put the world upon a tortoise, the tortoise on an elephant, and do not
know on what the feet of their elephant may rest? This supreme will,
issuing from the contest between God and Matter, this God, this more
than God, can He have existed throughout eternity without willing what
He afterwards willed,--admitting that Eternity can be divided into two
eras. No matter where God is, what becomes of His intuitive
intelligence if He did not know His ultimate thought? Which, then, is
the true Eternity,--the created Eternity or the uncreated? But if God
throughout all time did will the world such as it is, this new
necessity, which harmonizes with the idea of sovereign intelligence,
implies the co-eternity of Matter. Whether Matter be co-eternal by a
divine will necessarily accordant with itself from the beginning, or
whether Matter be co-eternal of its own being, the power of God, which
must be absolute, perishes if His will is circumscribed; for in that
case God would find within Him a determining force which would control
Him. Can He be God if He can no more separate Himself from His
creation in a past eternity than in the coming eternity?

"This face of the problem is insoluble in its cause. Let us now
inquire into its effects. If a God compelled to have created the world
from all eternity seems inexplicable, He is quite as unintelligible in
perpetual cohesion with His work. God, constrained to live eternally
united to His creation is held down to His first position as workman.
Can you conceive of a God who shall be neither independent of nor
dependent on His work? Could He destroy that work without challenging
Himself? Ask yourself, and decide! Whether He destroys it some day, or
whether He never destroys it, either way is fatal to the attributes
without which God cannot exist. Is the world an experiment? is it a
perishable form to which destruction must come? If it is, is not God
inconsistent and impotent? inconsistent, because He ought to have seen