same process is going on now within the ken of astronomers.  But does any one suppose that in those realms of space God is evoking something out of nothing, or saying “be,” and “there is”?  No; we are assured that these fiery mists are formed by the collision of misguided orbs; and we are even asked—­or, at least we were asked—­to believe that this process must go on until all systems are agglomerated in one orb, to be ultimately congealed into stone.  What, then, is the office of the Creator according to this scheme, as repulsive as it is absurd?  It would appear that, at some moment in a vacuous eternity, He calls matter out of nothing, whirls it into fiery vortices, and then lets it cool down to the absolute zero wherein death reigns for ever.

[Sidenote:  The Protest of Faith.]

[Sidenote:  Sustained by Latest Science.]

[Sidenote:  Which Suggests an Infinite Unity.]

But, after all, “there is a spirit in man,” and “the inspiration of the Almighty,” of the Eternal, of the glorious Whole to which we belong, stirs in us a protest against this blasphemy of ignorance.  Ignorance, I say, for it was not the knowledge of our wise men that whispered such things, but their sense of the vacuity beyond their knowledge.  Up to certain bounds, their grasp of facts, their insight into physical order, their mathematical skill, were beyond all praise.  But beyond that bound, aye, and within it, in every inconceivable mode of the action of force, as, for example, in gravitation, brooded the Unknowable.  And it was not their knowledge, but their ignorance that entailed absurd issues.  Already there are signs that even celestial physics and mathematics will refuse to endorse as final so revolting a scheme of material evolution and devolution, ending only in universal death.[23] And when once the re-birth of new order out of the old is seen to be everywhere and eternally taking place, then all the hints given us by science of the ultimate oneness of all things, converge in the faith that All is God, and God is All.  For certainly, the latest observations on Matter suggest that all forms of it are variations of one ultimate Substance.  And the convertibility of forces, as well as the conservation of force, point to one eternal energy.  Nor is the duality thus suggested any final conclusion.  For few, I imagine, would now contend that, in the last result Matter and Force are fundamentally different things.  In fact, Monism holds the field; and though the evolution of human opinion is very slow, it appears safe to predict that the triumph of that world theory is assured.

[Sidenote:  Idea of Creation Incongruous with Modern Knowledge.]