LIFE OX TIIK EARTH. 127 



maturity, final decay, and death belong to living orga- 

 nisation in its every shape on earth. 



In what, and how, and when did life begin on our 

 globe ? In its lowest aspects, whether animal or ve- 

 getable, we see nothing more than a few material 

 elements, aggregated under the simplest forms, with 

 very few organic functions ; yet these so propertied as 

 to preserve existence for a certain time to provide for 

 a succession of similar existences to live and die. 

 From these simple conditions (taking animal life as 

 best in illustration), we find a series rising upwards 

 by broken steps to those which are most complex and 

 complete. In no part of this ascending scale is there 

 any very wide gap what seemed in many instances to 

 be such having been partially filled up by recent 

 discovery in the living or in the fossil world. However 

 this series may have begun, and whether worked out 

 by progressive derivation or evolution within itself, or 

 by successive acts of special creative powers, equally 

 may we affirm the unity of scheme in this vast con- 

 nected scale, and the necessity of a First and Supreme 

 Designing Cause. If the endless forms, functions, and 

 instincts of life which we see around us be derived by 

 progressive changes, in unmeasured time, from a few 

 primitive types of being, such changes bespeak vital 

 laws and energies acting on matter through, or con- 

 currently with, the great forces of the natural world. 

 Under any and every view of the subject, intention by 

 some higher Power, however obscure to man as the 

 interpreter, is manifest as the foundation of the whole. 

 This is the sole standing-point to our reason, when 



