Such is the proud language of the murmuring brook. Yet the boast is an untrue one; for if any conclusion in regard to the future can be warranted from the facts of the past, none can be more sure than that no particular brook will flow on for ever. Instead of a brook, it may become a mighty river like the St. Lawrence; it may dash over precipitous cliffs with a vaster fall and volume than Niagara; and, after all, the slow inexorable changes of the earth’s crust will one day make its flow impossible, and the channel of it shall know its stream no more. Only the flow of time is unending, of time which does nothing, but out of or without which nothing can be done,--of time, replete with glorious wonders as far back as the knowledge or the imagination of man can penetrate, through every age, through every million of years that can be rescued from forgetfulness, bearing fresh testimony, in the greatness and the endlessness of the work, to the eternal power and wisdom of the Supreme Worker. NOTE ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. Presuming that there is not a particle of evidence as yet established in favour of the supposition known as the doctrine of _abiogenesis_, it does not follow that no such evidence ever will, or ever can, be forthcoming. The advancement of science is continually doing away with harsh, abrupt outlines, and revealing the softest shades of transition in the varied scenery of nature. Between organic and inorganic matter, between the inert and the living mass, the line of separation has been hitherto, to our minds, the hardest and sharpest of all. We have indeed become so accustomed to this violation of the cosmos, this harsh interruption to the continuous order of nature, and to the simplicity of its general plan, that we are apt to be rather annoyed than pleased with the first efforts made to prove them only imaginary. There is a dignity about life which requires, it is thought, to be defended from too close a proximity in character to the chemical solids and liquids amongst which it makes its appearance, even though the life whose dignity is thus maintained exhibit little more than the functions of a stomach, or be presented in the somewhat dull animation of a chrysalis and the torpor of a slug.