44 
gerous way, or are, as yet, only listeners to the voice of 
novelty — so especially attractive to the young, and to the 
lowly educated. 
No manipulation of dead matter has instructed us in the 
origin of life ; nor does there appear the slightest chance that 
it should. It is, therefore, to living structure we must turn 
for information ; and that confirms the Mosaic history of its 
introduction ; in my humble opinion, at least, the only true 
theory, the only consistent account we have of the existences 
of the three great orders — living plants, water animals, and 
the creatures of earth. 
“ And God said. Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb 
yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his 
kind" 
<c And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the 
moving creature that hath life.” The same term is used in 
the creation of the creatures of earth. 
“ And God said. Let the earth bring forth the living creature 
after his kind.” But in the creation of man we are told, that 
God “ breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man 
became a living soul.” 
What I wish to bring more particularly under your observa- 
tion is the distinction made between the creation of plant and 
all the inferior animals, and between all the inferior animals 
and man, — resulting in the impossibility of life passing from 
one organism to another between the three marked divisions 
of existence. 
The plant has a sort of life. It has growth and repro- 
duction. Revelation does not even call this life. But it is 
remarkable that both water and land creatures are, at their 
creation, summoned into being as living things. 
I said living structure confirmed the Mosaic cosmogony. 
Is it not broadly outlined here ? What was created distinct 
continues distinct. The existence granted to vegetable, 
passes not into animal life ; improves not upon its Author's 
impress ; trangresses not the boundary marked out for it by 
Divine Power ; can never give unto itself that which its 
Creator has denied it ; and cannot, therefore, transmit other 
than it received. Hence the zoophyte is an imaginary thing — 
obscure as may seem the distinction between animal and 
vegetable in the lowest appearances of the former. 
The distinction of creation is again most emphatically 
marked in the wide gap interposed between man and all other 
animals. He holds life — and the same kind of life too, — in 
common with them. But mark the enormous difference : he 
became a living soul } not only living like the rest of the animal 
