Out of nothing, nothing comes. Into nothing, nothing goes. These are
foundation axioms underlying the entire system of Christian theology.
The first looks backward, and the second looks forward. The first
correllates with the saying, "So things which are seen were not made of
things which do appear." The converse of this is the following: Things
which are seen were made of unseen things; that is, the visible universe
is the manifestation of the invisible. The real universe is the
invisible. There is nothing that can not be thrown into the invisible.
Even the diamond has been thrown into solution, and all solutions may be
thrown into the invisible by heat. The question, What is matter? has
puzzled the best minds of earth, and puzzled all, both infidels and
Christians, as much as any other question. The visible, organic universe
was created, but it was created out of the invisible. The invisible is
eternal. There is an eternal world, and that is the invisible and real
universe, without which the visible would not be, for of nothing,
nothing comes. All matter is to be referred to antecedent
substance--that which lies under and causes it to be. Substance,
strictly speaking, lies in the invisible. Matter, properly speaking, is
an effect, which is the visible manifestation of an unseen substance,
and this is eternal.
God created the universe by means of eternal substance. He is the king
eternal. The time never was when he was the king of nothing. It is said
of Leibnitz that he thought inert matter insufficient to explain the
phenomena of body, and had recourse to the entelechies of Aristotle, or
the _substantial forms_ of scholastic philosophy, conceiving of them as
primitive forces, constituting the substance of matter, atoms of
substance, but not of matter _imperishable_, but subject to
transformation. This view of the atomic theory is two-fold: First, the
atomic invisible, as the very term _atom_ indicates, for it is from "ha
temno," which means _not cut_--literally _indivisible_. You can't cut an
atom chemically or otherwise, unless you are working upon that which is
an atom in the loose and more modern sense of the term. You may reduce
matter chemically to the invisible or underlying substance, but beyond
this you can not cut? Can you run it into nothing? No. Into nothing
nothing goes. Physicists are indebted to the oldest philosophers, who
lived prior to Democrites, for the use of the term atom. Those oldest
philosophers used the term to indicate something that was not matter,
viz: immaterial substance. The term in its primary sense is applicable
nowhere else.
The invisible world of substance is undoubtedly eternal. But those men
who try to make this fact an argument against the existence of God are
guilty of the most stupid nonsense and impudence, for, having allowed
eternity not only to substance, but to _material_ substance, they have
no right in logic to deny eternity to life and mind; because it is as
easy, and as rational, to conceive of the eternity of one thing known to
exist as of another. But the idea that the visible world is eternal is
in direct conflict with the facts of science, which establish beyond
contradiction the mutable nature of all organized bodies. Aristotle,
though a believer in the existence of God, did affirm the world's
eternity, and therefore held that there never was any first male or
female in the history of any animals whatsoever, but affirmed, on the
contrary that one begat another infinitely, without any beginning. This
thought was so repugnant to common sense that Aristotle himself seemed
to be skeptical about it, admitting it to be a disputable thing. After
affirming his notion he added, "If the world had a beginning, and if men
were once earth-born, then must they have been, in all probability,
either generated as worms, out of putrefaction, or else out of eggs."
But the question comes up for an answer, From whence came the eggs?
Old Epicurus, after Aristotle, fancied that the first men and animals
were formed in certain wombs or bags growing out of the earth, by a
fortuitous concourse of dead atoms. Here we have the last _home stretch_
of all physicists in their efforts to get rid of the Christian idea of
creation; beyond it no modern infidel has traveled in his speculations,
nor ever will.
But if men were formed from eggs growing out of the earth, or from bags,
or from wombs created by a fortuitous concourse of dead atoms, by
chance, why, the motion of atoms being as brisk and vigorous as ever,
should we not expect the same thing to occur occasionally throughout all
the ages?
Anaximander, however, concluded that men, because they require longer
time than other animals to be hatched up, were at first generated in the
bellies of fishes, and there nourished till they were able to defend and
shift for themselves, and were then disgorged and cast upon dry land. So
we are driven to the conclusion that there is nothing in the world too
absurd for those men, both ancient and modern, to swallow down in their
efforts to get rid of the notion of an intelligent creation by the hand
of an intelligent creator.