CH. xix. THE BLOOD OF THE PASCHAL LAMB. 33 T 



sprinkle their door-posts with the blood of the sacrificial 

 lamb on the ever memorable night of the Exodus, was 

 not an irrelevant sign, an accidental or capricious choice, 

 for which any other thing would have done equally well. 

 There must have been a fitness in the proceeding be- 

 coming an all-wise and all-gracious Providence, dealing 

 with reasonable and intelligent creatures. Modern 

 science has enabled us to discover such an adaptation. 



Of late years numerous experiments have been made 

 by scientific men in order to ascertain the origin of life. 

 These experiments have been conducted in the interests 

 of two opposite parties ; those who maintain that dead 

 matter in certain favourable circumstances is capable 

 itself of originating life, and those who hold that all life 

 must spring from the germs of previous life. The advo- 

 cates of the former doctrine, known as the doctrine of 

 spontaneous generation, have not hitherto succeeded in 

 proving their theory. Their experiments when more 

 carefully repeated by their opponents have invariably 

 turned out failures. Indeed, the result of experimenta- 

 tion has been entirely and exclusively on the side of 

 those who argue that matter itself cannot in any circum- 

 stances originate life. So ubiquitous are the germs of 

 life that it is almost impossible to imagine a spot alto- 

 gether destitute of them. They are so difficult to get 

 rid of in conducting any experiment requiring their 

 exclusion, that after using the utmost precaution, and 

 placing them in circumstances the most unfavourable, 

 we cannot be quite sure that we have succeeded. In 

 the earth, air, and water they are everywhere present. 



