The final conclusion to be drawn from these propositions is that God is not simply the transitive but the immanent cause of the universe. He is in nature, not merely as a regulative principle impressing laws upon matter, but as a constitutive principle, the ever-present source and ever-operating cause of all its phenomena. If by the term nature we understand the totality of necessary and uniform phenomena, God is the immediate cause of all uniform and necessary phenomena. If by nature we understand the varied forms of energy which underlie the phenomena, and are manifested in the phenomena, these forms of energy are but various modes in which the omnipresent power of God reveals itself. God is immanent in matter, and his ceaseless energy produces all the phenomena of nature. Nature is more than matter: it is matter swayed by Divine power, and organized and animated by the Divine life.
But the question may be here raised, Is not this identification of the dynamical life of the universe with God, Pantheism? We answer in the language of James Martineau: "It certainly would be so if we also turned the proposition round and identified God with no more than the life of the universe, and treated the two terms as for all purposes interchangeable. If in affirming the Divine immanency in nature we deny the Divine transcendency beyond nature, and pay our worship to the aggregate of all its powers, the law of its laws, the unity of its organism,... then undoubtedly we do pass from part to whole, and rest in a dream of future science instead of emerging into immediate religion."[350] The theory which represents the Deity as the transitive cause of the universe—a Δημιουργός mechanically fashioning the materials supplied to his hands, and then leaving it to the working of its own inherent forces—is rank Deism. The hypothesis which regards the Deity as no more than the dynamical life of the universe—an informing and organizing soul associated with matter—is naked Hylozoism. The theory that reduces all existence, material and mental, to phenomenal manifestations of one eternal self-existent substance which evolves itself according to an inward law of necessity, and which is elusively called God, is Pantheism. But the doctrine which embraces the two conceptions of transcendence and immanence, and while it teaches the immanence of God in matter, proclaims the infinite distinctness in essence between matter and God, and the infinite omnipresence of a personal God above and beyond the limitations of matter, is Christian Theism.[351]
And now, in conclusion, may we not say that this dictum of faith that the universe exists only in virtue of the continued Will of its Creator, is coming more and more to be recognized as a scientific fact. The will of God is the one primal force which streams forth in ever-recurring impulses with an immeasurable rapidity at every point in space—an incessant pulse-beat of the Infinite Life.[352] The disposition and collocations of matter are simply the conditions necessary to the manifestation of this primal force. The chemical atom, "already quite a complex little world,"[353] is a mechanism for the interception, transformation, and transmission of force. All the varied forms of energy are but secondary and derivative streams of force—forms of energy which are conceivable only as effects, and which by mere accommodation we may be permitted to call "causes," yet with this specific reservation that "they are not vicegerents outside of the Divine Will, but are held within the Divine Will." "The word 'cause' may be used in a secondary and concrete sense as meaning antecedent forces, yet in an abstract sense it is totally inapplicable; we can not predicate of any physical agent that it is abstractedly the cause of another; and if, for the sake of convenience, the language of secondary causation be permissible, it should only be with reference to the special phenomena referred to, as it can never be generalized." "The common error, if I am right in supposing it to be such, consists in the abstraction of cause, and in supposing in each case a general secondary cause—a something which is not the First Cause, but which, if we examine it carefully, must have all the attributes of a first cause, and an existence independent of and dominant over matter." "Causation is the Will of God."[354] The Divine conservation of the world is the simple, universal, uniform efficiency of God.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN HISTORY.
"He hath made of one blood all the nations of mankind to dwell upon the face of the whole earth, and ordained to each the appointed seasons of their existence and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek God."—St. Paul.
"Divine providence, which conducts all things marvelously, rules the series of human generations from Adam to the end of the world like one man, who, from his infancy to his old age, furnishes forth his career in time in passing through all its ages."—St. Augustine.
"The right education of the human race, so far as concerns the people of God, like that of a single man, advances through certain divisions of time, as that of the individual through the consecutive ages of human life."—St. Augustine.
"Les nations sont régies par les mêmes lois que les individus."—Laurent.