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542 usurp the prerogatives of Omnipotence. He absolutely drops from his summit, coming down to a belief in the material origin of man; for he virtually affirms that the germ of humanity is a circumscribed and non-intelligent egg.

If this be so, whence cometh Life, or Mind, to the human race? Matter surely possesseth it not. God is

the Life, or Intelligence, which forms and preserves the individuality and identity of animals as well as men. God cannot become finite, and so be limited within material bounds. Spirit cannot become matter, nor can it be developed through its opposite. Of what avail is it to investigate what is miscalled material life, which ends in nameless nothingness, even as it begins? The true sense of Being and its eternal perfection should appear now, just as it will hereafter.

Error of thought is reflected in error of action. The continual contemplation of existence as material and

corporeal — as beginning and ending, with birth, decay, and dissolution as its component stages — hides the true and spiritual Life, and causes our standard to trail in the dust. If Life has any material starting-point whatsoever, then the great I is a myth. If Life is God, as the Scriptures imply, then it cannot be embryotic; and an egg would be an impossible enclosure for Deity.

Embryology supplies no instance of one species producing its opposite. A serpent never begets a bird,

nor does a lion bring forth a lamb. Amalgamation is deemed monstrous, and is seldom fruitful; but it is not so hideous and absurd as the supposition that Spirit — the pure and holy, the immutable