90 



DE. ALFRED T. SCHOFIELD ON 



has endowed life in the individual cell with purpose. It can 

 preserve its own life by the progressive selection and assimilation 

 of food, and can reproduce its own species : but its directivity 

 must have proceeded from a, supreme Director. When, however, 

 we come to the direction of a complex organism like man, we 

 look for the general directing force of the countless cells and 

 numerous organs for the good of the whole, in the expression 

 of life in mind; and so far as such direction is extra-conscious — 

 to the unconscious mind in man. Life, indeed, itself is not a 

 force, but a directing of force. No force can direct itself, and no 

 natural force is alive. But no directing force in life has been 

 known to change one species into another, and reproduction is 

 strictly limited to " after its kind." 



It is, however, so difficult to speak oi creation, or, indeed, of 

 evolution without touching on life ; that practically scientists have 

 found themselves forced, most unscientifically to discuss its origin. 

 Such a discussion took place at Dundee, I think, in the year 

 1912; when, as I have already stated, ten professors joined in, 

 each contributing his idea on the abstruse subject, but, so far 

 as I know, not one of the ten ventured to suggest that possibly 

 God as Creator might prove to be the missing source of life.* 



There can be no doubt life existed from the beginning, and 

 there is now little question that the phenomena of life are essen- 

 tially purposive, or, as Professor Henslow says, " directive," and 

 are therefore the phenomena of mind ; and if we further ask, 

 Whose mind? there is but one final answer, " God's," for He 

 alone existed in the beginning. 



Abiogenesis, or the production of living protoplasm from, 

 chemicals has been affirmed, and specially by Dr. Charlton 

 Bastian ; but drastic experiments have proved that already exist- 

 ing life had not been sufficiently excluded in his experiments, and 

 that the premisses being unsound, the conclusion was false. 



To-day it is generally accepted that life alone can produce life, 

 and that all attempts to make it artificially have so far failed. 



Dr. A. E. W'allace declares that " living protoplasm has 

 never been chemically produced." 



Huxley, indeed, says: " Life exists before organism and is its 

 cause. " 



But life can only produce life after its kind, from creation till 

 now. Grass can never produce a tree ; and if in any way the 

 body of a man is to be made from a single living cell, the 

 mind of the Creator as well as the fashioning hand must be 



*We may remark here that protoplasm is not so much the pliA'sical basis 

 of life as that (as Professor Burden Sanclerj.on shews) life is the basis of 

 protoplasm. 



