THE ORIGIN OF MAN 197 



ever we put it, it is a miracle ; and from whatever 

 standpoint we regard an atom, an atom is a 

 wonder-worker. 



As we have mentioned, a single atom may have 

 some hundreds of thousands of corpuscles spinning 

 and gyrating — flashing round their orbits at the 

 rate of thousands of miles a second — while in the 

 immense molecules of living protoplasm there 

 must be millions of such solar systems. Dr 

 C. W. Saleeby compares the molecule of haemo- 

 globin (the colouring matter of the blood) to a 

 star-cluster such as the Pleiades — each sun in the 

 cluster with thousands of satellites. If there is 

 to be any material basis of life at all, could there 

 be a more magnificent and mysterious mechanism .'' 

 Little wonder that God can make souls when his clay 

 is star-clusters I .- 



Verily, we lose no sense of awe, no sense of 

 reverence, when we conceive of man as a product 

 of the atoms, and when we perceive in matter 

 " the promise and the potency of all terrestrial 

 life." Nay, see ; .the atoms dance and throb in the 

 very beard and bones of Death, and in the presence 

 of such infinite, incorrigible energy our faith in 

 immortality is surely strengthened. What matter 

 rigid jaw and stiffened fingers ? The energy that 

 once made the living soul is still prodigious in the 

 disintegrating atoms. Can we believe that the 



