or the formation of "something" out of "nothing," is an impossible conception. Such an assertion is simply a specious play upon words, or else it involves the negation of an infinite creating power. The term "creation," as used in all modern philosophy, implies, _ex vi termini_, the act of causing to exist; and, unless we assume that nothing which exists was ever caused to exist, we must suppose that the causing power was alike capable of giving existence to matter and to the forces that reside in it. The reason why the Greek philosophers did not embrace the idea of absolute creation was not because it was an unthinkable idea, or one incapable of representation in thought. They were, as we have seen, surrounded by a mythology which attributed the origin of the world to polytheistic agencies. They struggled against the cosmogony of poetical and popular traditions in an effort to find a cause of a different character. Monotheism, the conception of the one only and omnipotent God, freed philosophy from the great want which had hampered its speculations. This want was the conception of divine power, as abstracted from substance or the qualities of substance. When this conception had been obtained, absolute creation was seen to be a legitimate deduction from the illimitable scope and nature of the power which monotheism imputed to the Being supposed to preside over the universe, and to have existed before all the objects which the universe contains: and this conception of the act of creation thus became equally capable of representation in words and in thought. You may say that it has no evidence to support it; that it leads to contradictory ideas of the attributes claimed for the Creator; that upon the hypothesis of those attributes, his works are inexplicable. Whether you can say this truly or not, you can not say that absolute creation is inconceivable; and unless you mean to claim that neither matter nor force was ever created, that there never was a being competent to make either the one or the other to exist, you can not deny the probability that both were called into being by a definite and specific exercise of power. Mr. Spencer's philosophy manifestly leads to the conclusion that there is no God, or no such God as the hypothesis of special creations supposes, or such as the hypothesis of evolution necessarily calls for. If I understand him rightly, he rejects the idea of any creation, whether of matter, or force, or the properties of matter, or even of law of any kind, physical or moral. Hence it is that I admit the necessity of treating the existence of the Omnipotent Creator as an independent question to be judged upon moral evidence; and hence, too, in reasoning upon the probable methods of the Almighty, I maintain that the postulate of his existence is alike necessary to the evolutionist and to those who believe in special creations, and that both must adopt the same cardinal attributes as attributes of his power and character.