The advocates of extreme naturalism have labored faithfully to verify their doctrine by experiment. They have put Nature to task――not to say torture――to compel her to originate _life_. Pushing their chemical analysis of those forms of matter in which life is thought specially to reside, they flatter themselves that they have at last got their hands on the very elements which, brought together, make life, viz. carbonic acid, ammonia, and water, chemically combined. To this compound they give the name, “protoplasm.” They have found, they say, that where life is there is protoplasm, its home and dwelling-place at least; and that life never appears lodging in any other home. They can not see that the presence of life adds any thing to this compound, or that its absence takes any thing away. Therefore they are sure they have found what makes life. Now the skillful chemist in his laboratory has not the least difficulty in providing himself with carbonic acid, ammonia, and water. Why then does he not evolve the long-sought-for _life-force_ and prove his doctrine, past all doubt? Let him bring out new beings, new forms of life, vegetable or animal or both, in ample diversity, for the range is unlimited. Let his laboratory push forth into being such troops of offspring as will forever confound gainsayers and prove that Nature, properly manipulated, is equal to the production of life-forces in endless variety and abundance. Have any modern scientists done this? Not yet. Have they made any approximation toward it? Mr. Huxley thinks he has come so near to it that if he could only have at his service the favorable conditions of the very earliest state of matter, he should succeed. “If it were given me (says he) to look beyond the abyss of geologically-recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy, _I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter_. That is the expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me.”[2]――――“Not living matter evolving living protoplasm” means that matter itself, dead matter, begets real life. Nature would thus become herself a creator, exercising the most decisive functions of the Infinite God. Mr. Huxley can not make Nature do this exploit in the present state of this world or of the universe; but he fully believes there was a time when he should have seen it if he had been there! This is his proof of the new doctrine. He will not presume to “call it any thing but an act of philosophic faith.” 3. _The sense of the word “day” as used in Gen. I. of the six days of creation._