222 Natural Salvation. 



This point should te kept clearly in mind, since it helps 

 to place the whole subject under better lights. Cells 

 from the reproductive tissue of one parent (spermatozoa) 

 meet a cell from that of another parent, and the same 

 interblending and fusing of nuclear elements takes place, 

 followed by a recast of the blend, and then a new life 

 developing in due course. 



At first, and for a number of years, the discovery that 

 the unicells age and must have recourse to sexual conju- 

 gation, to escape death, was most disheartening to the 

 earlier hopes of natural salvation. Death appeared to run 

 far more deeply in the warp and woof of living matter 

 than had been supposed. 



Kor a time we .were inclined to acquiesce in the extreme 

 view that this observed decline and aging of the cell-of- 

 life was due to an inevitable, irremediable exhaustion of 

 the vivific molecules of the cell nucleus. That even if 

 the number of protoplasmic molecules were restored by 

 adjuvant chemical action, we might yet find that the 

 wear and tear of cell life depletes the large mobile mole- 

 cule, itself ; and that the problem of its restoration might 

 be found out of range of the chemical activities and affin- 

 ities of terrestrial matter. In brief, that death reigned 

 irretrievably on our planet, and that life is possible here 

 only in the parent-and-child mode. For it was easy to 



