JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 57 
millions of years must have elapsed to admit of the evolution 
of the animal and vegetable kingdoms by divergence, variation 
and natural selection. Parthenogensis can explain how one 
organism may reproduce itself by autofertilisation, but this so far 
as we know takes place only in the lowest forms of organic life. 
Following the assumption that the animal and vegetable king- 
doms did originate in this way, we cannot avoid the necessity 
of making use of variation, adaptation and natural selection ; 
and the axiom of Herbert Spencer that all living things 
undergo a ceaseless transformation through a continual adapt- 
ation of organisms to environments, must be accepted and 
applied. But it signifies little how low the organism from 
which the animal or vegetable kingdoms sprang, the matter of 
which that organism was composed did not do the varying nor 
the selecting. The matter, per se, could do nothing ; but the 
life and intelligence which animated it would vary and adapt 
itself to environments and, if necessary, make new conditions 
to enable it to complete its design and purpose. ‘The laws of 
matter and the so called laws of nature are nothing more than 
the laws of the Creator. Whether His laws are mutable or 
otherwise, I will not attempt to discuss. His laws however 
may, and do, guide the operations and divergence, variation and 
natural selection in order to attain the ideal, a part of which 
we may reasonably infer is man. 
According to the Mosaic account, the first human organism 
was a spontaneous production and this reproduced itself by 
some kind of parthenogentic process. Evolutionists, however, 
do not consider this evidence sufficiently authentic to: com- 
mand their acceptation of that occurrence. The science of 
embryology and cytology are both opposed to the biblical 
story. Both these sciences teach and demonstrate that 
the living primary cell of an organism is as much an entity 
as the aggregation of its progeny in the form of a specific 
organism. ‘The primary cell of a human organism after its 
fertilisation by impregnation proceeds by division, reproduction, 
differentation and collocation to produce the organism of its 
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