It is evident that the writer grasps firmly the essence of the question as to the beginning of things, and covers the whole ground which advanced scientific or philosophical speculation can yet traverse. That the universe must have had a beginning no one now needs to be told. If any philosophical speculator ever truly held that there has been an endless succession of phenomena, science has now completely negatived the idea by showing us the beginning of all things that we know in the present universe, and by establishing the strongest probabilities that even its ultimate atoms could not have been eternal. But the question remains--If there was a beginning, what existed in that beginning? To this question many partial and imperfect answers have been given, but our ancient record includes them all. If any one should say, "In the beginning was nothing." Yes, says Genesis, there was, it is true, nothing of the present matter and arrangements of nature. Yet all was present potentially in the will of the Creator. "In the beginning were atoms," says another. Yes, says Genesis, but they were created; and so says modern science, and must say of ultimate particles determined by weight and measure, and incapable of modification in their essential properties--"They have the properties of a manufactured article."[29] "In the beginning were forces," says yet another. True, says Genesis; but all forces are one in origin--they represent merely the fiat of the eternal and self-existent. So says science, that force must in the ultimate resort be an "expression of Will."[30] "In the beginning was Elohim," adds our old Semitic authority, and in him are the absolute and eternal thought and will, the Creator from whom and by whom and in whom are all things. Thus the simple familiar words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," answer all possible questions as to the origin of things, and include all under the conception of theism. Let us now look at these pregnant words more particularly as to their precise import and significance. The divine personality expressed by the Hebrew Elohim may be fairly said to include all that can be claimed for the pantheistic conception of "dynamis," or universal material power. Lange gives this as included in the term Elohim, in his discussion of this term in his book on Genesis. It has been aptly said that if, physically speaking, the fall of a sparrow produces a gravitative effect that extends throughout the universe, there can be no reason why it should be unknown to God. God is thus everywhere, and always. Yet he is everywhere and always present as a personality knowing and willing. From his thought and will in the beginning proceeded the universe. By him it was created.