, but is fundamentally implicit in it, a mystery
that in its unfolding assuredly follows the strictest law, the most
inviolable rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade of
energies reveals itself, or whether--unquestionably also in obedience to
everlasting law--the physical and chemical conditions admit of the
occurrence of life, or whether in his own time and place a genius
arises.(1)

The Dependence of the Order of Nature.

(2 and 3). The "dependence" of all things is the second requirement of
religion, without which it is altogether inconceivable. We avoid the words
"creation" and "being created," because they involve anthropomorphic and
altogether insufficient modes of representation. But throughout we have in
mind, as suggested by Schleiermacher's expression already quoted, what all
religion means when it declares nature and the world to be _creatures_.
The inalienable content of this idea is that deep and assured feeling that
our nature and all nature does not rest in its own strength and
self-sufficiency, that there must be more secure reasons for nature which
are absolutely outside of it, and that it is dependent upon, and
conditioned through and through by something above itself, independent,
and unconditioned. "I believe that God has created me together with all
creatures." (Luther.)

This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when men's eyes were not yet
opened to see the deep-lying connectedness of all phenomena, the
inexorableness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in the
apparently numerous interruptions of the causal sequences, the frailty and
dependence of this world and its need for heavenly aid could be directly
observed, when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the world
was "nothing" and perishable, that it had been called forth out of
nothing, and that in its transient nature it carried for ever the traces
of this origin. But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this
dependence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable laws and
unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto itself, so that for every
phenomenon a sufficient cause is to be found within nature, that is, in
the sum of the antecedent states and conditions which, according to
inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows.

We have already noted that this is most obviously discernible in the world
of the great masses, the heavenly bodies which pursue their courses