marrow. Development of the Ovum. 93 nucleus, and the germinal vesicle is now no longer seen. In this process, the nucleus is the first to divide, its substance separating into two poles. A constriction then appears in the protoplasmic mass, and the single cell is subdivided; each of these again divides until the mulberry stage is reached. This globular lump of cells gives rise to the fiddleshaped area, from which may proceed fish, amphibious animal, reptile, bird, mammal, man. It is a simple oblong, violin-shaped, thin disc of three connected membranes, lying one above another. Out of the lower layer arises the inner delicate skin (epithelium) for the intestinal tube from the mouth to the anus, lungs, liver, salivary glands, etc. Out of the middle layer arise all the other organs, muscles, bones, blood-vessels. Out of the upper or outer layer arise the skin (epidermis) and the central parts of the nervous system (spinal marrow and brain). A central line or streak divides the whole into two equal lateral halves. On both sides of this furrow arises a longitudinal fold, which, growing over and joining, forms a cylindrical tube, the medullary canal, the foundation of the central nervous system, the spinal Mr. W. Kitchen Parker said-" The spinal axis is not originally pointed anteriorly in anything but amphioxus, in all other vertebrates it is dilated from the first. This dilatation is soon seen to be separated into three vesicles, the primitive fore, mid, and hind brain. The fore-brain gives rise to the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemispheres, and the vesicle of the third ventricle, from which latter arise the optic vesicles, which give rise to the optic nerve, retina, and choroid. The mid-brain gives rise to the corpora quadrigemina (in birds and reptiles corpora bigemina-the socalled optic lobes), and the crura cerebri. The hind-brain is differentiated into the cerebellum, the pons Varolii, and the medula oblongata." All these, originally arranged in the same way, develop into such different groups that it is very difficult to recognise their corresponding parts in fully organised brains. As yet, in this gradual commencement and apparently original equality, you cannot distinguish mammal, bird, reptile, from one another. The heart, the liver, the limbs, all parts of the body, are originally the same in all vertebrates; but from this stage proceed the everincreasing separation and differentiation of the higher animals, every one after his own order. It is a continual advance, and our mind always grows. There is no weaker fallacy than that the mind, always progressing, is prisoner of the earth. Materialists inquire-" Why this process of natural genesis? Why should not Omnipotence be proved by the supernatural production of plants and animals everywhere throughout the world from hour to hour?" As if God were to begin at the end; or as if He did not, hour by hour, produce from germ of plant and fish, of bird and beast, all the living creatures after their kind. What process is there that, long continued, would not be accounted natural? But who knows that anything is natural, or of itself? To call a thing "natural" is to pronounce it Divine, or to make the word a cloak for ignorance. Scales, feathers, hair, fin, wing, limb, claw, paw, hand, are formed in successive processes of fœtal life, and by series of modifications, so small, that only the microscope can reveal, and not always, the secret transformation. Changes into hoof or hand, gill or lung, specialities of structure variously adapted, and passage of lowest forms into highest and furthest differentiation within a few months, not by confusion of parts but by variety of design, are that natural process whose initiation and continuance are "of subtler essence than the trodden clod." Pass from the phenomena of life to those of mind. By union with matter, mind takes possession of a new world, doubling its powers of action and extending its sphere of existence. Corporeal existence may indeed be the basis of intellectual activity, of moral agency, of sociality among all created intelligent beings. When we consider the exquisite sensations of organised existence; the alliance with various properties of solidity and extension; the mechanical and animal indices of motion; the new consciousness of duration by collation of mental history with the motion and symphony of time in the material universe; we conceive that body is to mind a means serving such important ends, and carrying such consequences, as make it the general law of finite existence: first, the natural, then the spiritual body (1 Cor. xv. 44, 45). Energy and activity enter the most exalted of our moral sentiments by their alliance with physical sensations. Were we only animals, we should neither need nor possess an imaginative faculty. If intellectual only, or moral only, we should disregard as Three Stages of Life. 95 degrading or illusory whatever presented less than absolute truth, reason, rectitude. Imagination and its sensibilities do now, however, abate or stimulate every function of life; mingle with and yet further ennoble the highest and purest of our intellectual and moral feelings; so that we possess the germ and instinctive expectation of another and a higher mode of existence. This future and unseen world, brought into definite alliance with us, is as simply natural and true as the present nature. Consciousness, religious conceptions, instinctive yearnings, take away dim remoteness from the world to come, and connect our homely land of trees and water with momentous future transactions. The Bible, revealing three stages of life-in the body, out of the body, clothed with spiritual body-brings the visible and invisible into that conjunction which the wisest and best men accept as obvious and natural. Our yearnings look into a