tion. In the young
organism, true to the ancestral type, the gill still persists--as in the
tadpole of the common frog. But as maturity approaches the true lung
appears; the gill gradually transfers its task to the higher organ. It
then becomes atrophied and disappears, and finally respiration in the
adult is conducted by lungs alone.[80] We may be far, in the meantime,
from saying that this is proved. It is for those who accept it to deny
the justice of the spiritual analogy. Is religion to them unscientific
in its doctrine of Regeneration? Will the evolutionist who admits the
regeneration of the frog under the modifying influence of a continued
correspondence with a new environment, care to question the possibility
of the soul acquiring such a faculty as that of Prayer, the marvelous
breathing-function of the new creature, when in contact with the
atmosphere of a besetting God? Is the change from the earthly to the
heavenly more mysterious than the change from the aquatic to the
terrestrial mode of life? Is Evolution to stop with the organic? If it
be objected that it has taken ages to perfect the function in the
batrachian, the reply is, that it will take ages to perfect the function
in the Christian. For every thousand years the natural evolution will
allow for the development of its organism, the Higher Biology will grant
its product millions. We have indeed spoken of the spiritual
correspondence as already perfect--but it is perfect only as the bud is
perfect. "It doth not yet appear what it shall be," any more than it
appeared a million years ago what the evolving batrachian would be.

But to return. We have been dealing with the scientific aspects of
communion with God. Insensibly, from quantity we have been led to speak
of quality. And enough has now been advanced to indicate generally the
nature of that correspondence with which is necessarily associated
Eternal Life. There remain but one or two details to which we must
lastly, and very briefly, address ourselves.

The quality of everlastingness belongs, as we have seen, to a single
correspondence, or rather to a single set of correspondences. But it is
apparent that before this correspondence can take full and final effect
a further process is necessary. By some means it must be separated from
all the other correspondences of the organism which do not share its
peculiar quality. In this life it is restrained by these other
correspondences. They may contribut