TWO PATHS, ONE GOAL. 



123 



there is something from birth, or preceding birth onwards ; and if one 

 might venture to look into the New Testament to see if there are 

 any passages which show what the purpose of God in the creation 

 man is, I would venture to point to two, one in the second chapter 

 of Hebrews, which says, "For it became Him, for whom are all 

 things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto 

 glory, to make the Captain of their Salvation perfect through 

 sufferings," and the other, in the eighth of Romans, that we should 

 " be conformed to the image of His Son." If that is not a great 

 purpose, I do not know what purpose is. 



Eev. F. A. Walker, D.D. — There are a few points that I should 

 like to allude to in this very able and instructive paper for the 

 purpose of information as much as anything else. 



We have had a great deal of science brought before us in the 

 course of this paper. 



Dr. Kidd says, " Thus the whole ascending series of animal forms 

 shows so simple an arrangement as that of the sponges, and so 

 complicated a group of mechanisms as the fourfold stomach of a 

 ruminant." I refer, of course, to Dr. Kidd's great knowledge of 

 anatomy and scientific knowledge in respect of the sponges ; but I 

 would mention that as long ago as 1860 I was, in company with 

 Dr. James Scott, the first to discover that the sponge was in 

 no sense a plant, but an animal with organs of respiration, 

 digestion, etc. There were several very local and rare sponges here, 

 and he informed me that the sponge not only possessed organs of 

 digestion, but a system of interlacing hairs that served to expel 

 the water it had taken in, and also to intercept the minute animals 

 that it received at the same time and which served it for food ; so 

 that its physical arrangement would not appear to be altogether of 

 the simplest. 



As it was said of old, in reference to the funeral pageant ol a 

 Roman Emperor, that the omission of certain statues from among 

 those carried in the procession only rendered the said statues more 

 illustrious, " Brutorum et Cassiorum imagines " (the Hanipdens and 

 Cromwells of that day) ; so that what Dr. Kidd leaves out is, 

 on that account, all the more intentionally significant when 

 he states, " we may allude to first the bones, muscles, skin, 

 feathers, scales, hairs, spines, claws, teeth, horns." Nearly 

 every physical organ is here enumerated, those which serve 



