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the medium of the ordinary process of generation." And, in connection with these propositions, we have many pages of ingenious and plausible arguments and illustrations, drawn from certain facts in vegetable and animal physiology, and in which the laws of sound reasoning are sadly lost sight of, and general principles are deduced from special data. Thus having shown how imperfect human foetuses may be produced by an arrest in the ordinary process of inter-uterine development, "so that the heart, instead of becoming four-chambered, may go no further than the three-chambered form, and thus have the character of the reptile heart: or more, it may have only two chambers, and thus be like the heart of a fish;"—he then proceeds to observe that, supposing instead of an "under-adequacy," a super-adequacy, it would be no great boldness to assume that such "super-adequacy" would enable "a fish mother to develope a reptile heart, or a reptile mother a mammal one." This super-adequacy," we are told, "would suffice in a goose to give its progeny the body of a rat, and produce the ornithorhyncus; or might give the progeny of an ornithorhyncus the mouth and feet of a true rodent, and thus complete, at two stages, the passage from the aves to the mammalia." (Page 224.) Now, I hesitate not to say that this, as well as every other like argument for such a development, professedly derived from physiology, may be fully refuted by the best ascertained facts of that science; and that such deductions are wholly repudiated by our greatest physiologists. Notwithstanding the pure materialism of this theory, this author speaks with becoming reverence of a Divine Creator, and contends that such a mode of development is but a fulfilling of His will, which is thus the groundwork of the law. I admit, in the fullest sense, that natural law is a manifestation of the Creator's will; but I contend that the law, written in nature's volume, is just the reverse of what this writer says; and that his hypothesis is really built on an inversion of a first principle.

Life is here represented as the result of chemico-electric action, or, in other words, life is represented as a product of organization. Whereas, as I endeavoured to show in my last lecture, it is clear from the strictest researches in physiology, as well as from the soundest reasoning, that life is, and must of necessity be, antecedent to all organization; that it is life that organizes, and not organism that produces life; and that the whole end for which the organization is produced, is latent in the life which produces it. That this is the case, we have abundant proof in the instincts of animals, and the wondrous transformations of insects, to some of which proofs I formerly directed your attention. The true idea of the origin of the varied forms of life is involved in a sentence, which

this author quotes with approbation from Plato:-"That previous to the existence of the world, there existed certain Archetypes, and these Archetypes were models, in imitation of which particular beings were created." If we admit this doctrine, where must we look for these "Archetypes" but in the ideas of a Divine Mind, existing antecedently to all forms, whether inorganic or organic? And here, I apprehend, is to be found the true philosophic ground for the variety and order of creation; for every bird, beast, and insect-every flower that blows may be considered as a letter in a divine alphabet, which, if we could only decypher and properly combine them, would teach us lessons of infinite wisdom, and perhaps furnish us with the causal ground for each particular form of existence.

Admitting all that can be proved respecting the improvement of certain animals or plants, by the ingenuity of man, in surrounding them with the most favourable circumstances, still it may most unhesitatingly be affirmed that no new species has been thus produced, and those the most improved plants or animals, if left to themselves, always shew a tendency to return to their original type. We have therefore every just reason to conclude that—with such slight exceptions as do not interfere with the rule--such as we find any species or race now, such they always were; or, in other words, such as the species are now, such they were originally created. If development took place as described in "The Vestiges," the perpetuation of low forms of life ought long since to have ceased altogether, and not partially have given place to higher ones; and no just reason can be assigned why such changes should not now occur. But, although man, a higher animal form (to say nothing of his mental qualities) than any that existed during the geological periods, has now most certainly inhabited our planet for some thousands of years, yet we find types still existing as low as any that are discoverable in the earliest ages. From this consideration among others, and from the ascertained extinction of many forms or types of life, and the as well ascertained commencement of new forms, many of which, even of the newest forms, are lower in the scale of organization than types long since extinct; it appears to me, that the whole compass of facts points to the conclusion, that every race had an independent origin, and that thus the law of animated creation was, and still is, that of Distinct Gradation.

If we were to admit the "development theory," as advocated in the "Vestiges," notwithstanding its palpable contrariety to the teachings of reason and science, we should not simplify our conception of the origin of living forms. A series of creations, grade upon grade, just as the

