never pass beyond the line of his finiteness so as to see and delineate how it is that the absolute God realizes his thought in the finite and thus reveals himself.

3. A speculative question sometimes asked is, What was God doing before he created the world? "Will you be satisfied," says the agnostic, "with the puerile thought that God woke up one day after the inaction of eternity, and bethought himself that he would make some worlds?"

This is one of those questions which demand exact definitions of what lies beyond the limits of the finite and beyond the limits of all finite minds. It carries us beyond all God's revelations of himself and calls on us to define, by the mere force of our unaided intellects, the precise mode of his eternal action of which he has made no revelation. Our inability to answer such a question does not invalidate the fact that God does reveal himself in the finite in the forms of space and time, nor the reality of our positive knowledge of him through these revelations.

The universe in its existence and ongoing is a true revelation of God in which we know what he eternally is. If we try to picture God's thought or intelligence as eternal, we can think it only as one archetypal, all-comprehending knowledge. If we try to think of God's action as eternal, we can think it only as one all-comprehending and unchanging purpose. But the eternal and archetypal thought and the eternal and all-comprehending purpose are in the process of being progressively realized and revealed in the universe and in God's action in it in time. Plato says Time is the moving image of eternity. God's action in the universe in time is the evolving image, the progressive realization and revelation of God's thought and purpose, of his action in eternity.

However time differs from eternity, it reveals it. A human person stands unchanging in his personal identity, yet reveals himself continuously in the successive and changing activity of thought and will. This consciousness of unchanging personal identity is the fixed standard by which he is able to note and measure the succession of events and the lapse of time. If he floated with everything else in the current he would know neither his identity nor his motion. And God is unchanging in his eternal identity, yet ever revealing himself by his action in time.

Because man is finite, he knows but in part, and successive events are known to him only as they occur. A man possesses only the present. But what is the present? An infinitesimal moment which departs in coming; the unknown future always crystallizing into the past. But God's consciousness is not limited. Το him successive events are not known merely in their occurrence, but the past, the present, and the future are equally clear in his knowledge. His knowledge is also an eternal fulness which has neither ebb nor flow. But this does not deny the reality of succession and time. The absolute does not annul the finite, it gives it being. Almightiness does not annihilate finite power; it is the source of the reality of it. So eternity does not annul time, it is the basis of its reality. On the other hand, finite power is not contradictory to almightiness but reveals it. And time is not contradictory to eternity but reveals it. Man, the finite image of God, stands unchanged in his personal identity in all his varied activity and through the succession of events. Much more may God abide unchanged in his eternal personal identity, and yet reveal himself in the finite through his action in time. Time, therefore, is not contradictory to eternity, but it is its image, type, or revelation. Creation is the expression and revelation of the divine power, wisdom, and love in the finite. Time is the expression or revelation or exponent of God's eternity in the finite.

It follows that time is inseparable from created or finite existence. When finite beings were created time began. Should all finite beings be annihilated and God exist alone, he would be in eternity, and time would cease. For time is eternity measured by the succession of events in the finite universe, and eternity is time not thus measured. The creative action was "in the beginning,” — that is, time itself, as measured by the succession of events, began with the creation. Hence the act of creation, in which time itself begins, must transcend all time, and cannot be at any definite moment in time.

The objection is, therefore, of no force. The very asking of the question implies an absurdity. For to say that an infinite time. must have elapsed before the creation, is to say that before creation the creation itself must have existed an infinite time. Augustine said: "As they demand why the world was created then and no sooner; we may ask why it was created just here where it

is and not elsewhere."

And when the question was asked, “What was God doing before he created the world?" he rebuked one who answered, "He was preparing hell for those who pry into mysteries." But Luther answered this question humorously: "He was cutting twigs in the wilderness to chastise those who ask impertinent questions." These answers were intended to indicate that it is an illegitimate question.

