the environment,"-it is nothing of the kind; the adjustment is caused by life, is the exhibition of life, not life itself. Some, seeking great accuracy, state :-"In the vegetal world, and in the lower regions of the animal world, the life is purely, or almost purely, physico-chemical; it becomes more and more predominately psychical as we ascend in the animal world, until at the summit it is mainly psychical." Now, physicists are well aware that we do not know matter, only know states of consciousness which we call perceptions of resist ance, extension, colour, sound, odour; do not know motion, only know the sequent states of consciousness produced in the muscles of the eyes, or of the tactual, or of other organs, in the act of attending to the moving object; it is therefore rather strange that they should expect to be believed that, by this thing which they know not, they are able, without any occulta vis, to explain some other thing which is more unknowable.

No one pretends that he can "cognise this occulta vis; yet it is sought, strange to say, among the dead; for taking protoplasm, that substance in which life manifests itself, they kill it, find three compounds, carbonic acid, water, ammonia, the result of decomposition, which certainly possess no properties other than those of ordinary matter, and then try to find amongst these dead, the life-the occulta vis. Not finding it, they assert,-"This protoplasm is composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its. atoms are aggregated, and is again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done." Then, to excuse the blunder of seeking the living among the dead, it is stated,-"the compounds or constituents of protoplasm, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless; but when brought together, under certain conditions, they exhibit the phenomena of life." When we ask for proof, and carbonic acid, water, and ammonia are brought together, there is no protoplasm, nor any sign of life, nor is any process known in our laboratories by which life can be brought into existence. The mystery remains unsolved. Why the substance protoplasm should manifest properties which are not manifested by any of its constituents we do not know, and very likely

we never shall know. Mysterious as the fact is, it is common; for every chemical synthesis is the manifestation of a new set of properties equally insoluble. We say equally insoluble, yet must add, that though by chemical synthesis we do produce new sets of properties, we cannot, by any synthesis, construct organisable matter; the affinities of life and living matter belong to a chemistry which we do not understand, nor can we imitate. We cannot even make the dead matter, not a bit of that material which has the chemical relations of protoplasm; nor, if we had this dead matter could we give it the breath of life, or restore life to the tissue whence it had departed.

A peculiar operation must have accompanied the advent of life. By some grouping of particles into peculiarity of structure, by some undulatory displacement of molecules resulting in myriads of little waves or pulses of movement, by some energy, there was a new work. This new energy became one of the so-called natural powers: and now if a stone falls, if fire burns, if life lives, if mind thinks, it is an effect from the Great Unknown; not by fresh effort every time the stone falls, or fire burns, but by continual operation of the energy originally infused.

This may be illustrated by growth. "The faculty of combining heterogeneous compounds into matter like itself— growth, in fact is the very thing possessed by no other substance in the world."1 It is the product of an occult power, and protoplasm is on an equality with complicated organised beings. Let it be imagined that over the table and on the floor are spread in confused mass all the letters of the alphabet, capital and small, thousands intermingling; these are seen to be slowly adjusting themselves, until every scattered type has come into due place, and arranged itself for the printer to take the impression of a book. Of course some invisible power is at work. Work more

wonderful than this is wrought by protoplasm, and any attempt to minimise the distinction and difference between living matter and dead albumen and protein is to confuse counsel. Take some complicate chance formation "The Protoplastic Theory of Life :" J. Drysdale, M.D., pp. 184, 185.

from the bottom, or from the shore of the sea, at the beginning of the world, "And when you have got this substance, you are as far on your way to albumen as a man ascending a hill would be on his way to the moon. And when you have got albumen, you are still as far from living matter as in the moon you would be from the fixed stars."1 No natural process has been discovered which can explain the origin of living matter; and if such process were discovered, it would only show that God had mysteriously bridged the gulf which separates the dead from the living.

Thus, physical science, reverently waiting on the threshhold of existence, seeks to know the forms of the outer world by means of optical and tactual process, and to bring the how or manner of creation into representation for the perception of our inner man. The process is from without inward, and has a limit which cannot be passed the Ultimate Cause being utterly unknown, though immanent in all phenomena-but we know that all animals and plants consist, in great measure, of fluid water. The material basis of life is albumenoidal substance; what life is, in itself, no man knoweth. We can only say, "Its working is a continual adjustment of internal relation to external relations."

