Preservation, then, is midway between the two errors of denying the first cause (deism or atheism) and denying the second causes (continuous creation or pantheism). _1 Cor. 12:6_—“_there are diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all_”; _cf._ _Eph. 1:23_—the church, “_which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all_.” God’s action is no _actio in distans_, or action where he is not. It is rather action in and through free agents, in the case of intelligent and moral beings, while it is his own continuous willing in the case of nature. Men are second causes in a sense in which nature is not. God works through these human second causes, but he does not supersede them. We cannot see the line between the two—the action of the first cause and the action of second causes; yet both are real, and each is distinct from the other, though the method of God’s concurrence is inscrutable. As the pen and the hand together produce the writing, so God’s working causes natural powers to work with him. The natural growth indicated by the words “_wherein is the seed thereof_” (_Gen. 1:11_) has its counterpart in the spiritual growth described in the words “_his seed abideth in him_” (_1 John 3:9_). Paul considers himself a reproductive agency in the hands of God: he begets children in the gospel (_1 Cor. 4:15_); yet the New Testament speaks of this begetting as the work of God (_1 Pet. 1:3_). We are bidden to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, upon the very ground that it is God who works in us both to will and to work (_Phil. 2:12, 13_). (_b_) Though God preserves mind and body in their working, we are ever to remember that God concurs with the evil acts of his creatures only as they are natural acts, and not as they are evil.