"Again, how can the Relative be conceived as coming into being?" It cannot be _conceived_ at all. The faculty of the mind by which it forms a concept--the discursive Understanding--is impotent to conceive what cannot be conceived--the act of creation. The changes of matter can be concluded into a system, but not the power by which the matter came to be, and the changes were produced. If the how is known at all, it must be seen. The laws of the process must be intuited, as also the process as logically according with those laws. The following is believed to be an intelligible account of the process, and an answer to the above question. The absolute and infinite Person possesses as _a priori_ organic elements of his being, all possible endowments in perfect harmony. Hence all laws, and all possible combinations of laws, are at once and always present before the Eye of his Reason, which is thus constituted Universal Genius. These combinations may be conveniently named ideal forms. They arise spontaneously, being in no way dependent upon his will, but are rather _a priori_ conditional of any creative activity. So, too, they harmoniously arrange themselves into systems,--archetypes of what may be, some of which may appear nobler, and others inferior. This Person, being such as we have stated, possesses also as endowment all power, and thereby excludes the possibility of there being any "_other_" power. This power is adequate to do all that _power_ can do,--to accomplish all that lies within the province of power. So long as the Person sees fit not to exert his power, his ideal forms will be only ideals, and the power will be simply power. But whenever he shall see fit to send forth his power, and organize it according to the ideal forms, the Universe will become. In all this the Person, "of his own will," freely establishes whatever his unerring wisdom shows is most worthy of his dignity; and so the actualities and relations which he thus ordains are no proper limit or restraint, for they in no way lessen his fulness, but are only a manifestation of that fulness,--a declaration of his glory. In a word, Creation is that executive act of God by which he combines with his power that ideal system which he had chosen because best, or _it is the organization of ample power according to perfect law_. If one shall now ask, "How could he send forth the power?" it is to be replied that the question is prompted by the curiosity of the "flesh," man's animal nature; and since no representation--picture--can be made, no answer can be furnished. It is not needed to know _how_ God is, or does anything, but only that he does it. All the essential requirements of the problem are met when it is ascertained in the light of the Reason, that all fulness is in God, that from this fulness he established all other beings and their natural relations, and that no relation is _imposed_ upon him by another. The view thus advanced avoids the evil of the