14.

[43] "First Principles," 2d Ed., p. 17.

[44] 2 Cor. xii. 5.

[45] 1 Cor. vi. 15.

[46] John xiv. 20.

[47] John xiv. 21-23.

[48] John xv. 4.

[49] Gal. ii. 20.

[50] One must not be misled by popular statements in this connection,
such as this of Professor Owen's: "There are organisms which we can
devitalize and revitalize--devive and revive--many times." (_Monthly
Microscopical Journal_, May, 1869, p. 294.) The reference is of course
to the extraordinary capacity for _resuscitation_ possessed by many of
the Protozoa and other low forms of life.

[51] Acts ix. 5.

DEGENERATION.

"I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man
void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns,
and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof
was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well; I looked upon it
and received instruction."--_Solomon._

"How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"--_Hebrews._

"We have as possibilities either Balance, or Elaboration, or
Degeneration."--_E. Ray Lankester._

In one of his best known books, Mr. Darwin brings out a fact which may
be illustrated in some such way as this: Suppose a bird fancier collects
a flock of tame pigeons distinguished by all the infinite ornamentations
of their race. They are of all kinds, of every shade of color, and
adorned with every variety of marking. He takes them to an uninhabited
island and allows them to fly off wild into the woods. They found a
colony there, and after the lapse of many years the owner returns to the
spot. He will find that a remarkable change has taken place in the
interval. The birds, or their descendants rather, have all become
changed into the same color. The black, the white and the dun, the
striped, the spotted, and the ringed, are all metamorphosed into one--a
dark slaty blue. Two plain black bands monotonously repeat themselves
upon the wings of each, and the loins beneath are white; but all the
variety, all the beautiful colors, all the old graces of form it may be,
have disappeared. These improvements were the result of care and nature,
of domestication, of civilization; and now that these influences are
removed, the birds themselves undo the past and lose what they had
gained. The attempt to elevate the race has been mysteriously thwarted.
It is as if the original bird, the far remote ancestor of all doves,