he natural
and the spiritual, between the spiritually inorganic and the spiritually
organic, endows them with its own high qualities, and develops within
them these new and secret faculties, by which those who are born again
are said to _see the Kingdom of God_.

What is the evidence for this great gulf fixed at the portals of the
Spiritual World? Does Science close this gate, or Reason, or Experience,
or Revelation? We reply, all four. The initial statement, it is not to
be denied, reaches us from Revelation. But is not this evidence here in
court? Or shall it be said that any argument deduced from this is a
transparent circle--that after all we simply come back to the
unsubstantiality of the _ipse dixit_? Not altogether, for the analogy
lends an altogether new authority to the _ipse dixit_. How substantial
that argument really is, is seldom realized. We yield the point here
much too easily. The right of the Spiritual World to speak of its own
phenomena is as secure as the right of the Natural World to speak of
itself. What is Science but what the Natural World has said to natural
men? What is Revelation but what the Spiritual World has said to
Spiritual men? Let us at least ask what Revelation has announced with
reference to this Spiritual Law of Biogenesis; afterward we shall
inquire whether Science, while indorsing the verdict, may not also have
some further vindication of its title to be heard.

The words of Scripture which preface this inquiry contain an explicit
and original statement of the Law of Biogenesis for the Spiritual Life.
"He that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son of God
hath not Life." Life, that is to say, depends upon contact with Life. It
cannot spring up of itself. It cannot develop out of anything that is
not Life. There is no Spontaneous Generation in religion any more than
in Nature. Christ is the source of Life in the Spiritual World; and he
that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son, whatever else
he may have, hath not Life. Here, in short, is the categorical denial of
Abiogenesis and the establishment in this high field of the classical
formula _Omne vivum ex vivo_--no Life without antecedent Life. In this
mystical theory of the Origin of Life the whole of the New Testament
writers are agreed. And, as we have already seen, Christ Himself founds
Christianity upon Biogenesis stated in its most literal form. "Except a
man be born of water and of the Spirit he