The logical alternative of creation is therefore a system of pantheism, in which God is an impersonal and necessary force. Hence the pantheistic _dicta_ of Fichte: “The assumption of a creation is the fundamental error of all false metaphysics and false theology”; of Hegel: “God evolves the world out of himself, in order to take it back into himself again in the Spirit”; and of Strauss: “Trinity and creation, speculatively viewed, are one and the same,—only the one is viewed absolutely, the other empirically.” Sterrett, Studies, 155, 156—“Hegel held that it belongs to God’s nature to create. Creation is God’s positing an _other_ which is not an _other_. The creation is _his_, belongs to his being or essence. This involves the finite as his own self-posited object and self-revelation. It is necessary for God to create. Love, Hegel says, is only another expression of the eternally Triune God. Love must create and love _another_. But in loving this _other_, God is only loving himself.” We have already, in our discussion of the theory of creation from eternity, shown the insufficiency of creation to satisfy either the love or the power of God. A proper doctrine of the Trinity renders the hypothesis of an eternal creation unnecessary and irrational. That hypothesis is pantheistic in tendency. Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 97—“Dualism might be called a logical alternative of creation, but for the fact that its notion of two gods in self-contradictory, and leads to the lowering of the idea of the Godhead, so that the impersonal god of pantheism takes its place.” Dorner, System of Doctrine, 2:11—“The world cannot be necessitated in order to satisfy either want or over-fulness in God.... The doctrine of absolute creation prevents the _confounding_ of God with the world. The declaration that the Spirit brooded over the formless elements, and that life was developed under the continuous operation of God’s laws and presence, prevents the _separation_ of God from the world. Thus pantheism and deism are both avoided.” See Kant and Spinoza contrasted in Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:468, 469. The unusually full treatment of the doctrine of creation in this chapter is due to a conviction that the doctrine constitutes an antidote to most of the false philosophy of our time. 5. To the Observance of the Sabbath. We perceive from this point of view, moreover, the importance and value of the Sabbath, as commemorating God’s act of creation, and thus God’s personality, sovereignty, and transcendence. (_a_) The Sabbath is of perpetual obligation as God’s appointed memorial of his creating activity. The Sabbath requisition antedates the decalogue and forms a part of the moral law. Made at the creation, it applies to man as man, everywhere and always, in his present state of being.