crystal is as beautiful as the organism. One is quite
entitled to hold this; but what he is not entitled to hold is that both
in the same sense are living. _He that hath the Son hath Life, and he
that hath not the Son of God hath not Life._ And in the face of this
law, no other conclusion is possible than that that which is flesh
remains flesh. No matter how great the development of beauty, that
which is flesh is withal flesh. The elaborateness or the perfection of
the moral development in any given instance can do nothing to break down
this distinction. Man is a moral animal, and can, and ought to, arrive
at great natural beauty of character. But this is simply to obey the law
of his nature--the law of his flesh; and no progress along that line can
project him into the spiritual sphere. If any one choose to claim that
the mineral beauty, the fleshly beauty, the natural moral beauty, is all
he covets, he is entitled to his claim. To be good and true, pure and
benevolent in the moral sphere, are high and, so far, legitimate objects
of life. If he deliberately stop here, he is at liberty to do so. But
what he is not entitled to do is to call himself a Christian, or to
claim to discharge the functions peculiar to the Christian life. His
morality is mere crystallization, the crystallizing forces having had
fair play in his development. But these forces have no more touched the
sphere of Christianity than the frost on the window-pane can do more
than simulate the external forms of life. And if he considers that the
high development to which he has reached may pass by an insensible
transition into spirituality, or that his moral nature of itself may
flash into the flame of regenerate Life, he has to be reminded that in
spite of the apparent connection of these things from one standpoint,
from another there is none at all, or none discoverable by us. On the
one hand, there being no such thing as Spontaneous Generation, his moral
nature, however it may encourage it, cannot generate Life; while, on the
other, his high organization can never in itself result in Life, Life
being always the cause of organization and never the effect of it.

The practical question may now be asked, is this distinction palpable?
Is it a mere conceit of Science, or what human interests attach to it?
If it cannot be proved that the resulting moral or spiritual beauty is
higher in the one case than in the other, the biological distinction is
useless. And