Article July 29, 1905 Issue

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with contributions from Arthur Chamberlain, Jenkin Lloyd Jones

It is clear that no stage of evolution, as we are able to conceive of it, presents itself as perfect. Our intuitions outrun all material concepts; and, precisely as we have been obliged, in tracing matter back to its least specialized from, to posit an ultimate power whose creation must be perfect, so, however much we specialize matter, we have simply a more complex, material organism, imperfect, mortal, and clearly lacking in that perfection which we have been obliged to posit of self-existent omnipotence.

We are therfore forced to the conclusion that any manifestation of this self-existent, ultimate power "was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be" perfect, and since the ultimate self-existent power could have been called into being by no power other than its own, we are obliged to conceive of it as eternally self-existent. Since, too, this power is eternally perfect, all its attributes as well must have existed eternally in all their perfection. Hence, to posit the creative attribute on the part of this power is to posit that attribute from all eternity.

Put briefly, and in the usual phraseology, whatever God does at all He must do from all eternity to all eternity; and all that He does is perfect.

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