o the
Kingdom next in order. And the more minutely the detailed structure and
ordering of the whole fabric are investigated, it is obvious, in turn,
that the Organic Kingdom is the preparation for, and the prophecy of the
Spiritual.

Third, and highest, we reach the Spiritual Kingdom, or the Kingdom of
Heaven. What its characteristics are, relatively to any hypothetical
higher Kingdom, necessarily remain unknown. That the Spiritual, in turn,
may be the preparation for, and the prophecy of, something still higher
is not impossible. But the very conception of a Fourth Kingdom
transcends us, and if it exists, the Spiritual organism, by the analogy,
must remain at present wholly dead to it.

The warrant for adding this Third Kingdom consists, as just stated, in
the fact that there are organisms which from their peculiar origin,
nature, and destiny cannot be fitly entered in either of the two
Kingdoms now known to science. The Second Kingdom is proclaimed by the
advent upon the stage of the First, of _once-born_ organisms. The Third
is ushered in by the appearance, among these once-born organisms, of
forms of life which have been born again--_twice-born_ organisms. The
classification, therefore, is based, from the scientific side on certain
facts of embryology and on the Law of Biogenesis; and from the
theological side on certain facts of experience and on the doctrine of
Regeneration. To those who hold either to Biogenesis or to Regeneration,
there is no escape from a Third Kingdom.[98]

There is in this conception of a high and spiritual organism rising out
of the highest point of the Organic Kingdom, in the hypothesis of the
Spiritual Kingdom itself, a Third Kingdom following the Second in
sequence as orderly as the Second follows the First, a Kingdom utilizing
the materials of both the Kingdoms beneath it, continuing their laws,
and, above all, accounting for these lower Kingdoms in a legitimate way
and complementing them in the only known way--there is in all this a
suggestion of the greatest of modern scientific doctrines, the Evolution
hypothesis, too impressive to pass unnoticed. The strength of the
doctrine of Evolution, at least in its broader outlines, is now such
that its verdict on any biological question is a consideration of
moment. And if any further defence is needed for the idea of a Third
Kingdom it may be found in the singular harmony of the whole conception
with this great modern truth. It might even