Or, III. The endless succession of changes which make up the phenomenal world must have gone on from all eternity without beginning or cause. This is self-evidently absurd. Every change is an effect, and every effect must have a cause ; but an infinite chain of changes, each being in turn first effect and then cause, is impossible, because an infinite chain of effects demand an adequate cause, even more imperatively than a single effect. Thus the son, though begotten, is not caused by the father. 1st. Be- cause the father does not contrive the son, nor understand the process of his production ; and 2d, because the father is himself caused, and a thousand generations of men demand a cause a thousand times more imperatively than one.
This dream of an eternal succession is also annihilated by the testimony of human history and the science of geology, (see be- low, questions 20-22), and by the result of universal experience. 1st. That contrivance necessarily implies intelligence ; and 2d. That intelligence is always the cause, never the result of organ- ization.
20. What is the historical argument against the eternity of the world ?
If the world be eternal, the human race must have existed for ever, and have descended to the present through an eternal suc- cession of generations. Otherwise, if although the world be eter- nal, the human race began to exist in time, we would still be forced to believe in a God who created the human race. But every branch of human history, sacred and profane (and admitt- ing, for argument's sake, that the books of Moses are merely hu- man productions, they are still as trustworthy history as any other), the mythologies, traditions, records of all races and na- tions, concur with comparative philology, or the science of the origin and relations of human languages, and with ethnology, or the science of the origin and distribution of races of men, in con- verging to some more or less remote point in the past as the start- ing point of the human family. Also other arguments, " such as the recency of science ; the vast capacity of the species for general or collective improvement, contrasted with the little progress which they have yet made ; the expansive force of population, and yet its shortness still from the territory and resources of the globe ;"
22 THE BEING OF GOD.
all alike prove that the human race began to be at a compara- tively recent period, — See Chalmer's N. Theology, vol. i., book 1, chapter 5.
21. What is the geological argument against the eternity of the world ?
Geology has clearly established the fact that the earth has ex- isted many myriads of years, and passed through many successive physical revolutions. In the progress of these successive revolu- tions different races of plants and animals were successively brought into existence, as the physical conditions of the earth suited their respective habits. Thus, in order, the most elementary vegetable forms preceded the animal, and of these last the fish, the reptile, the bird, the mammiferous quadruped, and, last of all, man ap- peared in succession. The geologic record proves that in many sudden catas trophies whole races of plants' and animals were de- stroyed, and then new and distinct species^ntroduced.
In connection with these two facts all naturalists maintain these two principles, 1st, that there is no such thing as the de- velopment of one species or family of plants or animals into an- other ; and 2d, that there is no such thing as the spontaneous generation of new species. Consequently geology demonstrates not only one, but many successive acts of absolute creation. " The infidel/' says Hugh Miller (Footprints of the Creator, p. 301), " who in this late age of the world attempts falling back upon the fiction of an infinite succession would be laughed to scorn."
22. What ivas the famous development theory as set forth by the author of the " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" and how may it be disproved ?
The great astronomer La Place originated the philosophical suggestion which has always since been known as the Nebular Hypothesis. He supposed that the stellar universe originated from an indefinitely rarified, and intensely hot nebulous matter, agitated by a uniform gyratory motion, and that from this origin the whole universe has gradually been evolved, through the cal- culable operation of the known laws of matter. This is cosmical development, or the development of worlds. La Place treated this theory chiefly in relation to astronomy, and claimed as its
DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 23
most prominent practical confirmation the existence of large ne- bulous masses in the remote abysses of space, which the telescope could not resolve into stars, and which were, as he insisted, ne- bulae in the process of world development.