In doing this, to suppose that there are no intellectual difficulties is to manifest narrow mental grasp; but there are no absolute contradictions; no incongruities intolerable to the mind. True, as we have seen above, we encounter the inevitable fact of the uncreate existence of the Infinite. But we have seen that this, though infinitely impenetrable by us for ever, is still not repugnant to our reasoning and moral faculties. Indeed the eternal existence of _matter_ as not requiring proof is one of the assumptions of some materialists. But surely the self and necessary existence of an intelligent omnipotence is without measure more congruous. It has been argued that the eternity of matter is thinkable, because matter is immutable—retains its properties through every vicissitude conceivable in time and space. But surely gravity is an indispensable quality of matter; yet take a bar of iron, weighing a thousand pounds at the sea level, four miles high, and it loses two pounds of its weight; carry it to the distance of the moon from the earth, and it weighs but five ounces; and at a distance which could be computed its gravity would be absolutely lost. It is conceivable that all the ‘modes of motion’ by which matter is known to us, might, if we knew enough concerning them, be found to have conditions in which they would cease to operate. We must know that matter is unchangeable before the argument is valid. But even then it is incompetent. What the mind asks, is power and intelligence, to account for the majesty of the universe, and the existence of mind; and if their cause, to be such, must be admitted to be uncaused, the majority of reflective minds can accept this, and in doing so, can fairly rest, and fully hope. But, this granted, the question shapes itself afresh, ‘In the beginning what?’ Had matter a coeval existence, an eternal being like God? or did He create it? bring, what to our senses is something, directly out of nothing? None dare answer. Both suggestions refuse to be dealt with by reason. But the incongruity of both might vanish like starlight in the dawn, if we knew _what_ that is, which constitutes matter. It would, perhaps, make the Divine mind more immanent than we could dare to imagine. But it is easier without measure, judged of by our only source of knowledge, our own mental experience, to conceive of matter as a product of mind, than mind as a product of matter.