332 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



gradually developed out of these, according to a 

 fixed order of natural operation, under the supreme 

 guidance of Divine administration." They teach 

 that if spontaneous generation be, indeed, a reality, 

 the matter which undergoes change, " having been 

 proximately disposed, by the action of heat and 

 of other causes, of itself evolves into act by 

 Divine intervention, rather than that the causal 

 action of an inanimate body should be efficacious 

 towards the generation of life." 



It is not, then, in the case of spontaneous gener- 

 ation, the principle of Evolution, but the misappli- 

 cation of this principle, which has led to the grave 

 philosophical errors into which so many modern 

 evolutionists have fallen. None of the agnostic or 

 monistic theories account for life. " They begin 

 with organism, but organism connotes life. Whence 

 then, this life? Take the first instance and the 

 first instance there must have been of an inani- 

 mate chemical compound showing signs of life ; say 

 phenomena of cleavage and of subsequent gastraean 

 inversion. How is it that this particular inanimate 

 chemical compound has taken such a start ? If mat- 

 ter evolved itself spontaneously into life, without aid 

 of formal or efficient Cause, why have not the met- 

 amorphic rocks through all these aeons of time 

 shaken off the incubus of their primitive passivity, 

 and wakened up into protoplasm, and thus secured 

 to themselves the privilege of self-motion, internal 

 growth, reproduction ? Again, is it possible to imag- 

 ine that brute matter, inert and purely passive, could 

 by its own unaided exertion pass straight from the 



