CHAP, ii Biogenesis. 7 



that mere matter does not contain any potency of 

 life : it has only a capacity of being vitalised by 

 previously existing life. And it certainly contains 

 no promise of life ; for the profoundest knowledge of 

 the physical and chemical properties of matter would 

 not give the faintest hint or suggestion of life. 1 



Now, according to Professor Drummond, the 

 very same law that life can be produced only 

 from life is true also in the spiritual world ; and 

 its expression in the spiritual world is the law of 

 Regeneration : that, as matter can become living 

 only by the agency of already existing life, so mind 

 can acquire spiritual life only through the agency of 

 the Divine Spirit. This is according to Christ's 

 saying, " Ye must be born anew," as reported by Saint 

 John in that conversation with Nicodemus which has 

 become the classical passage on the doctrine of 

 Regeneration ; 2 and, in the classical passage on the 

 doctrine of the Resurrection, Saint Paul says the 

 same in different words : " The first man is of the 

 earth, earthy : the second man is of heaven. . . . 

 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we 

 shall also bear the image of the heavenly." 3 



No doctrine is more profoundly true, and with 

 none does fanaticism more easily ally itself. But 



1 Huxley says : " The present state of knowledge furnishes 

 us with no link between the living and the not living." And 

 Virchow speaks of the theory of spontaneous, or "equivocal," 

 generation as " utterly discredited." (Quoted by Drummond, 

 p. 70, note.) 



2 John iii. 7, Revised Version. 3 1 Cor. xv. 47, 49. 