The objection under consideration is of force mainly against a false conception of the universe as a machine completed by a single fiat of will in the creation, and of God as so transcending it as to be in fact separated from it and capable of acting on it only by isolated miraculous acts in violation of its laws. It is of no force against true theism, which regards God as the absolute Reason, always immanent in the universe and developing it, and the universe as plastic in his hand. Thus he is continuously expressing his thought and love in it, as the spirit of man pervades his body, and is continuously expressing in and through it his thought, and will, and feeling. Innumerable worlds and systems have been brought into being, which exist now in different stages of their development, or in the past have completed their evolution, accomplished the ends for which they were made, and have been resolved again into the original nebulous matter to be developed anew. Referring to this, Professor Tayler Lewis says of various biblical expressions of measureless past duration: "Is there not something of this sort, laboring, as it were, for utterance, in many parts of the Bible, and especially in the remarkable reduplicates of them which we have been considering? Is it easy to avoid the thought that in these swelling climaxes of ages, and ages of ages, ever ascending upward toward the infinite, the writers were travailing with an idea, which, though not definitely clear, and not definitely filled up with either a real or a mythical history, did, nevertheless, represent to their minds actual ante-terrene and ante-Adamic periods, occupied in some way with God's works, both spiritual and natural? Can we believe that such language could have come from the conception of a blank duration like the metaphysical notion of time, or of solitary ages of the divine existence, or still less that such a barren idea could ever have given rise to such terms of division and plurality?"2 According 1 Civitas Dei, Bk. xi. chap. 5; Confessions, Bk. xi. § xii.

2 The Six Days of Creation, pp. 383, 384.

to this view, there is no need of fixing in imagination a beginning of the universe at a definite point in time. To whatever distance in time imagination traces back the universe, it always finds God antecedent to it as its cause, and the universe always dependent on him for its being. And all which is practically essential in the idea of creation is given in the conception of God as always antecedent to the universe as its cause and supporting it in being, as immanent and energizing in it and revealing himself through it, and of the universe as always dependent on God for its being, and always revealing his presence and power, his wisdom and his love.

This conception of the universe as created by God and always dependent on him, has been illustrated in various ways. The Platonists used the illustration of a foot making an imprint in the sand. Through whatever length of time the foot continued its pressure, it would always be the cause of the footprint. President Edwards illustrated it from the colors of a portrait, which are continuously created by the sunlight. It has been illustrated from light itself. Though the sun has been emitting light for millions of years, it is continuously the cause of the light, and as its cause is its antecedent. But they mistake who mean by such illustrations that the original matter of the universe is as eternal as God. For the universe still remains an effect, and is distinct from God and dependent on him. Thus God is always the prius of the universe, its cause and creator.

Cousin supposes that God necessarily creates eternally. But in saying this he sinks into the pantheism of Spinoza. When free will is excluded from God, he is at once identified with the unconscious and impersonal substance of the universe necessarily evolving into all that is. And his conception is only a vain attempt to picture the eternal in the finite forms of time.

CHAPTER XIII

GOD'S CHIEF END IN CREATION

IN considering the attributes of God, it was shown that he is not impelled to act by any want, but by pure, disinterested love. He acts, not to get, but to give; not to supply his need, but to pour out of his overflowing fulness in blessing.

All rational action is for some rational end. The question now arises, What is the rational end which God proposes to accomplish by the action of his love in creating, developing, and governing the universe? What is the rational end to which all other ends are subordinate, and in subordination to which all his action is seen to be in unity and harmony?

The Bible teaches that all God's action is in love in its two aspects of righteousness and benevolence. But this is not incompatible with declaring also the rational end to be accomplished by the action of his love. blindly as a mere good nature or but he must determine in the direct his action, in order to expression and satisfaction of his love in both its aspects.

For his love must not act amiable instinctive impulse, light of reason to what end to realize the full and complete

I. THE BIBLICAL STATEMENT. The Bible states the doctrine of God's chief end in three principal forms.

"Of

"For whom

God is himself the end for whom all things are created. him and through him and unto him are all things." are all things and by whom are all things." sake will I do it." 1

God does all things for his own name's sake. not forsake his people for his great name's sake."

"For mine own

"The Lord will "He leadeth

1 Rom. xi. 36; Heb. ii. 10; Isaiah xlviii. 11.