180 THE LAW. 



the world before it seemed to the Divine mind a fitting 

 habitat for the plants and animals with which He had pre- 

 destined to adorn its surface. Life is a measured and re- 

 stricted gift ; it is adjusted to, as well as governed by, ex- 

 ternal conditions, and it is only in harmony with what we 

 know of Nature's progress to believe in a long Azoic period, 

 during which these external conditions were undergoing 

 the necessary preparation and arrangement for the advent 

 of Vitality. At present all our ideas of Life are associated 

 with a globe superficially composed of land and water, sur- 

 rounded by a breatheable atmosphere, lighted and warmed 

 by a genial sun, and subjected to ever- acting physical and 

 chemical forces ; and while we firmly believe that inde- 

 pendent of these great cosmical conditions Life could not 

 exist, we may surely be permitted to presume that it has 

 been their unfailing accompaniment from the earliest mo- 

 ment they were harmoniously established, and will con- 

 tinue to be so while that harmony remains undissolved. 



[Origin of Life.] 



Starting from this point, we may fairly inquire, How 

 and by what means this earth became the "procreant cradle" 

 of organised existences 1 "Was it by some process of second- 

 ary causation, or directly and at once by the fiat of the 

 Creator 1 Alas for the impotence of science, and the scope 

 of our finite intelligence ! Science cannot even indicate 

 the line of inquiry our highest philosophy is the humble re- 

 cognition of the fact. The chemist and the physiologist may 

 resolve the vital organism into cells, and granules, and nuclei, 

 but here their efforts stop : they cannot endow these cells and 

 germs with life, or cause them to assume the lowliest form 

 of vegetable or animal existence. The " slime that mantles 



