University of Virginia Library

Divine origination

Matter is neither intelligent nor creative. The tree is not the author of itself. Sound is not the originator of music, and man is not the father of man. Cain very naturally concluded that if life was in the body, and man gave it, man had the right to take it away. This incident shows that the belief of life in matter was "a murderer from the beginning."

If seed is necessary to produce wheat, and wheat to

produce flour, or if one animal can originate another, how then can we account for their primal origin? How were the loaves and fishes multiplied on the shores of Galilee, - and that, too, without meal or monad from which loaf or fish could come?