CHAPTEE II. 



REGENERATION. 



IN the foregoing chapter, we have been only on 

 the ground of Nature and what is called Natural 

 Religion. We have now to consider the subject 

 of Divine Revelation and Divine Grace, and to 

 examine Professor Drummond's most important and 

 most characteristic doctrine, which he calls Spiritual 

 Biogenesis. 



Biogenesis is defined as the generation of life 

 from life only. We have every reason to believe 

 that this is an absolute law of the natural world 

 that every living thing, vegetable or animal, is 

 descended from living parents, and that the origin 

 of life was as much a direct act of Creative Power 

 as the origin of matter. Tyndall's celebrated 

 saying, that matter contains the "promise and 

 potency of life," is not supported by experimental 

 evidence, and indeed it has been propounded by its 

 author only as an effort of imaginative faith. But, 

 so far as experiment can prove a negative, it proves 



