Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/229

 the amount of decaying matter, the better is nature provided to reproduce. Life-force flows into the earth, creating and recreating from the materials already there provided to serve for all time. Likewise influx from the Creator through the spiritual world perpetually produces and reproduces heat, light, and power in the sun from materials there provided. Consequently, since there is no consumption or destruction of the sun's substances nor diminution of its capacity to undergo any chemical changes essential to the production of its phenomena, and since the activity of the sun's particles is sustained by influx from the Creator, Who as we have seen is eternal, the sun undergoes no loss, and can never fail in its supply of heat, light, and power. In the knowledge that the universe will never fall into chaos from the sun's expiration, or from the want of direction by intelligence and power, we are saved alike from the dogma of fanatical religion that the earth will "burn up," and from the superstitions of materialistic philosophers that the sun will "burn out." It may seem strange at first thought, and yet it is what maturer reflection would observe must needs be, that a morbid religion and a godless philosophy, howsoever much they may differ in the particulars of their reasonings, arrive at last at the same conclusion in ending the uni-