THE BATTALION
13
statement is with human theory, there is in it vivid descrip
tion of the further solidifying of earth and of its drawing to
itself an atmosphere of its own. But long ages of prepara
tion had yet to pass before earth was in any degree like the
would we know. A crust would by degrees solidify around
its seething interior, only to be broken up again and re-melted
as it fell into the liquid mass ; sheets of heated matter would
be drawn within its atmosphere and fall in fiery ruin upon
the thin exterior, breaking it up and hurling dense clouds of
boiling metallic vapor into the upper sky ; hot showers of
lava would antedate our rains and snows and bail ; gradually,
however, this utter chaos became legible design, and the three
great conditions of matter—solid, liquid, and gaseous—would
differentiate into somewhat their present consistencju [Verses
9, 10 ]. Thus far, to our vision, God has wrought in matter
under what might be called the law of movement, having to
do only with inorganic results. How many thousands, or
thousands of thousand years were consumed we have no way
of judging with any accuracy. Toward the end of the third
great creative day, however, earth and atmosphere are in con
dition to be impressed with a further revelation of the Al
mighty and of his vitalizing spirit. [Verses 11, 12, 13 ]„
Here Ave have the first statement of organic law. The life of
the plant is a very different thing from the merely attractive,
gravitative, adhesive and chemical forces thus far in play.
God must anew intervene, for never yet has matter under any
force resident in it given birth—so far as our science tells us—
to a single life-cell, vegetable or animal.
A neiv German work which one of my classes will shortly
read ivill give the history of the hard-fought battle of the sci
entists over this question, and the total defeat of that party
which maintained the possibility of spontaneous germination.
Neither does this assert that any new quality was given mat
ter. We do not yet know the process by which the organized
cell—protoplasm, you call it—generates amidst tire inorganic
matter about it ; nor even by Avhat innate power it absorbs
earthy, mineral, Avatery, gaseous nutriment from its surround
ings and weaves it into flesh, blood, bone, and brains. £ ‘God