seems to us written on the face and stamped in the very nature of things.

But as Kingsley has well said, "If there has been an evolution there must have been an evolver." We cannot predicate or anticipate an order without an ordainer. There must have been an intelligent power back of it to devise the scheme and at least set the train on its way. We cannot conceive of harmony and order as a necessary or even possible outgrowth of chaos and blind confusion. With intelligence and power all else is possible; without these nothing is certain. And if we say law regulates and controls the processes in nature, the question merely changes form; whence came the law? Nothing is explained by the mere substitution of a word.

Darwin's theism.

Moreover, it is not true, as some have assumed, that Darwin denies the existence of a Creator, as one or two passages from his published writings will sufficiently indicate. "To my mind," says he, "it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, than that each species has been independently created." And again, from his ORIGIN OF SPECIES: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its

several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved."

Causes in

nature.

He has great faith, that after life was started on the earth there were sufficient causes in nature to bring out of it all the successive types and orders. He does not claim that this has been demonstrated or that it can be conclusively proven, on account of the great number of "missing links" in the chain of development. But he assumes that because these links cannot now be found, it does not, of necessity, follow that they never existed. That may be true. But until some clear traces of such links can be found the assumption that they ever existed is mere supposition or hypothesis and not established science.

Missing

Prof. Huxley, in his New York lectures in 1877, attached much importance to the series of fossils recently discovered in some of links. our western territories by Prof. O. C. Marsh, because, beginning with a remote resemblance to the horse, they gradually changed to a very close resemblance, and so went far to fill up a hitherto wide hiatus in the chain of development.

But if every break in the chain were filled, the question of the origin of life would still remain. There are, indeed, two separate ques

Two

questions in- tions involved:

volved.

First, the origin of life.

Second, the method of its transmission.

Prof. Mivart assumes, and we think rightly, that with the first, physical science has nothing to do, and is incompetent to deal. Nevertheless we are not forbidden to inquire.

There are two principal theories, with various modifications of each.

1. The germ theory; that is, that all life proceeds from an antecedent form of life—and which implies a creator.

2. The theory of spontaneous generation, that is, that life is evolved from dead matter, in certain conditions, without the aid or

thing beyond itself.

operation of any

The latter theory is by no means new. Centuries ago it was believed that tadpoles were generated out of the mud along the borders of stagnant pools, by the vivifying action of the sun; caterpillars from the leaves on which they fed, and cels from the oozy slime of the Nile. And the hypothesis, in one form or another, has been revived or restated many times since the period of early Greek history.

The question has been very fully discussed recently, and with the aid of elaborate ex- Spontaneous periments, by Profs. Tyndall and H. C. Bastian, but with widely differing results.

generation. (Tyndall and Bastian.)

To reach any definite conclusion and make the test satisfactory it was agreed to take dead matter— isolate it from all contact with life-place it under favorable conditions for the development of life, if such thing were possible, and await the result. The experiment was a difficult one, but followed out with faithful detail by both experimenters. The material used was chiefly a liquid containing an infusion of hay, bits of cheese, or other organic substance. This was put in a bottle and brought to the boiling point, to destroy whatever germs it might contain-the bottle then hermetically sealed to protect the liquid from all possible contact with surrounding life, and left in a moderately warm temperature for several days. If at the end of the time the liquid showed signs of fermentation or putrefaction, it was taken as an indication of life; if no such signs appeared, it was regarded as absolutely sterile.

A great number of tests were made. But the result, thus far, seems to have been to array these eminent authorities against each other; Bastian claiming to have demonstrated the fact, Tyndall to have disproved the theory.

Fathy bras (Haxey and

Hacker.

It appeared at one time that the origin of life, in some of its forms at least, might be traced to a slime that covered the bot tom of the deep seas, since specks of living matter were found in it. The suggestion awakened much interest among scientific men, and Profs. Huxley and Hæckel in particular entered into a careful investigation. It afterward appeared that this slime occurs only in isolated sections of the sea-bottom-that oftener than otherwise it contains no life; and finally, by the microscopic investigations of Sir Lionel Beale, that this ooze or slime, instead of a bed of primitive life, is decaying matter out of which the life has not yet wholly perished. The living specks were the last of their generation rather than the first.

Indeed, there is little doubt that further investigation will prove the simple microscopic forms of life known as monad, bacteria, and the like, to be the result of decomposition of higher forms of life, rather than the beginnings of new life. The ooze at the bottom of ponds often shows traces of animal life, but it is decaying rather than primitive life. Instead of representing matter in the process of changing to the first form of life, it represents life in the last stages of decay, on the point of lapsing into the condition of dead mat

ter.