Preservation is that continuous agency of God by which he maintains in existence the things he has created, together with the properties and powers with which he has endowed them. As the doctrine of creation is our attempt to explain the existence of the universe, so the doctrine of Preservation is our attempt to explain its continuance.
(_a_) Preservation is not creation, for preservation presupposes creation. That which is preserved must already exist, and must have come into existence by the creative act of God.
(_b_) Preservation is not a mere negation of action, or a refraining to destroy, on the part of God. It is a positive agency by which, at every moment, he sustains the persons and the forces of the universe.
(_c_) Preservation implies a natural concurrence of God in all operations of matter and of mind. Though personal beings exist and God’s will is not the sole force, it is still true that, without his concurrence, no person or force can continue to exist or to act.
Dorner, System of Doctrine, 2:40-42—“Creation and preservation cannot be the same thing, for then man would be only the product of natural forces supervised by God,—whereas, man is above nature and is inexplicable from nature. Nature is not the whole of the universe, but only the preliminary basis of it.... The _rest_ of God is not cessation of activity, but is a new exercise of power.” Nor is God “the soul of the universe.” This phrase is pantheistic, and implies that God is the only agent.
It is a wonder that physical life continues. The pumping of blood through the heart, whether we sleep or wake, requires an expenditure of energy far beyond our ordinary estimates. The muscle of the heart never rests except between the beats. All the blood in the body passes through the heart in each half-minute. The grip of the heart is greater than that of the fist. The two ventricles of the heart hold on the average ten ounces or five-eighths of a pound, and this amount is pumped out at each beat. At 72 per minute, this is 45 pounds per minute, 2,700 pounds per hour, and 64,800 pounds or 32 and four tenths tons per day. Encyclopædia Britannica, 11:554—“The heart does about one-fifth of the whole mechanical work of the body—a work equivalent to raising its own weight over 13,000 feet an hour. It takes its rest only in short snatches, as it were, its action as a whole being continuous. It must necessarily be the earliest sufferer from any improvidence as regards nutrition, mental emotion being in this respect quite as potential a cause of constitutional bankruptcy as the most violent muscular exertion.”