LIGHT, LUMINARIES AND LIFE. 195 
remarks on a lecture by Professor George Henslow at University 
College.* 
He remarked that “in the coming into existence, or the 
growth, or the continuance of the combinations presented in 
the bodies of living things, scientific thought is compelled to 
accept the idea of Creative Power.” Again, “it is not in dead 
matter that we live and move and have our being, but in the 
creating and directive power, which science compels us to 
accept as an article of belief. . . . We have an unknown 
object put before us in science. In thinking of that we are all 
agnostics. We only know God in His works: but we are 
absolutely forced by science to believe with perfect confidence 
in a Directive Power—in an influence other than physical, or 
dynamical, or electric forces.” He refers to a conversation 
many years before with Liebig, when they were walking 
together in the country. To the question put to him, whether 
he believed that the grass and flowers around grew by mere 
chemical force, the illustrious chemist rephed,—* No, no more 
than I could believe that a book of botany describing them 
erew by mere chemical force”; and (adds Kelvin) “every 
action of human free will is a miracle to chemical, physical, 
and mathematical science.” So we fall back upon creation as 
the process of Divine Will and Thought realising itself in life 
aud form; and upon evolution directed to ends, as the Divine 
Method, though the Hand which guides it still wears the glove 
of mystery. 
Attempts are made in one direction and another to pierce the 
veil, but without much success. One of the latest of these 
speculations has been put before the scientific world by the 
accomplished physiologist, Professor Starling, of University 
College, London.t It is an extremely interesting—one may 
almost say fascinating—address, as we are led on through the 
various stages in the evolution of the animal world to see how 
functional development goes parz passu with cerebral develop- 
ment. But the eruv is—as ever—at the first step. Professor 
Starling attempts, with not much more success than Haeckel 
before him, to explain this by a bold hypothesis. He attempts 
to account for the origin of life, by the accidental building- 
up of endothermic compounds, “during those chaotic chemical 
* “Present Day Rationalism, with an Examination of Darwinism.” 
(Christian Apologetics, London : Johu Murray, 1903.) 
+ Presidential Address to Section L of the British Association, 
Winnipeg Meeting, 1909, by KE. H. Starling, M.D., F.R.S. 
