mediately known as force, it could
not be known at all, could not be rationally inferred. The operation of
force could furnish no evidence of the existence of forceless matter. If
force is not matter, then force can exist and operate without matter;
its existence and operation are no evidence of the existence of matter.
And as matter is forceless, it can itself give no evidence of its own
existence, for that would be an exercise of force. If force cannot exist
and operate without matter, then force depends for its existence and
operation on the forceless, which destroys itself; or force depends for
its existence on matter as some property or force, and so matter and
force are identified, and force depends on itself only, as it must."[30]
The idea, then, that force is an attribute of matter and inherent in it,
is absurd, for there is not a shadow of evidence that force is or can be
an attribute of matter. We have no knowledge of the origin of any force
save of that which emanates from human volition. All our knowledge of
force presents it as an effort of intelligent will. "We are driven,"
says Winchell, "by the necessary laws of thought, to pronounce those
energies styled gravitation, heat, chemical affinity and their
correlates, nothing less than intelligent will. But as it is not human
will which energizes in whirlwind and the comet, it must be divine
will." "In all cases, the creative power of God is an act of power, and
the power does not perish with its inception, but continues to operate
until the act is reversed and undone; so that everything that God has
created constitutes a positive and intrinsic force, though borrowed from
Him. Every incident runs back to God as its originator and real cause.
The true philosophical doctrine makes God distinct from all his works,
and yet acting in them. This doctrine has been held by the greatest
thinkers the world has ever produced, such as Descartes, Lerbrisky,
Berkeley, Herschel, Faraday, and a multitude of others." "It seems to be
required," says Dr. McCosh, "by that deep law of causation which not
only prompts us to seek for a law in everything but an adequate cause,
to be found only in an intelligent mind." "Our greatest American
thinker, Jonathan Edwards," says Dr. McCosh, (whom I can claim as my
predecessor,) "maintains that, as an image in a mirror is kept up by a
constant succession of rays of light, so nature is sustained by a
constant forth-putting of the divine power