What is commonly supposed to be the Biblical theory of Creation, is in truth a theory of spontaneous generation, only multiplying a million-fold the difficulty, if it be a difficulty, involved in that hypothesis. Unless we suppose the globe to have always existed, and always to have been tenanted by creatures endowed with life, we are forced to believe in the occurrence at some time or other of what, in the language of science, must have been spontaneous generation. As there is no historical reason for confining such an occurrence to any particular era; as science can give no reason why, if it happened once, it should not happen an indefinite number of times; as all analogy is in favour of uniform laws of nature rather than exceptional surprises; and, lastly, as numerous phenomena that have to do with the reproduction and maintenance of life are all continuous, and not interjectional--it seems at least an open question whether the origin of life itself may not also be sometimes, or even continually repeated. For, imagine what conditions we will to have prevailed when the elementary substances coalesced, out of which were compounded the first living being, it is difficult to imagine that the same conditions should never have recurred to produce a similar result, since the conditions are so far limited, that they must have been consistent, not only with the birth, but with the life after its birth, of that most antique animalcule. So many wonderful and hitherto unsuspected effects in the working of Nature have of late years been unveiled, so much of marvellous analysis successfully carried out, that it would surely be superstitious to despair of finding fresh links in the chain that binds together the lifeless and the living. Experiments in this direction may hitherto have failed from want of skill or care, or proper means at the command of those who conducted them. Yet it is not too much to ask of men renowned in science, that in pointing out the errors, they should abstain from discouraging the efforts. Let it not be thought irreligious to anticipate the possible establishment of the supposition now under discussion. It cannot be irreverent to think that the bestowal of life upon a particle of matter too minute for human eye to see, requires no more special apparatus than that allotted to the exquisite crystals of the frost. ‘Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?’ Yet in the workmanship of these a Divine hand is to the full as visible as in a diatom or a puff-ball. That the life-giving energy should have been exhausted in a single effort, is contrary beyond doubt to the analogy of religion, whatever may be thought of the analogy of nature.