eye give work for the spiritual ear and eye. Everything visible conducts to the invisible. Not only so, it is impossible for any man to know all sciences, he cannot know one, cannot know one thing perfectly in any one science; every science, and everything in every science, speedily passes beyond knowledge, and is lost in the unknown. It is gross presumption to bring up from the depths of this ignorance the assertion"all life motion and intelligence in the world are mechanical -as Vancanson's duck which eat and digested its food; or as the flute player of the same artist." Why those mechanisms were the work of mind, and maintained by mind. Even so, the beautiful arrangements of nature, in their uniformity and variety, in that which we understand and in that whereof we are ignorant, bring us to the acknowledgment of mind. The modes of action according to natural law cannot be arranged in scientific form, until they are represented to our mind as the work of intelligence. We naturally seek for, and are not satisfied till we find, tokens of intelligence, like, but infinitely greater than our own, in the moving power. If our argument is badly worked

"Though you see a churchman ill,

In the church continue still."

To obtain a conception as to order and will in creation; try, by scientific imagination, to get a view of their reality in a triple truth concerning Vitality: 1. Unity of Power, 2. of Form, 3. of Substance.

1. Unity of Power.

All the activities of vitality are for maintenance of the body, for changes in its positions and parts, and for continuance of the species. If we add activities of consciousness, intellect, and volition, the scheme embraces the highest forms of life, and covers those of the lowest creatures. The activities are propagated and maintained by a rhythm of motion. Looking through a telescope of high power, we find that every pulsation of the heart gives a rhythmical jar or undulation to the whole room. Light also consists of undulations; the rays of heat, the movements of electricity, and the motions of projectiles are rhythmical. The rhythm is compound; there are solar, planetary, and terrestrial rhythms;

but they appear most numerously in the phenomena of life. There are rhythms in muscular action, in blood circulation, in contraction and expansion of the lungs, in the periodic need of food and repose, in the increase and decrease of life, and in the successive changes of organic forms. Indeed the whole of that mysterious thing, whatever it may be, the life of plants and animals, is, so far as it is physical, entirely an exhibition of rhythmical transformations of energy. The rhythm of poetry and music are the outcome of rhythm in sensation, intelligence, and emotion. This energy, so far as our earth and our physical life are concerned, centres in the sun; and from the sun, mechanically and chemically, come that aptitude and power by which atoms of salt crystallise, and amorphous fragments arrange and rearrange themselves into special structures. Atoms of albumen, fibrine, gelatine, or the hypothetical protein-substance, do not, of themselves, take specific shapes; their doing so is a manifestation of this peculiar energy.

2. Unity of Form.

If a drop of human blood be taken, kept warm, and examined under high microscopic power, there will be seen structureless corpuscles in marvellous activity, capable of individual movement and change of form-these are minute portions of undifferentiated protoplasm. They are not of the same shape or size in the human organism, as in beast and fowl, in reptile and fish, in worm and plant, but there is a general likeness in the peculiarity: "Traced back to its earliest state or form, the nettle arises as man does, in a particle of colourless protoplasm." So arising, life diverges into the different vital activities, balancing of functions, changes of condition, growth, adaptation, individuality, morphological, and physiological development. Not by the development of individuality from the germ, as if the germ contained the perfect organism in miniature; but by that persistence of rhythmical force acting upon their living particles, and developing their intrinsic aptitude, or polarity, into the plant or animal by what may be called special endowment. How strong the action is may be exemplified by the Bigonia. 1 "Physical Basis of Life." Prof. Huxley.

A fragment of the leaf, small as a hundredth-part of the whole, placed in fit soil, and kept at suitable temperature, will become a complete plant. Other plants have like power; and a common polype may be cut into very small pieces; yet from every piece will grow a perfect animal.

This process in development of form is subject to continual change, but within definite limits; for, as no natural process works any, even the slightest, difference in the properties of any molecule; this unchangeableness of the molecule tends to bring about that balancing of function which causes a return from variabilities to the original form or stock. Every living body, therefore, having diverged from the normal course; will, so soon as the accidental causes of deviation have expended their force, by that power which physicians call "vis mediatrix naturæ," return to equilibrium. Every variation has its limit, the increase and decrease of species, their range and degree of perfection in likeness and unlikeness are not by metamorphoses of confusion, but by a world-wide process giving unity of form.

