In a very similar way we must reason regarding the ultimate units of matter, call them what we will, electrons, corpuscles, or units of electricity.  If these are mere duplicates of each other, as science now teaches, they not only indicate by this identity that they are “manufactured articles,” as was long ago pointed out of the atoms and molecules, but they also indicate with all the force of a demonstration that nothing but an ever present omniscient Intelligence could keep these duplicates from always acting the same under similar external forces.  If gold and carbon, iron and oxygen are at bottom composed of particles that are mere duplicates of each other, as seems to be the case, how can these elements and the six dozen or more others maintain their individuality throughout nature as we know they do, even in the far distant stars, except by the sleepless care of an Intelligence whose Word is as effective in one part of the universe as in another, and to whose Word these particles of matter can show no inertia and no disobedience, because they have no powers or properties except what He has imparted?  This doctrine of the homogeneousness of matter is the antithesis of materialism.  It is consistent only with the doctrine of an almighty and ever present God, and like many other facts which have been developed by modern scientific discoveries, it confirms the other primal doctrine of a literal Creation “in the beginning.”

VI

The conclusion which our minds are forced to draw from the facts presented in this chapter is not doubtful, nor is it difficult to state.  Matter is not now being brought into existence by any means that we call “natural.” And yet the facts of radioactivity very positively forbid the past eternity of matter.  Hence, the conclusion is syllogistic:  matter must have originated at some time in the past by methods or means which are equivalent to a real Creation.

Thus far, at least, the record of Genesis is confirmed:  “In the beginning God created.”

II

THE ORIGIN OF ENERGY

I

What has been regarded by many as the greatest scientific triumph of modern times was worked out about the middle of the last century by James Prescott Joule and others, in determining that a certain amount of mechanical energy is exactly equivalent to a definite amount of heat.  With this mechanical equivalent of heat all the various other forms of energy have also been correlated; until now we have the general law of the Conservation of Energy, which says that energy can be neither manufactured nor destroyed, but merely transformed and directed.  And this magnificent law, like that of the conservation of matter, is strong evidence that there must have been a real Creation at some time in the long ago, different not merely in degree but in kind from anything known to modern science.