earth from the physical changes it was undergoing, was capable of sustaining, is as easy to be conceived as the first organization of a living form. The difficulty is not in the forms, or variety, or time of creation, but in the thing itself: the manner in which life first aggregated certain inorganic elements to form a nucleus for its reception. We now see the means which life uses in the beginning the means had to be formed. Organization in all cases now commences from a germ-cell, which is itself the result of life; every cell consists of somewhat similar compounds of four elements, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen. But a knowledge of this fact instead of lessening, in some degree may be said to increase the mystery. For similar as each cell may be in form and composition, life has endowed it with a most marvellous distinctness of identity; and a disposition to evolve, each in its own peculiar degree, and no other, cell upon cell, vessel upon vessel, tissue upon tissue, until the end which was present in the beginning is seen in the development, it may be only of a worm, or of man himself. In the infancy of Races, and during the development Eras, a somewhat similar process may have attended the evolution of the first living forms of every degree. We are told that man was "formed of the dust of the ground;" as a general expression that the natural body of man was formed from material substances, this may be admitted; but as a literal description it cannot be received as a scientific truth. For with the exception of phosphate of lime, which constitutes the solid part of bone, no earthy matter is found in the body; and nearly its entire bulk is formed from the four elements that enter into the composition of the germ-cell. "In the beginning," or beginnings, and under a very different condition of our planet to what now exists, the pristine creative energy-Life, flowing from the Source of life,-using as means or proximate causes, the imponderable elements of light, heat, magnetism, and electricity, and the material elements already named, may have, by this combination of ponderables and imponderables, formed primordial cell germs of distinct orders of being; then, by a continued preserving and adapting power, even now equally necessary, and equally manifest, acting in accordance with those archetypes which eternally existed in the Divine Mind, gradually have produced perfect plants and animals; and lastly conferred upon them the power of evolving germ-cells from their own substance, and so of reproducing their forms ad infinitum. In this sense, creation may have been a series of developments, having, according to the prin ciples we have been examining, a harmonious and connected relationship through the whole inorganic and organic series; but each degree or grade of development would be distinct, and mark a peculiar phasis of [Enl. Series.-No. 15, vol. ii.]

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the Creator's intention. Guided by analogy, we may thus in some degree, and with all reverence, read in the present the history of the past, and trace the "beginning" in the consummated "end." But certain it is, that whatever was the mode employed, living forms had a beginning, and that then as now, life preceded the form and caused its development, and stamped each distinct form with its peculiar characteristic.

Our limits preclude my going any farther on the present occasion into this interesting and instructive branch of our inquiry, and illustrating the subject by details of the development of particular species; but in conclusion I would observe, that I hope nothing I have advanced may be considered as deprecating the fullest and freest investigation; for I feel assured that the fuller the inquiry, and the broader the base of research, the more we shall be convinced of the agency of a Divine Creator, and thus of a power existing antecedent to all created beginnings: and, consequently, of a Being who exists out of, and above nature, and yet continually acts in the preservation of the universe, with the same energy that called forth its first creation.

SUMMARY OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE BOOKS OF GENESIS AND EXODUS, AS DERIVED FROM THE ARCANA CELESTIA.

(Continued from page 78.)

THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
Chap. III.

CONTENTS. Of the Third State of the Most Ancient Church, which began to believe nothing but what was comprehended by the senses. The sensual nature inducing doubt in the proprium, ver. 3. Persuades it to scrutinize into the things of faith, from itself, and the rational principle consents, ver. 6. They perceive that they are in evil, ver. 13. The sensual principle is its own curse, ver. 14. A prophecy that the Lord would come into the world, ver. 15. That the proprium will no longer apprehend truth, ver. 16. That the rational principle will no longer remain, ver. 17. The curse and vastation, ver. 18, 19. Recapitulation.

(Of the Third State of the Most Ancient Church.)

1. Now the sensual principle of man, when trusted to, was more subtle than any other of the external man which Jehovah God had

made, and insinuated a doubt into the proprium of the external man whether there was any Divine command that wisdom was not to be sought for except in perceptions derived from love.

2. And the proprium of the external man replied to the sensual principle, that the good and truth revealed to those who were descended from the Most Ancient Church may be received;

3. But that God had said, that men were not to learn the good and truth of faith from themselves, nor even to think of them as originating in themselves, or in their sensual and scientific principles; for that if they did all wisdom and intelligence would perish.

4. And the sensual principle suggested to the proprium, that if men scrutinized into the things of faith from the sensual and scientific principle, it would be seen to be untrue that wisdom and intelligence would perish;

5. For that, on the contrary, men would then be under the guidance of self, and would thereby be like the Lord; (for who are more persuaded that their eyes are open, and that as God they know good and evil, than they who love themselves and at the same time excel in worldly wisdom?)

(Of the Fourth State of the Most Ancient Church.)

6. And the proprium saw that knowledge of this kind was suited to its own lusts, and as such was good; and that it was also agreeable to its own phantasies, and as such was desirable: it therefore took of the things thereof, and imparted them also to the rational principle, which consented.

7. And in virtue of remains, both the proprium of the external man and the rational principle were made conscious, by an interior dictate, that they were no longer in that state of innocence in which they were before, (that is to say, they had no longer any thing of genuine intelligence or faith, but were now in evil.) Nevertheless natural good still remained, and in virtue of this the man of the church was affected with shame it served also to conceal from outward view the evils which lurked interiorly.

8. And by reason that the man of the church had somewhat of perception still remaining, he was afraid of the interior dictate of which he was conscious; for he was now in natural good, in which there is some little of perception, (and they who are in natural good hide themselves through fear, and out of shame that they are no longer in innocence; but they who are in no natural goodness, do not even hide themselves, because they are not ashamed. Jer. viii. 12, 13.)