the days of La Place have proved the imaginary nebulæ to be stars, and the theory is generally abandoned as inconsistent with ascertained facts. It was in its origin mere guess-work, unsupported by proof. But still the nebular hypothesis is adhered to by Spencer, Tyndall, and others, who say that, although the nebula within reach of telescopes have been resolved into stars, that does not prove that the nebulous matter does not exist. The probability, however, is that if the nearer nebulæ have been resolved into stars, the more distant are the same.

Having accounted for the existence of the world. in this imaginary way, evolution proceeds to account for all living things in it and on it. The claim is that men and animals and plants all come from one common basis of life-protoplasm, cosmic dust, primordial fog, or by whatever name the "formal basis of all life" is called. Protoplasm, according to Huxley, is the original substance out of which all organic matter is developed, and is the same in plants and animals. By some means or other the gaseous fire, or matter of the universe, got into the form of protoplasm, the slimy substance that contains the germ of life, and out of this mud sprung living things. It is described as resembling albumen, or the white of an egg, and is composed of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. This is the "structural unit" from which all living bodies, vegetable and animal, start into life. Huxley says: "Beast and

fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same character, namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus." Out of this mysterious substance, in which the life germ exists, a mysterious artist fashions and develops a reptile, a bird, a mosquito, an elephant, or a

man.

The first and insuperable difficulty with the evolutionist who denies Divine interference is to account for that mysterious thing we call life. How did the living creatures evolved by the heat of the sun out of mud or slime-the lowest form of insect lifecome to have life? How did the living come from the non-living? The answer given is, by "spontaneous generation." But that is totally and confessedly without proof, and is contrary to the maxim, "omne vivum ex vivo." Life nor anything else can be evolved from matter unless it previously existed in matter, for evolution is the unrolling of something already existing in germ or embryo. Spontaneous generation is neither more nor less than creation, or causing something to exist which does not exist. In other words, it is attributing to natural laws divine power, or the power to make something out of nothing.

No human skill nor power has yet succeeded in producing a spark of life. Evolution (and all science) is confessedly helpless and utterly baffled before the problem of the origin of life. No more is known

of it now than was known to the world four thousand years ago. This is almost universally admitted. The controversy on this point has been settled by the experiments of Prof. Tyndall, a skeptical evolutionist, who demonstrated that in every case in which it was claimed that life had been generated from dead organic matter, the living germs were derived from living parents. He affirms "that not a shred of trustworthy experimental testimony exists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared independently of antecedent life."

But scientists have a convenient way of getting over such difficulties, and say that although there may now be no such thing as "spontaneous generation," there may have been in some past age, or such a condition of things may have existed by which life was produced by natural laws. And this guess or supposition is called science! Darwin supposed that life was given by the Creator to a few primitive forms in the beginning.

It is maintained that matter is eternal, though Scripture teaches the eternity of God, and that He alone is the first and the last, the beginning and the end; but it cannot be maintained that life is co-existent with matter, because geologists teach us that there was an azoic (no life) age, or period of time, in the earth's existence, in which it was impossible that life could exist. More than a dozen times, as geology reveals, the earth has been submerged and

all animal life on it destroyed. Human pride is humbled before the great mystery of life, and is obliged to confess: "It is too high for me; I cannot attain unto it." The only explanation is in the plain teaching of the Bible, that creation was the immediate act of God, who is the sole author of life. He is the Creator of all things, but if matter is eternal, then, instead of being the creator, He is only the fashioner, or developer of matter into the present cosmic system, and really created nothing. If He did not, or could not, create matter, the fair inference is that He could not annihilate it, and, therefore, would not be omnipotent, and if not omnipotent, then no God at all.

Evolution fails at the outset to account for life. It teaches that all organic life has been developed from a primeval germ, but as to whence that originated and how it became endowed with such wonderful powers and activities, we are told nothing. The "fortuitous combination of atoms," the very existence of which is only an assumption, has produced all organic and inorganic formations, or evolved creation out of lifeless matter. Life is evolved out of the lifeless, the organic out of the inorganic, mind out of matter, thought out of the non-thinking, soul out of the soulless. Conscience is a mere phenomenon of molecular changes and has no moral authority; it simply grew as anything else grows, and is the result of necessity. The delicate organs

of sight, sound, touch and smell have gradually developed by natural forces, and all without the intervention of a Divine mind! Could anything be more absurd? If anyone not a scientist should give utterance to such nonsense, he would be set down as one of those whom the Bible calls fools; but when coming from Huxley, or some other distinguished scientist, the believers in what Carlyle calls "the gospel of dirt," receive it as science, and exclaim: "Great is science, and Huxley is her prophet!"

Matter and life are as unlike as it is possible to conceive things to be; there is no analogy or similarity between them, and the idea that one can produce the other is too absurd for patient consideration. Life is an entity, as much so as matter, and its connection and association with matter is as inexplicable as the union of the human soul and body, or the union of the divine and human in Jesus, the Christ.

Evolution, as already stated, implies that there is something to be evolved. Nothing can give out that which it does not possess. Like evolves like, and something cannot come from nothing. Insensate matter cannot evolve sensation, unless sensation previously exists in matter. It is preposterous to talk about matter evolving mind, reason and conscience, unless these principles exist in matter. And this is just what people endowed with reason and common sense are invited to receive as a truth of