Life comes now only from preëxisting life. But at some time there was no life on the globe. It does not take any great exercise of "philosophic faith," as Huxley suggested, "to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time" and recognize that at this beginning of things there must have taken place a most wonderful event, essentially and radically different from anything now going on, namely, the beginning of organic life. But would not this be a real Creation in the old-fashioned sense of this term? We cannot avoid this conclusion; nor is there anything in either science or philosophy to indicate that this creation of the living from the not-living was confined to _one mere speck_ of protoplasm. It is absolutely certain that it required a real Creation to produce life from the not-living at all; and it is just as reasonable that this exercise of creative power may have taken place _in all parts of the earth at the same general time_, as the Bible teaches. For if a Being saw fit to create life at all, why should He stop with one or two bits of protoplasmic units? An architect who can make his own bricks and other building material, can surely build what he desires out of these materials. Common sense tells us that, if the Creator really created life in the beginning, He did not stop with a few specks of protoplasm here and there over the earth. The ability to create life from the not-living implies the ability to make full-grown trees or birds or beasts in twenty-four hours, instead of waiting for months or years, as is usual at the present time. As we have already found regarding matter and energy, so of life. The record in Genesis is confirmed, for modern science compels us to believe in Creation as the only possible origin of life,--a Creation entirely different from anything now going on, and one that can never be made to fit into any scheme of uniformitarian evolution. IV THE CELL AND THE LESSONS IT TEACHES I With his usual vigor and expressiveness Henry Drummond has given us a picture of the remarkable fact that the cells of all plants and animals are strikingly alike, especially the single cells from which all originate. It is easy for any one to distinguish between an oak, a palm tree, and a lichen, while a botanist will have elaborate scientific distinctions which he can discern between them. "But if the first young germs of these three plants are placed before him," says Drummond, and the botanist is called upon to define the difference, "he finds it impossible. He cannot even say which is which. Examined under the highest powers of the microscope, they yield no clue. Analyzed by the chemist, with all the appliances of his laboratory, they keep their secret. "The same experiment can be tried with the embryos of animals. Take the ovule of the worm, the eagle, the elephant, and of man himself. Let the most skilled observer apply the most searching tests to distinguish the one from the other, and he will fail.