d "silicious shells--a skeleton of radiating _spiculae_
or crystal-clear concentric spheres of exquisite symmetry and
beauty.[1]" The simplest _amoeba_ however, has no definite form; but the
little mass moves about, expands and contracts, throws out projections
on one side and draws them in on the other. It exhibits irritability
when touched. It may be seen surrounding a tiny particle of food,
extracting nutriment from it and growing in size. Ultimately the little
body separates or splits up into two, each part thenceforth taking a
separate existence.

[Footnote 1: Professor Allman.]

Now it is claimed that such a little organism contains the potentiality
of all life; that it grows and multiplies, and develops into higher and
higher organisms, into all (in short) that we see in the plant and
animal world around us. This, it is argued, is all done by natural
causes, not by any direction or guidance or intervention of a Divine
agency.

Here we must stop to ask how this protoplasm, or simplest form of
organic life, came to exist? How did it get its _life_--its property of
taking nourishment, of growing and of giving birth to other creatures
like itself?

The denier of creation replies, that just in the same way as, by the
laws of affinity, other inanimate substances came together to produce
the earth--salts and other compounds we see in the world around us--so
did certain elements combine to form protoplasm. This combination when
perfected has the property of being alive, just as water has the
property of assuming a solid form or has any other of the qualities
which we speak of as its properties.

Now it is perfectly true that, treated as a substance, you can take the
gummy protoplasm, put it into a glass and subject it to analysis like
any other substance. But simple as the substance appears, composition is
really very complicated. Professor Allman tells us that so difficult and
wonderful is its chemistry, that in fact really very little is known
about it. The best evidence we have, I believe, makes it tolerably
certain that protoplasm consists of a combination of ammonia, carbonic
acid, and water, and that every molecule of it is made up of 76 atoms,
of which 36 are carbon, 26 hydrogen, 4 nitrogen, and 10 oxygen.[1]

But no chemist has ever been able either to account theoretically for
such a composition, still less to produce it artificially. It is urged,
however, that it may be only due to our clumsy apparatus