administrational and redemptive movement. It is a fact of immense importance that for the wonderful organism of teaching concerning God and man and eternal life in the completed Scriptures, the great foundation truths are all discovered to have been given on their first pages, and that the theology of creation is heard reverberating through the entire theology of Providence and Salvation to the consummation in "the last things." Surely there must have been some divine direction for the hand that sketched out these foundations.

PRESERVATION.

Preservation is that continuous agency of God by which He maintains in existence the world, or universe, which He has created. It is described as an "upholding by the word of His power," and by various equivalent statements (Heb. i. 3; Gen. viii. 22; Neh. ix. 6; Ps. xxxvi. 6; civ. 29-30; John v. 17; Acts xvii. 28; Col. i. 17). It necessarily involves the following points:

1. That the continuance in existence of every created thing necessarily depends upon the power that brought it into being. It has, and can have, no absolute existence. It cannot attain to independence. All creation would fall back into nothing without the divine power in which it has its being. It is no more capable of selfupholding than it could have been of self-origination. We are compelled to think that the divine power could not confer on any part of creation necessary or absolute existence. For this would involve the obliteration of the whole distinction between that which is God and that which is not God, the contradiction of making originated being self-existent or without beginning. Only God can have absolute immortality (1 Tim. vi. 16). A

creature can have immortality only in the abiding will and power of God, and according to His plan. This plan may give to the creature real objectivity of existence, and lodge in it an endowment of creaturely energies and order, but the continuance must rest in the steady will of Him who made it, not for instant perishing, but with a view to preservation.

2. Preservation is, therefore, not something merely negative, a doing nothing, a mere refraining from destroying, but a positive exercise of divine power, efficiently sustaining given existence and order. It is, also, something more, and more direct, than a simple self-activity of inherent properties and powers, conceived of as imparted to nature by the act of creation, and able, thenceforth, to operate themselves independently, according to the deistical notion of God's supposed withdrawal and separation from the world, in the otiose relation of merely "seeing it go."

3. This positive divine efficiency of preservation must be conceived, further, as establishing the permanency of existence and the uniformities of action in nature, recognized as "second causes," through which, as means, cosmic processes and advance take place and continuous life-phenomena are presented. We are as little to deny second causes as to think them independent of God. Their actual forces and working which are the subjects of our daily experience and of scientific examination, and which exhibit the "reign of law" in nature, express the abiding will of God both as Author and Sustainer of nature. They are rightly acknowledged as objectively real, and, with their regularities of causation, actually embodied in the system of nature, as the result of God's preservational efficiency upon the products of His crea

tional work. Even the creative act, in itself, must necessarily be viewed as producing something which then has an existence of its own, with its own real, though dependent, forces and properties. Otherwise the Divine cause has really effected nothing. "In the interest of the creation-idea itself, it is important for the divine act of constitution to give rise to something having separate existence, and not remaining inherent in the divine conception and volition. And thus must creative activity itself produce that which is destined to be permanent existence and able to become the object of conservation." Preservation can conserve only what creation brings into existence. God did not create for instant perishing, but with high and unchangeable view to a real world, a real universe, in great aims of love and goodness, whose working out belongs to His eternal will and plan. Hence His preservational efficiency holds in existence the world-constitution which His power produced. And we rightly regard the permanency and uniformity of this established secondary causation, with its "reign of law," as at the basis of that possibility of human foresight and consequent self-adjustment to conditions of safety and welfare through which the world is made a fitting abode for the training of free personality into self-control and moral character. Forecast of the future, prudence, adjustment to relations, and seizure of opportunities are some of the rich things provided for in these uniformities.

This objective reality of "second causes" in both material and spiritual nature, resting thus on the twofold divine action of creation and conservation, must be made explicit and emphasized. As a result of the double

1 Dorner, "System of Christian Doctrine," II., p. 48.

action God has established other being than Himself -being that has its own existence, its given forces and modes. Its actual endowments amount to a conferred relative independence. The closest observation of nature, from its largest forms to its minutest constituents, the most penetrative and exhaustive analysis of its action from masses to molecules, make this impression upon us. But more: When we face the phenomena of human history and scan the consciousness of human personality in its freedom of choice and self-direction, often in conflict with every conception of what must be the divine will, a relative creaturely independence cannot fail to appear as an evidently intended and actually conferred resultant from the twofold divine action. This relative independence is as little to be denied as is the absolute dependence of the whole system upon God. It is just in that part in which the cosmic system comes to its crown, in human freedom, that this truth of a divinely conferred, relatively-independent creaturely selfhood becomes indubitable. And it is a truth that needs perpetual re-affirmation and remembrance in order to guard against the overdrawn theories of the Divine Immanence and Efficiency which attribute every human act or choice, as well as motion of matter, directly to God and annihilate free personality and responsibility.

4. Theology, therefore, cannot accept the oft-repeated representation' which substitutes "continuous creation" (creatio continua) for preservation, making the continuance of the universe the result of ceaseless instantaneous reproduction. In this the idea of preservation, as simply

1 As by Hollaz, I., 531; Richard Rothe, "Theological Ethics," I., 186-190; Jonathan Edwards' Works, II., 486-490; Nathaniel Emmons' Works, IV., 363-389; McPherson, "Christian Dogmatics," 177.

upholding an objective existence already given by creative power, disappears in that of a direct divine creational efficiency which, moment by moment, makes nature what it is. But this notion accords as little with the implications of reason as of revelation. Plainly the Scriptures make a clear distinction between preservation and creation, and, indeed, set them over against each other (Neh. ix. 6; Heb. i. 2, 3; Col. i. 16, 17). And in the light of reason, whether guided by the principles of natural or revealed truth, difficulties of a very decisive character come into view. To substitute momentary recreation for preservation would seem to imply that God does not, or rather cannot, by a primary creative act, form any creature being, either of matter or mind, with more than momentary existence or constitute it with any measure of enduring energy, but that He must instantly repeat His work in order to give it a form of continuance. The so called creative action would, in fact, in that case fail to create, i e., to give and establish real objective existence, endowed with forces or potencies of its own in permanency. And the utter annulling of "second causes" would compel us to refer every event, among minutest atoms, creeping worms, the clothing of continents with myriad trees and flowers and heads of golden corn, and the flashing rays of light in all the skies, each one to a direct and immediate specific fiat of God. The theory would wipe out the whole realm of cosmic and creature causation—nothing being left but immediate divine volitions and their direct effects. Instead of physical forces, with their correlations and transformations, passing from phase to phase and producing their uniform phenomena, we would have to substitute direct divine productions. We should have to