Ultimately, however, the problem is no more difficult now than it was to the first man who pondered over the beginnings of life in the childhood of the world. The same answer fits both modes of thought, with only a different process of reasoning. Whether we count the world’s creation by days or by millions of years, the truth of the first verse of Genesis remains: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In our theories the whole complicated world-process is but the working out of simple laws. This leads back as swiftly and far more surely than did the primitive cosmology to an omnipotent and omniscient creative Power, defining at the very outset the aim of the stupendous whole, and carrying its comprehensive plan into reality, step by step. We who are the products of time cannot help applying the relation of time to the work of the Creator; time is so interwoven with our being that a modern evolutionist, Bergson, considers it the fundamental element of reality. Thus it is natural that we should think of God as setting the first atoms and forces of the universe into motion somewhere and somehow, at a given moment. Through this act, we imagine, the order prevailing through an infinitude of space and time was established for the great fabric of life. To earlier thinkers such an act of a supermundane and immutable God appeared as a single act. The idea of prime importance in all this is the free activity of the Creator in contradistinction to the blind necessity of nature, the underlying theory of all pagan or unreligious philosophy.(439) The world of God, which is the world of morality, and which leads to man, the image of God, must be based upon the free, purposive creative act of God. Whether such an act was performed once for all or is everlastingly renewed, is a quite secondary matter for religion, however important it may be to philosophy, or however fundamental to science. In our daily morning prayers, which refer to the daily awakening to a life seemingly new, God is proclaimed as “He who reneweth daily the work of creation.”(440) Chapter XXVI. The Maintenance and Government of the World 1. For our religious consciousness the doctrine of divine maintenance and government of the world is far more important than that of creation. It opposes the view of deism that God withdrew from His creation, indifferent to the destiny of His creatures. He is rather the ever-present Mind and Will in all the events of life. The world which He created is maintained by Him in its continuous activity, the object of His incessant care.