All the various views respecting G-od's relation to the uni- verse entertained among men may be classed under one or other of the following heads, and in general terms stated as follows :
1st. The deistical, including those views which admitting more or less fully that, when Grod created the universe, he com- municated their inherent properties to all material elements and to spirits, and made them in their interaction subject to certain general laws, so constituted, as to bring forth in the ceaseless evolutions of events all his preordained ends, yet deny that Grod continues in immediate contact with each individual creature, or that he is now concerned in constant supervision and control of their actions and their destinies. His relation to the universe thus is like that of the maker, not of the keeper of a watch. The actions of men, therefore, must either be mechanically deter- mined like those of material bodies, or entirely fortuitous and be- yond the influence of Grod.
2d. The pantheistic, including all those various views which
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regard God as the only being in the universe, and the creature as in reality without separate existence, property, or agency, as only phenomenally distinct, and essentially more or less transient modes of the one universal divine being. — See above, Chapter I., question 35.
3d. The true doctrine, established by Scripture and sober philosophical induction, occupies intermediate ground between the above extremes. The Christian theory of providence agrees with the deistical in maintaining that, at the creation, God en- dowed every element, material or spiritual, with inherent proper- ties after its kind, and made them all subject to general laws, thus constituting them in a real sense efficient second causes. On the other hand, it maintains, in opposition to the deistical theory, that God continues to support and control second causes in their action, and so to adjust the general laws which prevail in the several departments of nature as to direct all events, whether the actions of free agents or of unconscious matter, to the accomplish- ment of his own will.
As God is infinite in his relation to time and to space, it is evident that the difference between the Deistical and Christian views of providence does not turn upon the question as to the time when God makes provision for the determination of each in- dividual event, but upon the question as to the nature of his relat- ion lo the creation. We maintain that the creature "lives, moves, and has its being in God," and that God, in the full exercise of his infinite wisdom, goodness, righteousness, and power, so directs and controls the actions of free agents freely, and of necessary agents necessarily, as at once not to coerce the nature of the agent, and yet infallibly to determine all things according to his eternal purpose.
3. Wherein does preservation consist ?
Preservation is that continued exercise of the divine energy whereby the Creator upholds all his creatures in being, and in the possession of all their inherent properties and qualities with which he has endowed them at their creation, or which they have sub- sequently acquired by habit or development.
4. On what ground is it assumed that the universe would not continue to exist unless constantly upheld by God ?
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PROVIDENCE.
The old theologians held that, as the creature as such is not self-existent, it could no more continue to be than it could com- mence to be of itself, since the cause of its being is out of itself. This rationalistic argument, although logically plausible, is not certain. As by the law of inertia a body once moved ab extra will continue to move until stopped ab extra, so it might be that a being once created might continue to exist until annihilated ab extra.
This doctrine, however, is eminently congruous to that sense of dependence which is an essential element of our religious na- ture, and it is clearly affirmed by Scripture. — Heb. i., 3 ; Neh. ix., 6 ; Job x., 12 ; Ps. civ., 27-30 ; Acts xvii., 28.
5. State the argument for God's providential government of the world derived from his own perfections.
1st. The stupendous fact that God is infinite in his being, in his relation to time and space, and in his wisdom and power, makes it evident that a universal providence is possible to him, and that all the difficulties and apparent contradictions involved therein to the eye of man are to be referred to our very limited capacity of understanding.
2d. God's infinite wisdom makes it certain that he had a defi- nite object in view in the creation of the universe, and that he will not fail in the use of the best means to secure that object in all its parts.