Scripture draws another picture, not of the How, but of the Why there is life. By this picture we understand that through creation, redemption, regeneration, we have in time, in nature, in history, a revelation of those great acts by which the Eternal graduates us for everlasting existence. As in matter, the visible garment of the Almighty, there are infinite metamorphoses; as in life, we behold illimitable progression; as in the historic development of thought, we find how the mental habits of bygone generations enter the very spirit. of present modes of thinking; so in Revelation we are taught to adore-not a Vastness which oppresses us, not a Power which terrifies us, but a Father who is leading us to complete fulness of life. Every temptation we resist, every generous impulse wisely yielded to, every noble thought that is encouraged, every sacred aspiration realised, adds its own

1 "The Protoplastic Theory of Life:" J. Drysdale, M.D., p. 260.

An Unknown Energy.

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energy to the impetus of the great movement which is bearing all true-hearted men towards a higher character and richer existence. Revelation shows that there is a Spirit of infinite perfection in whom we live and move and have our being that all Nature is a Word of God coming from everlasting realms, bringing tidings of the past, and carrying intelligence to the future. Star-domed space is the temple of His Majesty, and our soul His inner spiritual jewelled chamber (Jno. xiv. 23).

We may ask Have the living particles which are arranged into the shape of an organism an innate tendency to arrange themselves into the shape of that very organism. to which they belong? This is a hard thing to say, and yet the tendency to assume the specific form must be inherent in all parts of the organism. What is the energy which gives this tendency? If we say polarity of the organic units, that is a name ascribed to atoms for something of which we are ignorant; nor does it explain what we want to know-how living particles, or units, possess the property of arranging themselves into the special structures which they construct? The power cannot be in the atoms of albumen, or fibrine, or gelatine, or the hypothetical protein substance, for in that case, how are we to account for the unlikenesses of different organisms? Laying aside these particles, the chemical units, can we find a sort of morphological unit, a microscopic cell, by multiplication of which all developmental changes are effected? No; for the cell is itself a manifestation of this strange power, and though cells are the ultimate visible components of many organisms, they are not universal. driven to the conclusion that, complex as are chemical units, physiological or life units are more complex; and that difference of composition in these units themselves, leading to differences in the mutual play of energies, causes the endless variety of existing forms. Evidently, we have here a power, the nature of which is wholly unknown.

We are, then,

Oken said: "Every living thing arose out of slime, and is nothing but slime in various forms. This primitive slime originated in the sea, and from inorganic matter in the course

of planetary evolution." Oken might have stated it more. Scripturally in the water, and out of the earth, the Lord God made things to grow. Hæckel tells us: "Life is nothing but a connected chain of very complicated material phenomena of motion. These motions must be considered as changes in the position and combination of the molecules." Now, when a man says life is something that he knows of, and is nothing more, he would have us think that a wonderful amount of knowledge is in his possession: whereas in fact, as to life, no substance even distantly resembling organisable matter has ever been formed by man. The complex combination, when dead, is called "protein," but the living nature no man has determined. To minimise in words the distinction between living and unliving matter, does not alter the fact that the two are as far from one another as the east is from the west. Even supposing, but not admitting, that under certain circumstances we may be able to generate a low order of life by a peculiar grouping of particles, the mystery still remains unsolved. It may be possible to use Divinely given energy, or occulta vis, for the production of organisms, but that reads 'not the riddle any more than our use of galvanism explains the reason of galvanic powers. We know that the formative energy by which crystallising matter unites together, has its inner power by chemical constitution, and its external power by influence of surrounding matter; so the semi-fluid state of matter may possibly have passed into amorphous organisms, and thus changed form, as these organisms do every moment; but the ultimate causes, whether of physical or of vital phenomena, centre in mystery. "Autogony," or "spontaneous generation," are only dark words which veil ignorance by putting back, not explaining the difficulty.

The vital substance of the whole universe, identical for one and all living creatures, is semi-fluid, transparent, colourless, structureless. This is a window of truth through which the face of the Infinite may be seen: a pregnant and significant fact, proving that there exists beyond all our visual and chemical investigations, a distinct and special endowment of which we know absolutely nothing. It proves, in a