298 
oxygen in the first, or of hydrogen and oxygen in the next, 
or of hydrogen and nitrogen in the last, will not yield hie. 
As to the imponderable bodies, light, heat, electricity even it 
ultimately found to have life in them, they would not be life so 
far as we can now judge ; or if they were, or any of them, to 
be identified with life, they would, in the Christian philosophy, 
still be creatures of God, taking their origin from beyond 
visible nature. , ~ n _ ln „ 
Or again-Supposing that protoplasm, as Professor Huxley 
describes it, simple or nucleated, proved to be fhe formal 
basis of life, still, for all that, it is not he. “1 7 ^ 
hands of the potter” it still remains, and the life eludes 
analysis. Take hydrogen and oxygen in certain proportions, 
pass an electric spark through them, and they become water; 
the water is of the same weight as those two gaseous bodies, 
and yet is found to differ from them. Hydrogen and oxygen 
at freezing-point would not cohere, but quite the reverse , 
water coheres into ice. Professor Huxley, with the plainness 
which is becoming, admits, of course, that there is something 
more than the ascertained constituents,— there is a modus 
operandi ” of the electric spark which no one understands. - 
And if this mystery is confessed as to life, even m ns 
simplest, or, as we expressed it, generic form, still more must 
we expect it in the more specific creations of life, each 
which would appear to have its propnum Even conceding, as 
we freely may, all that is said of a similari y 
character” in species very widely different-if we take, as Mr. 
Darwin does, the physical ■ embryo of the canine and ■ 
human body as an illustration of this it leaves the question of 
the hidden “life,” in each case, just where it was, and ev 
enhances our conception of the power °f specific Ine m 
directing the development according to tbe mten ion 
Him who “ quickeneth whom He will,” and us He w 11. ^ 1 e 
less the difference discerned m the “visible charac e 
greater the difference, and the greater the specific power, of 
the invisible life in each. case. . . 
Exception as XV. Thus much, then as to the origin of bfe 
to fe species of an( ^ exception taken to tbe'Chnstian FhiiosopHy, 
that it is a Creation. Tm 
As to the Varieties of species, though we are bound to n 
particular theories, all present knowledge corresponds with the 
ordinary belief that classes are not on^ ve^ numeious but 
very distinct, even when analogous and below the rank of m» 
Very often, indeed, they maybe difficul to defin«, or at times 
seem to lap over, and at times to simulate each ot • 
the fact is that they all, as a rule, keep ultimately to their own 
