It is not telling what ought to be, but what is in
the real order. It only asserts for civil government the
relation to God which nature herself holds to him, which the
entire universe holds to the Creator. Nothing in man, in nature,
in the universe, is explicable without the creative act of God,
for nothing exists without that act. That God "in the beginning
created heaven and earth," is the first principle of all science
as of all existences, in politics no less than in theology. God
and creation comprise all that is or exists, and creation, though
distinguishable from God as the act from the actor, is
inseparable from him, "for in Him we live and move and have our
being." All creatures are joined to him by his creative act, and
exist only as through that act they participate of his being.
Through that act he is immanent as first cause in all creatures
and in every act of every creature. The creature deriving from
his creative act can no more continue to exist than it could
begin to exist without it. It is as bad philosophy as theology,
to suppose that God created the universe, endowed it with certain
laws of development or activity, wound it up, gave it a jog, set
it agoing, and then left it to go of itself. It cannot go of
itself, because it does not exist of itself. It did not merely
not begin to exist, but it cannot continue to exist, without the
creative act.
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