possible glorious future for every living man. Concerning intelligence, it is certain that coming into contact with a corporeal state is not a degradation; and, doubtless, reveals a new sphere and mysterious power of influence; various sentiments and modes of action; that would, otherwise, be wholly foreign to incorporeal existence. This quickening peculiar knowledge and varied action; bringing sentiments into alliance with sensations; their intermixture with ideas of beauty and order; not only form part of our training and transformation, but may have formed part of that discipline under which some angels fell, and some were exalted. It is not inconceivable that even archangels round the throne of God may be connected with the energy, motion, heat, light, and providential arrangements of the universe (Ps. civ. 4; Heb. i. 7). The universe may be a clock by which spirits become conscious of timely duration; while the creative, sustentative, renewing processes, make known other depths of the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. iii. 9-11). Great minds, discoverers of universal laws-Copernicus, who marked out the true path of our sun and earth amongst celestial worlds; Kepler, who defined the curve described by the planets around their central luminary; Newton, who was able to fix the condition, unique and supreme, whence results the equilibrium of worlds-did not study the universe as subject in all its movements to blind necessity, as were there no law, nor wisdom, nor beauty, nor harmony. Their investigation was a search for simplicity with comprehensiveness; and when the discovery of symmetry and universal harmony established the all-pervading sway of power and wisdom, they bowed before the eternal throne, and worshipped Him who sat thereon. 1 "I Their knowledge is now our own, and illumines the way to Him by whom our imperfections are to have remedy, our spiritual hopes are satisfied, our yearnings after immortality realised. What saith one of our students of science? protest that, if some great power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock, and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I would instantly close with the offer."" This he says, unaware that the thing is done for the willing, not by degradation but by re-creation (1 Cor. i. 30). Every martyr gains some good, for others; and the agony of our age gives birth to a better succeeding. If exact science and advanced modern philosophy cause a man to wish he were a sort of clock," and made, even against his will, to "think what is true and do what is right," what a proof this is of Scripture-that we have all gone astray ! Quid prodest omnes rerum cognoscere causas, si fugienda fugis, vel fugienda facis?" How small, as to real value, are secular science and philosophy in comparison with the truth and moral power possessed by the Christian who knows that his sins are forgiven, that he receives grace to resist temptation, that he is being disciplined by the Spirit of God! ... 68 "These are truths that wake Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor man, nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy.' William Wordsworth. We are under the guidance of a Wise and Beneficent Power. There is an orderly operation in the universe which produces definite sequences and results. The rule and progress of many and enormously extended series of natural phenomena have been attained with such accuracy and "On Descartes' Discourse:" Prof. Huxley. Self-sacrifice a Divine Principle. 97 thoroughness, that we can prophesy their course with certainty. By gravitation, regulating the movements of the heavenly bodies, we determine and predict to the fraction of a minute, for past and future years, the motions of bodies distant and complex as the double, triple, multiple stars. Knowledge extends our view to regions whence light needs many years to reach the eye. We subject to our will the powers of a world greatly unfamiliar, partly hostile, and have their use for our reward. That which we grasp, see, hear, every thought of mind or heart, makes us conscious of things and processes of operation which our intellect, if sufficiently expanded, could follow from beginning to end. The array of the external world, our natural powers, thought and emotion, whatever goes to produce consciousness, sacred longings for pure and endless life, force of conscience, proclaim the great fact that the ponderous and wonderful mechanism of the world is the product of some great Governing Mind. They are in the whole a super-rational sanction, the complement of our reason, most impressive that selfsacrifice is a Divine principle in all true worship. A leader in science, deservedly a leader in physics, has given his own revelation of world-government. The figure is startling and daring-"The chess-board is the world, the pieces the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The Player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that His play is always fair and just and patient. But we know to our cost that He never overlooks a mistake, nor makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man that plays well the highest stakes are paid with that overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength, and one who plays ill is checkmated without haste, but without remorse." Shrinking from his own words, the professor says-They are like a picture of Satan playing chess for the soul of a man, and "would substitute for that mocking fiend a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win." Afterwards, forsaking the angel, he says of our life's training-"It is a rough kind of education, one in which ignorance is treated like disobedience, incapacity is punished as a crime; it is not a word and a blow, but the blow first without the "Liberal Education:" Prof. Huxley. H |