cess and can produce life we will accept his
explanation; meanwhile, we will always be interested in his attempts
to solve the problem, but still our simple formula, "in the beginning
God," serves our present needs and will satisfy us better than any as
yet unverified hypothesis.

When we find through scientific investigation how life arises we will
simply know how God created it in the beginning.

The next step in the understanding of early life is to study under the
microscope the simplest forms which we can find in existence to-day.
This, while far easier of execution than the problems which we have
thus far considered, is still not without serious difficulties. But
every day brings us nearer to the understanding of the structure of
living things. Life the scientist cannot see. All he can study is
living matter. Whether life can exist separate from living things is a
problem outside the range of his, at least present, possibilities.
Therefore, concerning it he has no answer whatever to give. But when
we come to study living things we find that all life is associated
with protoplasm. This apparently foamy, jellylike, transparent
material is the only living substance in all the world. Animals and
plants are larger or smaller collections of the little masses of
protoplasm which we know as cells. The lowest animals are each made up
of but a single cell. This consists of a small mass of protoplasm
surrounded almost always by a thicker skin or covering, known as the
cell wall and enclosing a complicated kernel known as the nucleus. The
protoplasm seems to be the living substance itself. The cell wall is
not a simple dead scum on the outside of the protoplasm, but is itself
able to do certain things which can only, so far as we know, be done
by living substances. For instance, of two materials dissolved in the
water in which the cell floats, the wall may permit one to soak into
the animal and keep the other out. The one allowed to enter will
usually be found good to be used for food by the cell. The nucleus
seems to store within itself the record of its past history and thus
enable the cell to do in the future what its ancestors did in the
past.

Such simple cells can exhibit in very low form all the activities the
higher animals show in much more elaborate development. A one-celled
animal can move about, can recognize the proximity of food, can engulf
its food and digest it, can build up its own substance out of the
di