taught
that all the host of heaven and of earth were created things--merely
"things," not divinities--and not only that, but that the Creator was
One God, not many gods; that there was but one law-giver; and that
therefore there could be no conflict of laws. These first words of
Genesis, then, may be called the charter of all the physical sciences,
for by them is conferred freedom from all the bonds of unscientific
superstition, and by them also do men know that consistent law holds
throughout the whole universe. It is the intellectual freedom of the
Hebrew that the scientist of to-day inherits. He may not indeed be able
to rise to the spiritual standpoint of the Hebrew, and consciously
acknowledge that--

"Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone; Thou hast made heaven, the
heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all
things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein,
and Thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven
worshippeth Thee."

But he must at least unconsciously assent to it, for it is on the first
great fundamental assumption of religion as stated in the first words of
Genesis, that the fundamental assumption of all his scientific reasoning
depends.

Scientific reasoning and scientific observation can only hold good so
long and in so far as the Law of Causality holds good. We must assume a
pre-existing state of affairs which has given rise to the observed
effect; we must assume that this observed effect is itself antecedent to
a subsequent state of affairs. Science therefore cannot go back to the
absolute beginnings of things, or forward to the absolute ends of
things. It cannot reason about the way matter and energy came into
existence, or how they might cease to exist; it cannot reason about time
or space, as such, but only in the relations of these to phenomena that
can be observed. It does not deal with things themselves, but only with
the relations between things. Science indeed can only consider the
universe as a great machine which is in "going order," and it concerns
itself with the relations which some parts of the machine bear to other
parts, and with the laws and manner of the "going" of the machine in
those parts. The relations of the various parts, one to the other, and
the way in which they work together, may afford some idea of the design
and purpose of the machine, but it can give no information as to how the
material of which it is composed came