Now, if it be true at all that every event, whether it be a new existence or a change in an old existence, presupposes an explanatory antecedent or cause, there can of course be no accepting in all its breadth one of the propositions which Hume urges most strenuously--viz., that the mere study of an event can tell us nothing about its cause. We may grant that it can tell us very little,--that Hume performed an immense service in showing how extremely little we can know of the particular causes of particular events apart from the study of both in connection, apart from observation, experiment, and induction,--but we cannot grant that the event itself teaches us absolutely nothing. If every event must have a cause, every event must have a sufficient cause. For these two statements, although verbally different, are really identical. The second seems to mean, but does not actually mean, more than the first. The whole cause of the elevation of a weight of ten pounds a foot high cannot be also the whole cause of the elevation of twenty pounds to the same height, for the simple reason that in the latter case the elevation of ten pounds--of half the weight--would be an event which had no cause at all. And this is universally true. If every event have not a sufficient cause, some events have no cause at all. This, then, I say, we necessarily know that the efficient cause of every event is a sufficient cause, however vague may be our knowledge of efficiency and sufficiency. If every event--using this term as convenient to denote either a new existence or a change in some existence--must have a cause, to prove that the universe must have had a cause we require to prove it to have been an event--to have had a commencement. Can this be done? That is _the_ question in the theistic argument from causality. Compared therewith, all other questions which have been introduced into or associated with the argument are of very subordinate importance. Now there is only one way of reasonably answering the question, and that is by examining the universe, in order to determine whether or not it bears the marks of being an event--whether or not it has the character of an effect. We have no right to _assume_ it to be an event, or to have had a beginning. The entire argument for the Divine existence, which is at present under consideration, can be no stronger than the strength of the proof which we can adduce in favour of its having had a beginning, and the only valid proof of that which reason can hope to find must be derived from the examination of the universe itself.