may be summed up as follows:

1. If we reduce organized beings to their ultimate organisms--cells or
plastids--and with Spencer and Haeckel suppose these to be farther
divisible into still smaller particles or plastidules, each composed
of several complex particles of albumen or protoplasm, we may suppose
the primary act of creation to consist in the aggregation of molecules
of albuminous matter into such plastidules bearing the same relations,
as "manufactured articles," to the future cell that inorganic
molecules bear to crystals, and possessing within themselves the
potencies of organic forms. This is the nearest approach that we can
make to the primary creative act, and its scientific basis is merely
hypothetical, while revelation gives us no intimation as to any such
constitution of organized matter.

2. The formulae in Genesis, "Let the land produce," and "Let the waters
produce," imply some sort of mediate creation through the agency of
the land and the waters, but of what sort we have no means of knowing.
They include, however, the idea of the origin of the lower and humbler
forms of life from material pre-existing in inorganic nature, and also
the idea of the previous preparation of the land and the waters for
the sustenance of the creatures produced.

3. The expression in the case of man--"out of the dust"--would seem to
intimate that the human body was constituted of merely elementary
matter, without any previous preparation in organic forms. It may,
however, be intended merely to inform us that, while the spirit is in
the image of God, the bodily frame is "of the earth earthy," and in no
respect different in general nature from that of the inferior animals.

4. The Bible indicates some ways in which creatures may be modified or
changed into new species, or may give rise to new forms of life. The
human body is, we are told, capable of transformation into a new or
spiritual body, different in many important respects, and the future
general prevalence of this change is an article of religious faith.
The Bible represents the woman as produced from the man by a species
of fission, not known to us as a natural possibility, except in some
of the lower forms of life. The birth of the Saviour is represented as
having been by parthenogenesis, and if it had pleased God that Jesus
was to remain on earth as the progenitor of a new and higher type of
man to replace that now existing, this might be regarded as the
intr