The process may be partially explained-" The first centre of sarcode, or indifferenced organic matter, however originated, yet with certain definite tendencies to formal character and course of growth (as in a Foraminifer, e.g.), buds forth a second centre of identical nature; this a third, and so on. such repetitions of a primal complexly organized whole. . . are suggestive of operance akin to that of inorganic polar growths, as in a group of crystals, wherein each exemplifies the characters of the mineral or crystalline species, but is subject, like vital growths, to occasional malformation. . Growth by repetition of parts rapidly gives place to the higher mode of development by their differentiation and correlation for definite acts and complex functions.1 Hence, all organic matter has certain definite tendencies to formal character and development, which seem to be the impress of eternal fundamental energy. The endowment is there, whatever it may be; and, because of this endowment, there proceed from primordial germs, in no respect distinguishable, the whole variety of life. This startling fact disposes of the

"Anatomy of Vertebrates," pref. p. ix. 10. Richard Owen, F.R.S.

crystallization doctrine of evolution, by taking the essential and distinctive facts of life far beyond the region that any theory is able at present to approach. We conclude, therefore, that the popular statement of Scripture covers accurate scientific reality: from primary "indifferenced" organic matter, proceeded undulations or rhythms, which progressing along straight or in circular lines culminated in life. Every organism being a complex system of forces, and the higher organisms an almost infinite complication as compared with our powers of analysis.

3. Unity of Substance.

All the forms of protoplasm which have hitherto been examined contain, when dead, the four elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and some sulphur. The flower of the field, and the blood which courses through our veins, the dense resisting mass of oak, and that transparent jelly which pulsates in the waters of a calm sea, are bound by one common tie, and are akin: "In wisdom God made them all" (Ps. civ. 24). The significance of this cannot be exaggerated; the occult subtle influences, making an essential distinction and difference where man finds none, are wonderful! When we think that the microscopic fungus, and the great Finner whale; all that wealth of foliage lying between the lowest plant, and those trees which endure while nations and empires rise and fall; that Shakespeare, the genius, and midges evoked by the sun; are all knit together by unity of substance, and have community of faculty through one Divinely-fashioned material; we stand in awe of that varied interaction which makes nature beautiful as a robe of the Almighty.

Life-energy inspires this unity of substance, of form, of power, with variety in mechanical, chemical, and vital operation; plying the tongue with exquisite movements to modulate the voice; using the nerves and muscles to send forth volitions; and, by the intellect, conversing with those invisible things of which the world is full. Life, moreover, continually calls our moral sense and our intellect to new functions; and, by use of memory, as to the past, carries hope forward to the future; rendering by-gone stages of existence platforms for that which is to come; so that we trace benign skill, and rejoice in

Insects and Snails.

249

words spoken long ago-"My substance was not hid from Thee; it was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them" (Ps. cxxxix. 15, 16).

"Let the earth bring forth creeping thing.'

Insects were in the Devonian forests. Relatives, or ancestors of our modern May-flies flitted with broad-veined wings, and their larvæ dwelt in the stagnant waters. One marvellous May-fly had netted wings, attaining an expanse of seven inches. A kind of grass-hopper, with a cricket-like chirp, raised the first insect music known. Cockroaches are of an old family, being found in the carboniferous age, with insects belonging to three of the orders into which modern insects are arranged. Shad-flies, weevils, millipedes, scorpions, and spiders, are also of the carboniferous age. The compound facetted eyes of insects were as perfectly developed then as now. Of the two oldest land-snails-one is elongated, the other rounded. In this age, or earlier, they emerged from the waters, moved on the land, and breathed air. The oldest known fossil butterfly seems to have relationship with some of the living butterflies of tropical America. In the neozoic ages appear nearly all the orders of insects. They are of later origin, as Scripture declares, than the moving things of the waters. There is a scientific hypothesis that their progenitors were crabs.

In the origin, division, and development of life, there appears to have been this order of progress :-Plants reduced special elements, existing in gaseous combination, to a solid form. Animals, deriving their forces directly or indirectly from plants, carried the transformation a step further. All the structural and functional motions of every organism being an advance from the motions of simple molecules, to those of compound molecules, and from these to those of masses. The advance may be illustrated: all sea-snails are united by well-nigh numberless intermediate forms, and seem to have been the progenitors of fresh water and land snails.