13. (vi) IF THERE HAD NOT BEEN ONE GOD, THE UNIVERSE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN CREATED AND KEPT IN EXISTENCE.

The reason the oneness of God can be deduced from the creation of the universe is that the universe is a single system coherently organised from beginning to end, and dependent upon God as the body is on the soul. The universe was so created that God could be omnipresent, and keep all its particulars under His guidance, and keep it perpetually together as a unit, and so preserve it. This too is why Jehovah God says that He is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, Alpha and Omega (Isaiah 44:6; Revelation 1:8, 17) and elsewhere that He does everything, spreads out the heavens, and stretches out the earth, of Himself (Isaiah 44:24). This mighty system which is called the universe is a single unit coherently organised from beginning to end, because God had one end in view in creating it, to create from the human race a heaven of angels. The means to this end are all the things of which the world is composed; for he who wills the end, wills also the means.

[2] The man therefore who contemplates the world as a piece of work containing the means to that end can contemplate the created universe as a single coherent unit, and he can see that the world is an assemblage of services structured for the benefit of the human race, to form a heaven of angels. The Divine Love cannot have any other end in view than from His Divine to make human beings eternally blessed; and His Divine Wisdom cannot produce anything but services designed to fulfil that end. By considering the world from this universal point of view every wise man can grasp that the Creator of the universe is one, and that His essence is Love and Wisdom. Consequently there is no detail in it which does not conceal services either nearly or distantly designed to benefit human beings. Their food is provided by the fruits of the earth and also by animals, their clothing from the same sources.

[3] One of the astonishing things is that those insignificant insects called silk-worms dress both women and men in silk and adorn them magnificently, from queens and kings down to maids and servants; and those insignificant insects, the bees, supply wax to illuminate splendidly churches and halls. Those who consider one by one facts about the world instead of the whole assemblage of ends, causal means and effects, and those who do not attribute creation to Divine Love acting by means of Divine Wisdom, cannot see that the universe is the handiwork of one God, and that He dwells in each service because He is in the end. For everyone who is involved in an end is also involved in the means, for the end which activates and controls the means is buried deep within all the means.

[4] Those who regard the universe not as the handiwork of God, nor as the dwelling-place of His Love and Wisdom, but as the handiwork of nature and the dwelling-place of the sun's heat and light, shut off the higher regions of their mind from God, and expose the lower regions to the devil. As a result they exchange their human nature for that of a wild beast, indeed they not only think themselves to be no better than animals, but actually become animals. They become foxes in cunning, wolves in ferocity, leopards in guile, tigers in savagery, crocodiles, snakes, screech owls and other night-birds, each with its own nature. People like this in the spiritual world actually look from a distance like those wild beasts, for this is how their love of evil shows itself.

351. People who believe that Divinity is at work in the details of nature can prove the role of Divinity for themselves by a host of things they observe in nature--just as fully as and even more fully than people who decide in favor of nature. People who decide for Divinity pay attention to the miracles they see in the way both plants and animals reproduce. In the reproduction of plants, they see that a root goes forth from a tiny seed cast into the ground, with a stem from the root and then twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, all the way to new seeds. It is exactly as though the seed knew the sequence or the process for its own renovation. What rational person could believe that the sun, which is nothing but fire, knows this, or that it can endow plants with the ability to accomplish this with its warmth and light, that it can work these miracles in plants with the intent to perform some useful function? Anyone whose rational abilities are lifted up, on seeing and pondering such things, can only think that they come from One who has infinite wisdom, from God.

People who acknowledge Divinity see this and think this way. People who do not acknowledge Divinity, though, do not see this or think this way because they do not want to. So they lower their rational abilities down to the sensory level that gets all its concepts from the light that envelops our physical senses. They then "prove" their fallacies by saying, "Can't you see the sun making this happen by its warmth and light? What is anything that you cannot see? Is it anything at all?"

People who decide in favor of Divinity pay attention to the miracles they see in the way animals reproduce. At this point I may mention only what happens in eggs. Hidden within the egg is the chick "in seed" or in potential, with everything it needs for coming to hatching and for the whole sequence after hatching until it becomes a bird, a flying creature in the image of its parents. If people pay close attention to the nature of the form involved and think deeply about it, they cannot fail to be stunned. They see, for example, that in the smallest creatures as in the largest, in the invisible ones as in the visible, there are sensory organs for sight, smell, taste, and touch; there are organs of motion called muscles--these creatures actually fly and walk; and they have organs around their hearts and lungs that are activated by their brains. We have been informed by people who have written about their anatomy that even lowly insects enjoy these gifts: see especially Swammerdam's Book of Nature.

People who attribute everything to nature do see these things, but they simply think that they happen and say that nature makes them happen; and they say this because they have diverted their minds from thinking about Divinity. If people have diverted their minds from thinking about Divinity, then when they see the miracles in nature they cannot think rationally, let alone spiritually. They think in terms of sensation and matter, and in so doing think about nature from within nature and not from above it. This is just what people in hell do. The sole difference between them and animals is that they have rational capacity; that is, they could understand and think differently if they wanted to.