The Beginning of Life 



the air in countless numbers. They are so essential in the 

 Plan of Creation that the higher forms of both plant and 

 animal life, including man, could not live without their aid. 

 No other living things perform a more necessary service to 

 man. There are both helpful and harmful kinds but the 

 friendly or helpful ones outnumber the harmful ones many 

 hundreds of times. Great minds, through scientific research 

 have learned how to destroy and to overcome the harmful 

 ones such as those that cause tuberculosis, pneumonia, diph- 

 theria, typhoid fever and others while at the same time, they 

 have discovered methods of cultivating and increasing the 

 friendly ones. Every plant and animal since the first life cell 

 that has lived, died and gone into decay has been worked up 

 into plant food by these lowly bacteria. Every leaf that has 

 fallen from every tree, every stalk of grass, every lichen, 

 moss and fern, every log, every animal that has borrowed 

 its bodily structure from the soil, the water and the sunshine 

 pays these substances back to rebuild other lives. "Dust 

 thou art to dust returneth" is literally true. There is an 

 endless procession of life and death — of decay and a new 

 life. The farmer plants his fields to corn, clover or alfalfa. 

 These take up the substance from the soil, and oxygen from 

 the air. They are fed to his stock and the refuse is hauled 

 out as manure and placed again on the land. Immediately 

 these bacteria break this up into plant food and the plants 

 reproduce the substance of the parent plants. Thus the end- 

 less cycle continues. This process has been going on from 

 the beginning of life and it will continue so long as life 

 endures. Nothing in Nature is wasted. Everything is 



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