aeckel says: "As a matter of course, to the _infinite varieties_
presented by the organic forms and vital phenomena in the vegetable and
animal kingdoms, correspond an equally _infinite variety_ of chemical
composition in the protoplasm. The most minute homogeneous constituents
of this life substance, the protoplasm molecules, must in their chemical
composition present an _infinite number_ of extremely delicate
gradations and variations. According to the plastic theory recently
advanced (?) the great variety of vital phenomena is the consequence of
the _infinitely delicate_ chemical difference in the composition of
protoplasm, the sole active life substance." What a multitude of
infinities. But then, an _infinite number_, and an _infinite variety_ of
_infinitely delicate_ gradations and variations, with millions and
millions of years, do not remove further from sight life in its origin
than does the materialistic philosophy of one substance. They constitute
the _web_ and _filling_ of the _blanket of oblivion_ used by
materialistic doctors to cover up their ignorance of life and its
origin. A half dozen "INFINITIES," and "MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF YEARS!"
What! should I care if my ancestors were "tadpoles," when they are HID
AWAY IN THE CENTER OF INFINITIES, and laid _away back yonder_, so far
off as "MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF YEARS?"

When we ask our friends for the proof necessary to establish this
speculation as a fact among facts, they find it very convenient to
betake themselves to _infinities_, and _millions_ and _millions of
years_.

But we Christians do not ask them to give us an _infinite variety_,
etc., but to give us the "certain elements" of which "life is a
property," and the "special form in which these certain elements were
united," and the "special conditions" that existed when life first made
its appearance by spontaneous generation. When we do this we are
immediately carried away into the _infinities_. The result is that the
solution of the problem of the origin of life by spontaneous generation,
as a property of "certain elements of matter, united in a special form,
under special conditions," is buried forever out of sight. This same
definition of life is found on page 69 of a work entitled, "The System
of Nature," published by D. Holbach, a French Atheist, in 1774, in these
words: "Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert
and dead assumes action, intelligence and life when it is