I have read in vain, I have thought in vain, to understand what to later theologians was the method and the meaning of a creative act. ‘Order is heaven’s first law;’ and law—method—is the very pulse of order. Surely creative action in matter could only have proceeded by law? It could only have been the prevision and predetermination, by the inscrutable Creator, of definite affections of matter by force, issuing in rhythmic motions and cosmic harmonies, which, by their progress through immeasurable time, should accomplish the creative purpose. ‘Let there be light;’ that is the equivalent, in human thought, of an incomprehensible Divine volition. ‘And there was light,’ that is, in human phrase, the affirmation of its historic accomplishment. But to those who know, as we at present do, the science of light, what time, what power, what majesty of method, did its perfect accomplishment involve! ‘And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven.’ That, in human phrase, and according to human modes of thought, expresses the mysterious intent of Almighty Mind to fill space with the splendour we see; and to people it with intelligence of which we can form no faintest vision. ‘And it was so,’ that is the record of the realized intent. But how realized? Not by a material actor who ‘Rounded in his palm those spacious orbs, And bowled them flaming through the dark profound.’ That is impossible to thought; a travesty of the sublimer conceptions possible, even to finite minds. Then do we conceive them as, in our human sense, leaping into existence and place and relation and motion and order? All our knowledge repudiates this merely human conception. The only conception we can justly form is, that in the awful mystery of creative action, Divine will determined law, modes of affection of matter by motion, through force: making the dome of heaven and the peopled earth the realized will of the Eternal.