§ 1. Different Theories concerning the Origin of the Universe.
The question concerning the origin of the universe has forced itself on the minds of men in all ages. That the mutable cannot be eternal, would seem to be self-evident. As everything within the sphere of human observation is constantly changing, men have been constrained to believe that the world as it now is had a beginning. But if it began to be, whence did it come ? With- out the light of a divine revelation, this question is unanswerable. The data for the solution of the problem do not lie within the sphere either of experience or of reason. All human theories on this subject are nothing more than conjectures more or less in- genious.
Apart from the pantheistic doctrine which makes the universe the existence form, or, as Goethe calls it, " das lebendiges Kleid " (the living garment) of God, the most prevalent views on this subject are. First, those theories which exclude mind from the cau- sative origin of the world ; Secondly, those which admit of mind, but only as connected with matter ; and Thirdly, the Scriptural doctrine which assumes the existence of an infinite extramundane mind to whose power and will the existence of all things out of God is to be referred.
It is a self-evident truth that existence cannot spring spontane- ously from non-existence. In this sense ex nihilo nihil fit is an universally admitted axiom. Those, therefore, who deny the ex- istence of an extramundane mind, are forced to admit that as the universe now is, it must have always been. But as it is in a state of perpetual change it has not always been as it now is. There was a primordial state out of which the present order of things has arisen. The question is, How ?
The purely Physical Theory. According to the first hypothesis just mentioned, the primordial condition of the universe was that of universally diflfused matter in