Fifthly. "There can not be an endless succession of dependent things."
Sixthly. "There must be that upon which the first dependent link in the chain of dependent things depended."
Seventhly. "That thing, whatever it may be, upon which the first dependent thing depended, must be eternal."
Was it blind force or intelligence, which?
The existence of a supreme intelligence is the first great leading thought made known in the Bible.
The first that is made known in unbelief, is the existence of "the unknown."
When a man adopts the idea of the unknown, he lays down all his strength to oppose the idea of a supreme intelligence, for what right has he to dogmatize about the unknown? The use of the word force will not help us to a better understanding of things. Force is simply the manifestation of energy, and there must, necessarily, be something lying behind it to which it, as an attribute or quality, belongs. That "something" the Bible calls "spirit." It has never been christened with a name by the unbeliever. Force is the bridge between it and matter, and the bridge between it and all things upon which it operates. The unbeliever's "unknown" lies behind force. Has he ever given it a name?
So far as science is concerned, it is paying her proper respect to say she demands an intelligence in order to account for the wonderful things with which she has to deal. Laycock, treating upon the questions of mind and brain, says: "The phenomena of life present a vast series of adjustments and modifications to fill certain purposes and bring about ends."—Mind and Brain, vol. 1, p. 222 to 224.
Systematic action in the use of means to accomplish certain ends or purposes we regard as the evidence of intelligence. By what other means do we distinguish between the rational and the insane? Winchel says, in his "Religion and Science," p. 102, "Without God we can not account for the correlation presented by the world of structural part to structural part, of structural part to intelligible end, of structural part to persistent plans or archetypes, of correlations which show that they were anticipated."
Beal, on Protoplasm, p. 104 to 107, says, "Living matter overcomes gravitation and resists and suspends chemical affinity." He adds, "It is in direct opposition to chemical affinities that organized beings exist."