himself; no object moves and acts absolutely from and for itself alone. This reveals a single alloriginating, all-pervading, all-sustaining principle. These manifold mutually dependent existences imply one independent existence. The limitations. assigned to all individual persons and things point to a Being which limits them all. Particular causes and secondary movements lead back to "a cause of causes," "a first mover, itself immovable, yet making all things else to move."

The first cause must be far more truly and properly a cause than any secondary cause. In fact, as we have already seen, a secondary cause is not strictly a cause; so far as secondary, it merely transmits to its consequent what it has received from its antecedent. There may be a succession of a thousand such causes in a process, yet the first cause is also the last, and there is, in fact, all through, but one cause; the others merely convey and communicate its force. A machine, however numerous its parts and movements, does not create the least amount of force; on the contrary, the most perfect machine wastes and absorbs some of the force which is imparted to it. The universe, so far as subject to mechanical laws, is merely a machine which transmits a given quantity of force, but which no more creates it than it creates itself. The author of that force is the one true cause of all physical phenomena. Life is probably, and

mind is certainly, not entirely explicable on mechanical principles; but neither life nor mind can be maintained to do more than to determine the direction or application of the power implanted in them, or rendered accessible to them, through the working of the first cause. All things must, consequently, "live, move, and have their being" therein. It is at their end as well as at their origin; it encompasses them, all round; it penetrates them, all through. The least things are not merely linked on to it through intermediate agencies which go back an enormous distance, but are immediately present to it, and filled to the limit of their faculties with its power. It is in every ray of sunlight, every breath of wind, and blade of grass; it is the source and life of all human minds and hearts. The pantheist errs not so much in what he affirms of it, as in what he denies to it.

This cause the cause of causes-must, it is further obvious, be in possession of a power far beyond the comprehension of our reasons or imaginations. All other power is derived from its power. All the power which is distributed and distinguished in secondary causes must be combined and united in the first cause. Now, think what an enormous power there is displayed even in this world. In every half-ounce of coal there is stored up power enough, if properly used, to draw two tons a mile. How vast, then, the power which

God has deposited in the coal-beds of the world alone! The inhabitants of this little island, by availing themselves of the natural forces which Providence has placed at their disposal, annually accomplish more work than could by any possibility be effected by the inhabitants of the whole earth, if they exerted merely the power which is in their own bodies, the power of human bones and muscles. And yet there can be little doubt that, even in this country, we make no use at all of many natural agents, and only a wasteful use of any of them. "Weigh the earth on which we dwell," says an astronomer; "count the millions of its inhabitants that have come and gone for the last six thousand years; unite their strength into one arm; and test its power in an effort to move the earth. It could not stir it a single foot in a thousand years; and yet, under the omnipotent hand of God, not a minute passes that it does not fly far more than a thousand miles." The earth, however, is but a mere atom in the universe. Through the vast abysses of space there are scattered countless systems, at enormous distances, yet all related; glorious galaxies of suns, planets, satellites, comets, all sweeping onwards in their appointed courses. How mighty the arm which impels and guides the whole! God can do all that, for He continually does it. How much more He could do than He does, we cannot know. The power of no true

cause, of no free cause, is to be measured by what it does. It must be adequate to produce its actual effects, but it may be able to produce countless merely possible effects. It has power over its powers, and is not necessitated to do all that it is capable of doing. It is difficult, perhaps, to show that the universe is not infinite. It is obviously unreasonable and presumptuous to deny that the power of its Author may be infinite. And yet we find men who do so. For example, the late Mr John Stuart Mill, for no better reasons than that nature sometimes drowns men, and burns them, and that child-birth is a painful process, maintained that God could not possibly be infinite. I shall not say what I think of such an argument. What it proves is not the finiteness of God, but the littleness of a human intellect. The mind of man never shows itself so small as when it tries to measure the attributes and limit the greatness of its Creator.

A first cause, we have already seen, must be a free cause. It cannot have been itself caused. It is absurd to look for it among effects. But we never get out of the sphere of effects until we enter that of free agency; until we emerge from the natural into the spiritual; until we leave matter and reach mind. The first cause must, indeed, be in-all through-the universe; but it must also be out of the universe, anterior to, and above the universe.

1

The idea of cause is a delusion-the search for causes an inexplicable folly-if there be no first cause, and if that first cause be not a free cause, a Will, a Spirit, a Person. Those who object to the causation argument, that it does not take us beyond the world-does not lead us up to a personal cause of the world-have failed to apprehend what causation signifies. Secondary causes may not be true causes, and yet reason be trustworthy, for there is that behind them on which it can fall back; but if there be no first cause, or if the first cause be not free, reason is throughout a lie. Reason, if honest and consistent, cannot in its pursuit of causes stop short of a rational will. That alone answers to and satisfies its idea of a cause.

The most rapid glance at the universe powerfully confirms the conclusion that its first cause can only be a Mind, a Reason. The universe is a universe; that is to say, it is a whole, a unity, a system. The first cause of it, therefore, in creating and sustaining it, must comprehend, act on, and guide it as a systematic whole; must have created all things with reference to each other; and must continually direct them towards a preconceived goal. The complex and harmonious constitution of the universe is the expression of a Divine Idea, of a Creative Reason. This thought brings me to my next argument and next lecture.1

1 See Appendix XII.