Have the pebbles of the fiord a perception of their combined being?

have they a consciousness of the colors they present to the eye of
man? do they hear the music of the waves that lap them? Let us

therefore spring over and not attempt to sound the abysmal depths
presented to our minds in the union of a Material universe and a

Spiritual universe,--a creationvisible, ponderable, tangible,
terminating in a creation invisible, imponderable, intangible;

completely dissimilar, separated by the void, yet united by
indisputable bonds and meeting in a being who derives equally from the

one and from the other! Let us mingle in one world these two worlds,
absolutely irreconcilable to your philosophies, but conjoined by fact.

However abstract man may suppose the relation which binds two things
together, the line of junction is perceptible. How? Where? We are not

now in search of the vanishing point where Matter subtilizes. If such
were the question, I cannot see why He who has, by physical relations,

studded with stars at immeasurable distances the heavens which veil
Him, may not have created solid substances, nor why you deny Him the

faculty of giving a body to thought.
"Thus your invisible moral universe and your visiblephysicaluniverse

are one and the same matter. We will not separate properties from
substances, nor objects from effects. All that exists, all that

presses upon us and overwhelms us from above or from below, before us
or in us, all that which our eyes and our minds perceive, all these

named and unnamed things compose--in order to fit the problem of
Creation to the measure of your logic--a block of finite Matter; but

were it infinite, God would still not be its master. Now, reasoning
with your views, dear pastor, no matter in what way God the infinite

is concerned with this block of finite Matter, He cannot exist and
retain the attributes with which man invests Him. Seek Him in facts,

and He is not; spiritually and materially, you have made God
impossible. Listen to the Word of human Reason forced to its ultimate

conclusions.
"In bringing God face to face with the Great Whole, we see that only

two states are possible between them,--either God and Matter are
contemporaneous, or God existed alone before Matter. Were Reason--the

light that has guided the human race from the dawn of its existence--
accumulated in one brain, even that mighty brain could not invent a

third mode of being without suppressing both Matter and God. Let human
philosophies pile mountain upon mountain of words and of ideas, let

religions accumulate images and beliefs, revelations and mysteries,
you must face at last this terrible dilemma and choose between the two

propositions which compose it; you have no option, and one as much as
the other leads human reason to Doubt.

"The problem thus established, what signifies Spirit or Matter? Why
trouble about the march of the worlds in one direction or in another,

since the Being who guides them is shown to be an absurdity" target="_blank" title="n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论">absurdity? Why
continue to ask whether man is approaching heaven or receding from it,

whether creation is rising towards Spirit or descending towards
Matter, if the questioned universe gives no reply? What signifies

theogonies and their armies, theologies and their dogmas, since
whichever side of the problem is man's choice, his God exists not? Let

us for a moment take up the first proposition, and suppose God
contemporaneous with Matter. Is subjection to the action or the co-

existence of an alien substance consistent with being God at all? In
such a system, would not God become a secondary agent compelled to

organize Matter? If so, who compelled Him? Between His material gross
companion and Himself, who was the arbiter? Who paid the wages of the

six days' labor imputed to the great Designer? Has any determining
force been found which was neither God nor Matter? God being regarded

as the manufacturer of the machinery of the worlds, is it not as
ridiculous to call Him God as to call the slave who turns the

grindstone a Roman citizen? Besides, another difficulty, as insoluble
to this supreme human reason as it is to God, presents itself.

"If we carry the problem higher, shall we not be like the Hindus, who
put the world upon a tortoise, the tortoise on an elephant, and do not

know on what the feet of their elephant may rest? This supreme will,
issuing from the contest between God and Matter, this God, this more

than God, can He have existed throughout eternity without willing what
He afterwards willed,--admitting that Eternity can be divided into two

eras. No matter where God is, what becomes of His intuitive
intelligence if He did not know His ultimate thought? Which, then, is

the true Eternity,--the created Eternity or the uncreated? But if God
throughout all time did will the world such as it is, this new

necessity, which harmonizes with the idea of sovereign intelligence,
implies the co-eternity of Matter. Whether Matter be co-eternal by a

divine will necessarily accordant with itself from the beginning, or
whether Matter be co-eternal of its own being, the power of God, which

must be absolute, perishes if His will is circumscribed; for in that
case God would find within Him a determining force which would control

Him. Can He be God if He can no more separate Himself from His
creation in a past eternity than in the coming eternity?

"This face of the problem is insoluble in its cause. Let us now
inquire into its effects. If a God compelled to have created the world

from all eternity seems inexplicable, He is quite as unintelligible in
perpetual cohesion with His work. God, constrained to live eternally

united to His creation is held down to His first position as workman.
Can you conceive of a God who shall be neither independent of nor

dependent on His work? Could He destroy that work without challenging
Himself? Ask yourself, and decide! Whether He destroys it some day, or

whether He never destroys it, either way is fatal to the attributes
without which God cannot exist. Is the world an experiment? is it a

perishable form to which destruction must come? If it is, is not God
inconsistent and impotent? inconsistent, because He ought to have seen

the result before the attempt,--moreover why should He delay to
destroy that which He is to destroy?--impotent, for how else could He

have created an imperfect man?
"If an imperfectcreation contradicts the faculties which man

attributes to God we are forced back upon the question, Is creation
perfect? The idea is in harmony with that of a God supremely

intelligent who could make no mistakes; but then, what means the
degradation of His work, and its regeneration? Moreover, a perfect

world is, necessarily, indestructible; its forms would not perish, it
could neither advance nor recede, it would revolve in the everlasting

circumference from which it would never issue. In that case God would
be dependent on His work; it would be co-eternal with Him; and so we

fall back into one of the propositions most antagonistic to God. If
the world is imperfect, it can progress; if perfect, it is stationary.

On the other hand, if it be impossible to admit of a progressive God
ignorant through a past eternity of the results of His creative work,

can there be a stationary God? would not that imply the triumph of
Matter? would it not be the greatest of all negations? Under the first

hypothesis God perishes through weakness; under the second through the
Force of his inertia.

"Therefore, to all sincere minds the supposition that Matter, in the
conception and execution of the worlds, is contemporaneous with God,

is to deny God. Forced to choose, in order to govern the nations,
between the two alternatives of the problem, whole generations have

preferred this solution of it. Hence the doctrine of the two
principles of Magianism, brought from Asia and adopted in Europe under

the form of Satan warring with the Eternal Father. But this religious
formula and the innumerable aspects of divinity that have sprung from

it are surely crimes against the Majesty Divine. What other term can
we apply to the belief which sets up as a rival to God a

personification of Evil, striving eternally against the Omnipotent
Mind without the possibility of ultimatetriumph? Your statics declare

that two Forces thus pitted against each other are reciprocally
rendered null.

"Do you turn back, therefore, to the other side of the problem, and
say that God pre-existed, original, alone?

"I will not go over the preceding arguments (which here return in full
force) as to the severance of Eternity into two parts; nor the

questions raised by the progression or the immobility of the worlds;
let us look only at the difficulties inherent to this second theory.

If God pre-existed alone, the world must have emanated from Him;
Matter was therefore drawn from His essence; consequently Matter in

itself is non-existent; all forms are veils to cover the Divine
Spirit. If this be so, the World is Eternal, and also it must be God.