We must never lose sight of the one grand postulate of an infinite Creator. This postulate must be conceded to the believers in special creations, because any idea of creation implies a creating power. If we conceive of creation without a Creator, we must stop all argument. Now, the hypothesis of creation, as I have more than once said, implies a being of boundless faculties. There can be absolutely no limitation to the power of such a being, either in respect to the methods by which he will accomplish his objects, or to the number and variety of these objects, or to the purposes for which they are to exist. If we narrow our conception of creating power to anything less than an infinite faculty; if we suppose it to be restricted in any direction; if we argue about it as if there were things that it can not do, we shall be without the means of reasoning soundly upon anything that it is supposed to have done. It is quite otherwise when we are reasoning about the operation and effect of secondary causes. There is no secondary cause--no imaginable operation of a fixed quality of substance--no action of any of the properties of substance--that is not limited. The scope of its action may be very wide; within its sphere it may be enormously potent; but in its very nature it is bounded.[86] It is not so with the First Cause of all things; not so with the Infinite Power which, upon the hypothesis of a First Cause, has established all the physical laws of the universe and all the properties of matter. So that, when we reason about the methods of that infinite creating power, if we find a general system established, or a pattern repeated through a very large class of organisms, the proper inference is, not that the power was limited, but that it has been exercised to the whole extent of what was useful, and in that direction has been exercised no further; and if we find variations or additional structures incorporated with the repetition of a general pattern, the proper inference is that the unlimited creating power has put forth all the additional exertion and skill needful for the formation of new beings.