We readily confess that the act of creation--that is, _causing wholly new existence_--is utterly incomprehensible to us; so are thousands of other things. I am told by the physicist that eight hundred billions of ether-impulses impinge on the retina of the eye in a second of time to produce the sensation of deep violet;[126] and I believe it, but at the same time it is to me incomprehensible. My reason affirms that the First Cause must be infinite; and I believe it, but I can not comprehend Infinity. No logician of the present day teaches that comprehensibility is a test of truth. Is our finite capacity of conceiving or of doing a standard for Omnipotence? The only question here involved is, Can Infinite Power produce that mode of being we call matter? Does such an exercise of Infinite Power involve a contradiction? I conscientiously submit this question to my own reason, and I confess I am unable to see any contradiction. To my experiential knowledge matter presents "the essential characteristics at once of a _manufactured article_ and a _subordinate agent_."[127] "This," says the distinguished Prof. Maxwell, "precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent.... It must have been _created_."[128] The notion of its origination by a Power which is unconditioned and every way unlimited, satisfies my reason, and affords the best solution of the problem of its existence. That it is self-existent, independent, eternal--"a second other God"--is directly contradictory. The original, primitive fountain of existence is _Mind_. This must stand at the fountain-head. God is the sole and absolute Cause of all things--of time, and all temporal relations; of space, and all spatial relations; of the primordial element, and all its properties. _The creative act was not conditioned by Time or Space or Matter._[129] CHAPTER IV. CREATION.--THE GENESIS OR BEGINNING. "The laws of nature can not account for their own origin."--J. S. MILL. Creation was the absolutely free act of God, unconditioned by any pre-existing thing. Matter with its properties and forms, its temporal, spatial, and numerical relations; Spirit with its life and feeling, its ideas and laws--these had all their origin in the creative Word of God. Whatever is, and is not God, is the creature of God. This is the Biblical conception of Creation.