and that I, for my part, hesitate not to declare very frankly that though I know very little about God, I am sure that he is no round square. Now even so, an absurd and self-contradictory account of the act of creation must not be allowed to escape us by pleading that creation is a mystery, and that nobody can see how God makes things. For, mysterious as creation may be, we can be sure that if creation is of such a nature as to involve an external power and an external law, outside of God’s creative power itself, then God is himself not infinite. And we can be equally sure that unless God as creator is identical with his products, the idea of a creative act does involve just such a power preceding the act and outside of God himself. The device then by which so many thinkers seek to escape from this well-known and ancient net of dialectics, seems for us necessarily unsuccessful. There are mysteries that we have reverently to accept, and before long we ourselves shall find such, and we shall be glad to bow before them. But if creation is indeed such a mystery, at all events a self-contradiction about creation is not such a mystery.
VI.
We have dwelt at length on one of the alternatives of Theism. Disheartened, and without any enthusiasm, we turn to the other. Must we after all remain content in our religion without any assurance of the supremacy of the good? Must we be content with this halting half Theism of the empirical Design- Argument? If we must be, we must be. But
