earth." To the eye of the inspired writer, the agency of God is concerned in every process and every product of nature. "There are diversities of operations, but _it is the same God who worketh all in all_." His will and his power are the only real forces in nature. The interpretation which the Church has given of this teaching of the Sacred Scriptures has been remarkably uniform through the ages. She has always taught that the continuance of the world, no less than its origination, has its ground in the Divine causality; and every theory of the relation of God to the world which has sacrificed the doctrine of the all-embracing, all-sustaining presence of God in the universe, as an immediate and real efficiency, has always been rejected as Pelagian, Rationalistic, or Deistic. The conception of the Divine conservation of the world as the simple, uniform, and universal agency of God sustaining all created substances and powers in every moment of their existence and activity, is the catholic doctrine of Christendom. In attempting the difficult, perhaps impossible task of conceiving the _mode_ of this Divine conservation, different theories have been developed. But whatever the conception formed, whether that of the Divine _co-operation_ (_concursus Dei generalis_), as taught by St. Augustine and the Schoolmen; or that of a Divine intermediate _impulse_ (_impulsus non cogens_), as taught by Luther; or that of the Divine _sustentation_ (_sustentatio Dei_), as held by the Arminians; or even that of the _superintendence_ and _control_ of the Deity, as adopted by some modern religious scientists,[219] they all repose on the ultimate truth that whatever is created can have no necessary or independent existence; the same power which called it into being must continue to uphold it in being; and were God to withdraw his conserving efficiency the creature would be immediately annihilated.[220] St. Augustine, "the father of systematic theology," conceived the Divine conservation of the world as a _continual creation_ (_creatio continua_). He taught that the life and activity of the creatures, collectively and individually, are ceaselessly and absolutely dependent on and conditioned by the almighty and omnipresent agency of God. "Were He to withdraw from the world his creative power, it would straightway lapse into nothingness."[221] Thomas Aquinas, "the Angelical Doctor," who is regarded as having brought Scholastic theology to its highest development, held the same views on this subject as Augustine. He taught that "preservation is an ever-renewed creation."[222] All creaturely causes derive their efficiency directly and continually from the First Cause.[223]