THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MA

a

a clear and definite answer. Can Science also give answer, and is this in the main in accord with the swer of Scripture? Science can answer the questi only by the historical method of tracing the history life in the past and observing the goal toward which i tends. of human achievement and progress forms only one If the evolution theory be true, the record short chapter in the history of the ages. If from the records of man's little span of life on the globe we can deduce laws of history on whose truth we can rely, with how much greater confidence and certainty may we rely on laws which have governed all life since its earliest appearance?-always provided that such can be found.

28

Our first effort must therefore be to trace the great line of development through a few of its most characteristic stages from the simplest living beings up to

man.

lectures. And to these I must ask you to bring a large This will be our work in the three succeeding store of patience. Anatomical details are at best dry and uninteresting. But these dry facts of anatomy form the foundation on which all our arguments and hopes must rest.

But if you will think long and carefully even of anatomical facts, you will see in and behind them something more and grander than they. You will catch glimpses of the divinity of Nature. Most of us travel threescore years and ten stone-blind in a world of marvellous beauty. Why does the artist see so much we, set face to face with the grandest landscapes? every fence-corner and on every hill-side than Primarily, I believe, because he is sympathetic, and looks on Nature as a comracle as near and dear as any

more in

human sister and companion. As Professor Huxley has said, "they get on rarely together." She speaks to the artist; to us she is dumb, and ought to be, for we are boorishly careless of her and her teachings.

Nature, to be known, must be loved. And though you have all the knowledge of a von Humboldt, and do not love her, you will never understand her or her teachings. You will go through life with her, and yet parted from her as by an adamantine wall.

I do not suppose that the author of the book of Job had ever studied geology, or mineralogy, or biology, but read him, and see whether this old prince of scientific heroes had loved, and understood, and caught the spirit of Nature. And what a grand, free spirit it was, and what a giant it made of him. I do not believe that Paul ever had a special course of anatomy or botany. But if he had not pondered long and lovingly on the structure of his body, and the germination of the seed, he never could have written the twelfth and fifteenth chapters of the first letter to the Corinthians. And time fails to speak of David and all the writers of the Psalms, and of those heroic souls misnamed the "Minor" Prophets.

Study the teachings of our Lord. How he must have considered the lilies of the field, and that such a tiny seed as that of the mustard could have produced so great an herb, and noticed and thought on the thorns and the tares and the wheat, and watched the sparrows, and pondered and wondered how the birds All his teaching was drawn And all the study in the world could taught him what he knew, if it had not been a loving and appreciative study.

were fed.

from Nature. never have

30 THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MA

John's Gospel, xv. 1: "I alle true vine.'
There is one strange and interesting pussien
father used to tells that the Greek word dan
rendered true, is usually employed of the genuine
distinction from the counterfeit, the reality in di
tinction from the shadow and image. Is not this per
haps the clew to our Lord's use of natural imagery?
Nature was always the presentation to his senses of
the divine thought and purpose. He studied the
words of the ancient Scripture, he found the same
words and teachings clearly and concretely embodied
in the processes of Nature. The interpretation of the
Parable of the Sower was no mere play of fancy to
him; it was the genuine and fundamental truth, deep-
er and more real than the existence of the sower, the

soil, and the seed.

The spiritual truth was the sub

stance; the tangible soil and seed really only the
shadow. And thus all Nature was to him divine.

We all of us need to offer the prayer of the blind
man, "Lord, that our eyes may be opened." Let us
learn, too, from the old heathen giant, Antæus, who,
after every defeat and fall, rose strengthened and vivi-
fied from contact with his mother Earth. You will
experience in life many a desperate struggle, many a
hard fall. There is at such times nothing in the world
thoughts and encouragements which Nature pours
strengthening, healing, and life-giving as the
into the hearts and minds of her loving disciples.
She will set you on your feet again, infused with new
life, filled with an unconquerable spirit, with unfalter-
ing courage, and an iron will to fight once more and
in your ears, and she will never fail you. We may
In every battle her inspiring words will ring

win.

not see her deepest realities, her rarest treasures of thought and wisdom; but if we will listen lovingly for her voice, we may be assured that she will speak to us many a word of cheer and encouragement, of warning and exhortation. For, to paraphrase the language of the nineteenth Psalm, "She has no speech nor language, her voice is not heard. But her rule is gone out throughout all the earth, and her words to

the end of the world."

CHAPTER II

PROTOZOA TO WORMS: CELLS, TISSUES, AND ORGANS

THE first and lowest form in our ancestral series is the amoeba, a little fresh-water animal from o to of an inch in diameter. Under the microscope it looks like a little drop of mucilage. This semifluid, mucilaginous substance is the Protoplasm. Its outer portion is clear and transparent, its inner more granular. In the inner portion is a little sphe

This is certainly of great

There is also a little cav

roidal body, the nucleus.
importance in the life of the animal; but just what it
does, or what is its relation to the surrounding proto-
plasm we do not yet know.
ity around which the protoplasm has drawn back, and
on which it will soon close in again, so that it pulsates
like a heart. It is continually taking in water from
the body, or the outside, and driving it out again, and
thus aids in respiration and excretion. The animal
has no organs in the proper sense of the word, and
yet it has the rudiments of all the functions which we

possess.

A little projection of the outer, clearer layer of protoplasm, a pseudopodium, appears; into this the whole

step, or the pro

animal may flow and thus advance a

jection may be withdrawn. And this power of change
of form is a lower grade of the contractility of our
muscular cells. Prick it with a needle and it con-

the only provid reproduction tal ather small and aimal of rene

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