only to men who have received the God of Moses, and who have studied in
the school of Jesus Christ. If this hypothesis explains the facts, it is
sound, for the property of truth is to explain, as the property of light
is to enlighten.

The doctrine of the Creator can alone account to us for the universe, by
bringing us back to its first cause. The first cause of unity cannot be
matter which could never produce mind; the first cause of unity cannot
be the human mind, which, from the moment that it desires to take itself
for the absolute being, is dissolved and annihilated. The unity which
alone can have in itself the source of multiplicity, is neither matter
nor idea, but power; power the essential characteristic of mind, and
infinite, that is to say, creative power. The Creator alone could
produce divers beings, because He is Almighty, and maintain harmony
between those beings, because He is One. Thus is manifested an essential
agreement between the requirements of philosophy and the religious
sentiment; for religion, as we said at the beginning of these lectures,
rests upon the idea of Divine power. Reason and faith meet together
upon the lofty heights of truth. But let us not enter too far into the
difficulties of philosophy. Let us confine ourselves to considerations
of a less abstruse order.

The Creator is the God of nature. All the visible universe is but the
work of His power, the manifestation of His wisdom. The poet of the
Hebrews invites to offer praise to the Most High, not only men of every
age and of all nations, but the beasts of the field, the birds of the
air, and the cedars of the forest, the rain and the wind, the hail and
the tempest.[167] In the language of a modern poet: