244. Let us here again pause for a moment and review the position which we have reached. By taking the universe as we find it, and regarding each occurrence in it, without exception, as something upon which it was meant that we should exercise our intellects, we are led at once to the principle of Continuity, which asserts that we shall never be carried from the conditioned to the unconditioned, but only from one order of the fully conditioned to another. Two great laws come before us: the one of which is the Conservation of Mass and of Energy; that is to say, conservation of the objective element of the universe; while the other is the law of Biogenesis, in virtue of which the appearance of a living Being in the universe denotes the existence of an antecedent possessing life. We are led from these two great laws, as well as from the principle of Continuity, to regard, as at least the most probable solution, that there is an intelligent Agent operating in the universe, one of whose functions it is to develop the universe objectively considered; and also that there is an intelligent Agent, one of whose functions it is to develop intelligence and life. Perhaps we ought rather to say that, if we are not driven to this very conclusion, it appears at least to be that which most simply and naturally satisfies the principle of Continuity. But this conclusion hardly differs from the Christian doctrine; or, to speak properly, the conclusion, so far as it goes, appears to agree with the Christian doctrine. In fine, we are led to regard it as one of the great merits of the Christian system, that its doctrine is pre-eminently one of intellectual liberty, and that while theologians on the one hand, and men of science on the other, have each erected their barriers to inquiry, the early Christian records acknowledge no such barrier, but on the contrary assert the most perfect freedom for all the powers of man.