Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/228

 terminating in the earth as the ultimate, and thereby perpetually causing things to subsist and to exist. When the equilibrium in matter is disturbed, or when conditions are made favorable, that creative energy manifests itself in the endeavor to restore equilibrium, as in generated electricity.

In maintaining that the activity of the sun's particles, whence is its heat, is derived from the Creator through the spiritual world, it is immaterial whether or not there is combustion, or composition and decomposition, in the substances of the sun. Influx from the spiritual world into the sun, though accompanied by a species of chemical change, is still the primary cause of the sun's heat. The secondary cause is the species of chemical changes in the substances of the sun produced by that influx. Activity and subsidence, or chemical changes of a certain kind, do go on in the sun without the destruction of its substances, the same as in nature. The chemical changes that occur in the sun to produce its heat, light, and power no more diminish its capacity to undergo endless changes than the perpetual decay and reproduction of vegetable and animal forms in the earth decrease its ability to vegetate and to provide for new animal formations. In fact the reverse is true in the earth, for the greater