necessitated by the established doctrine of the persistence of force.

The bearing of these principles upon the doctrine of the evolution of the various species of plants and animals from a few primordial germs is apparent. Original germs could of course only evolve what had been previously involved. Evolution affords no support to atheism. You may unwind the strips of linen from an Egyptian mummy. You will find nothing there but what was put there. Nor can you divest yourself of this conviction, though ten thousand human voices are shouting in your ear: You did not see this corpse wrapped in linen; no living being saw it; no embalmer of the present day can tell you how it was done; it may have been done by "a fortuitous concurrence" of the forces of nature, which have produced marvelous results;-there was no involver. After atheism has succeeded in proving that God has had nothing to do with the world since life throbbed in one little germ, it will find itself confronted with a still more difficult task, the banishment of the involver of that germ from the universe.

CHAPTER XVII.

LIFE AND ITS RELATIONS TO MATTER.

In order to direct attention more fully to the claims made by atheistic forms of evolution, it is necessary to invite the reader to a consideration of the problems involved in the term Life, and to the solutions given thereto by those who repudiate belief in the being of God. Having journeyed with the uncompromising evolutionist over extended fields,-the origin of man; spontaneous generation; primordial germs; the origin and essence of matter; the nature, relations, and genesis of the physical forces; the law of continuity,-in which fields he has labored with unwearied assiduity, and from which he has brought valuable treasures to the temple of truth; it is necessary to follow him in his investigations into the nature of life. An attempt must be made to furnish answers, probable if not incontrovertible, to the following questions: Is life mere mechanism?—Is life some one of the physical forces ?-Is life a mode of motion ?—Is life a mere aggregation of the life of an infinite number of infinitesimal bioplasts?-Is life one of the affections of matter, which has two sets of properties, the physical and the spiritual-a double-faced unity?—Is life what Mr. Herbert Spencer defines it, "The definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co

existences and sequences"?-Is life a substantive entity? -What is the origin of life?

A discussion of these and kindred topics is necessary to an investigation of the relations, friendly and antagonistic, which theistic conceptions of the universe bear to the theory of evolution as advocated by eminent thinkers with an array of learning, with a measure of boldness, and with attractiveness in style, that bewilder the mind and rivet attention even when they do not succeed in securing intellectual assent.

To the question, What is life? various answers have been given. No one of these, however, meets the demands of science, though some are as ingenious as they are elaborate, and as pretentious as they are profound. The term, it must be conceded, is as yet undefined.

With the view of ascertaining the present status of the intricate question, and in the hope of directing attention to the conflicting opinions which prevail, the task is undertaken of examining the more noteworthy attempts that have been made to define the incomprehensible term.

These tentative definitions may be classified, for the purpose in view, under two heads:

I. Those which regard life as mere mechanism.

II. Those which regard it as an immaterial, substantive entity, capable of controlling both matter and inorganic forces.

IS LIFE MERE MECHANISM?

Life has been defined by Haeckel as "a connected chain of very complicated material phenomena . . . . of atoms placed together in a most varied manner.”*

This may be accepted as a specimen of the definitions * History of Creation, vol. i. p. 199.

furnished by the materialistic school of philosophy. It assumes, as materialism invariably does, that science is competent to assert that there is nothing in the universe except matter and its forces. The latter, modern materialists are disposed to regard as modes of motion. Life, accordingly, must be viewed either as "a particular arrangement of the molecules of matter," or as "one of the modes of motion," a connected series of changes produced by the ordinary physical forces.

Any theory which regards life as "a particular arrangement of the molecules of matter "—an arrangement having such diversities that each species of plants and animals, indeed each individual plant and animal, by virtue of a slightly different arrangement, possesses characteristics differing from those possessed by others. -is radically defective. The material and the vital, though frequently united, are two distinct realities; and their mysterious union is more readily explained on the assumption that life is a substantive entity, capable of employing chemical and physical forces in the production and maintenance of an individual material organism, than by assuming that life is a phenomenon of material molecules when arranged in certain ways. The chasm between the living and the not-living is too broad to be bridged by molecular arrangement. To regard life, not merely as an evolution, but as a particular phase of material evolution, furnishes no explanation of the origin of conscious existence; nor is it possible to believe that the will, which is capable of setting the machinery of the individual organism in motion, is the result of a specific arrangement of material atoms. Hence Prof. Tyndall concedes: "The continuity between molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness is the rock upon which materialism must inevitably split whenever it

pretends to be a complete philosophy of the human mind." He approvingly quotes the language of DuBois Reymond: "It is absolutely and forever inconceivable that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms should be otherwise than indifferent to their position and motion, past, present, and future." Prior to 1875 Prof. Tyndall viewed materialism as an inadequate explanation of the phenomena of conscious life. Indeed, even Mr. Herbert Spencer, whom materialists would regard as competent authority, concedes that, "The proximate chemical principles, or chemical units, -albumen, fibrine, gelatine-or the hypothetical proteine substance, cannot possess the property of forming the endlessly varied structures of animal forms."

The mechanical theory of life, even when aided by the hypothesis that the universe is pervaded by "mind stuff” -a hypothetical, imponderable, impalpable, exhaustless, invisible material potentiality, having subtle influences discoverable through the microscope of a powerful imagination and filling the interstices between the molecules of the hypothetical ether which is supposed to pervade all interstellar spaces, being extremely mobile, and exceedingly complex in its molecular structure, from the minute particles of which individual organisms are produced by physical agencies, each organism being capable of evolving a definite number of harmonious combinations, is about as satisfactory an explanation of life, as is the assumption, as an explanation of musical phenomena, that the music of the piano is the result of mechanical forces operating in the instrument itself, no skilled hand directed by an intelligent will being needed to evoke symphonies, even those of Mozart or of Beethoven. It is possible to affirm that the music is due to successive vibrations of material substances; that there