An eloquent preacher exclaims, "Great ought to be our compassion for the weak brother whose faith in God would be shaken because a chemist should succeed next year in producing vital cells out of a hermetically-sealed vessel containing only the elements of protoplasm."--Rev. E. A. Abbott, D.D., 'Cambridge Sermons,' p. 33. It must be admitted, however, that many who certainly cannot be fairly described as "weak brethren," entertain very strongly that fear of the doctrine of spontaneous generation which Dr Abbott deprecates. I quote, from the 'Presbyterian Quarterly' of January 1874, the words of President Barnard of Columbia College, New York, expressing an entirely opposite sentiment. I do so without criticism or comment, as I shall have to consider the relation of materialistic theories of the origin of life to theism in next volume. "To the philosopher, the demonstration of the theory of spontaneous generation, should it ever be demonstrated beyond all possibility of doubt or cavil, cannot but be a matter of the deepest interest. But to the man who finds himself compelled to receive it, this interest, it seems to me, must be no less painful than it is deep. Nor is this the only theory which the investigators of our time are urging upon our attention, of which I feel compelled to make the same remark. There are, at least, two besides which impress me with a similar feeling; and the three together constitute a group which, though to a certain extent independent of each other, are likely in the end to stand or fall together. These are, the doctrine of spontaneous generation, the doctrine of organic evolution, and the doctrine of the correlation of mental and physical forces. If these doctrines are true, the existence of an intelligence separate from organised matter is impossible, and the death of the human body is the death of the human soul. If these doctrines are true, the world becomes an enigma, no less to the theist than it has always been to the atheist. We are told, indeed, that the acceptance of these views need not shake our faith in the existence of an almighty Creator. It is beautifully explained to us how they ought to give us more elevated and more worthy conceptions of the modes by which He works His will in the visible creation. We learn that our complex organisms are none the less the work of His hands because they have been evolved by an infinite series of changes from microscopic gemmules, and that these gemmules themselves have taken on their forms under the influence of the physical forces of light and heat and attraction acting on brute mineral matter. Rather, it should seem, we are a good deal more so. This kind of teaching is heard in our day even from the theologians. Those sentinels on the watch-towers of the faith, whose wont it has been for so many centuries to stand sturdily up in opposition to the science which was not, in any proper sense, at war