1st. The Hebrew word translated create in Gen. i., 1, has a sense precisely equivalent to our word make, and it is the least indefinite term in the whole language that Moses could have selected if his purpose was to affirm the absolute creation of the world by God out of nothing. And a more limited sense can not rationally, and has never, by competent interpreters, been put upon these words, occurring as they do at the very opening of the inspired account of the " generations of the heavens and of the earth," without connection with any other proposition, and absolutely without limitations of any kind.
2d. This doctrine is implied in several other passages of Scrip- ture, Kom. iv., 17 ; 2 Cor. iv., 6 ; Heb. xi., 3.
2d. This doctrine is also implied in all those innumerable passages of Scripture which declare that God's power and sover- eignty are both infinite.
4. What other arguments may be adduced in proof of crea- tion, properly so called ?
1st. The doctrine that matter is self-existent and eternal, and that God has simply formed the world out of preexisting material is plainly inconsistent with his absolute independence and all-
ABSOLUTE CREATION PROVED. 189
sufficiency. It evidently limits the Creator, and makes him in working dependent upon the nature of the material with which he works.
2d. It is inconsistent with the feeling of absolute dependence of the creature upon the Creator, which is inherent in every heart, and which is inculcated in all the teachings of the Scriptures. It could not be said that " he upholds all things by the word of his power/' nor that " we live, and move, and have our being in him/' unless he be absolutely the Creator as well as the Former of all things.
3d. It is manifest from the testimony of consciousness. (1.) That our souls are distinct individual entities, and not parts or particles of God ; (2.) that they are not eternal. It follows con- sequently that they were created. And if the creation of the spirits of men ex nihilo be once admitted, there remains no special difficulty with respect to the absolute creation of matter.
4th. Although the absolute origination of any new existence out of nothing is to us confessedly inconceivable, it is not one whit more so than the relation of the infinite foreknowledge, or foreordination, or providential control of God to the free agency of men, nor than many other truths which we are all forced to believe.
oth. After having admitted the necessary self-existence of an infinitely wise and powerful personal Spirit, whose existence, upon the hypothesis of his possessing the power of absolute crea- tion, is sufficient to account for all the phenomena of the universe, it is unphilosophical gratuitously to multiply causes by suppos- ing the independent, eternal self-existence of matter also.
6th. When the physical philosopher has analyzed matter to its ultimate atoms, and determined their essential primary prop- erties, he finds in them as strong evidence of a powerful antece- dent cause, and of a wisely designing mind, as he does in the most complex organizations of nature ; for what are the ultimate properties of matter but the elementary constituents of the uni- versal laws of nature, and the ultimate conditions of all phe- nomena. If design discovered in the constitution of the universe as finished proves a divine Former, by equal right must the same design discovered in the elementary constitution of matter prove a divine Creator.
190 THE CREATION OF THE WOKLD.