SCIENTIFIC FAITH ONCE MORE 
endowing all matter with sensation and purpose, 
and thus its passage from one condition to another 
higher in the scale is easily accomplished. 
Haeckel’s manipulation of matter to get life will 
to many persons seem like a sleight-of-hand trick. 
One thing disappears, and at a word another entirely 
different takes its place. Now we see the solid life- 
less crust of the earth, then we see water and carbon 
dioxide, then nitrogenous carbon compounds, then, 
presto! we have albumen or protoplasm, the physi- 
cal basis of life. Out of protoplasm by a deft use of 
words comes the monera ; another flourish of his pen 
and there is that marvel, the living cell, with its 
nucleus, its chromosome, its centrosome, and all its 
complicated, intelligent, and self-directed activities. 
This may be the road the creative energy traveled, 
since we have to have creative energy whether in 
matter or apart from it; but our scientific faith hesi- 
tates until these steps can be repeated in the lab- 
oratory and life appear at the behest of chemical 
reactions. 
The scientific faith of mankind — faith in the uni- 
versality of natural causation — is greatly on the 
increase; it is waxing in proportion as theological 
faith is waning; and if love of truth is to be our form 
of love of God, and if the conservation of human life 
and the amelioration of its conditions are to be our 
form of brotherly love, then the religion of a scien- 
tific age certainly has some redeeming features. 
