie in morality, for it alone is of absolute worth."1 In the graduated system of ends of which the universe consists, the moral, in other words, must be presumed to be the highest. And this is precisely what Christianity declares when it teaches that Christ and the kingdom of God are the consummation of God's world-purpose; that the government of the world is carried on for moral ends; and that "all things work together for good to them that love God."2
1 Christian Ethics, p. 65 (Eng. trans.).
2 Rom. viii. 28.