of spirits as having each a reality as inexpugnable as his own, as sacred as his own, with rights to be revered; supremely, the right of self-direction from personal conviction. This immutable perfection of the moral recognition by God, let it be repeated, is the living Bond in the whole world of spirits. Did it not exist, did God not exist, there would be, there could be, no such world; there could be no other spirit at all. Real creation, then, means such an eternal dependence of other souls upon God that the non-existence of God would involve the non-existence of all souls, while his existence is the essential supplementing Reality that raises them, to reality; without him, they would be but void names and bare possibilities. Thus in the Divine office designated “Creation,” exactly as in that denoted by “Redemption” or “Regeneration,” the word is a metaphor; but in the one case as in the other, it symbolises a reality eternal and essential, of a significance no less than stupendous.
X. The key to the whole view is found in its
doctrine concerning the “system” of causation. It
reduces Efficient Cause from that supreme place in
philosophy which this has hitherto held, and gives
the highest, the organising place to Final Cause
instead. Final Cause becomes now not merely the
guiding and regulative, but actually the grounding
