“They’re still at it, Faber,” he said, “with their heated liquids and animal life!”

“I need not ask which side you take,” said the doctor, not much inclined to enter upon any discussion.

“I take neither,” answered the curate.  “Where is the use, or indeed possibility, so long as the men of science themselves are disputing about the facts of experiment?  It will be time enough to try to understand them, when they are agreed and we know what the facts really are.  Whatever they may turn out to be, it is but a truism to say they must be consistent with all other truth, although they may entirely upset some of our notions of it.”

“To which side then do you lean, as to the weight of the evidence?” asked Faber, rather listlessly.

He had been making some experiments of his own in the direction referred to.  They were not so complete as he would have liked, for he found a large country practice unfriendly to investigation; but, such as they were, they favored the conclusion that no form of life appeared where protection from the air was thorough.

“I take the evidence,” answered the curate, “to be in favor of what they so absurdly call spontaneous generation.”

“I am surprised to hear you say so,” returned Faber.  “The conclusions necessary thereupon, are opposed to all your theology.”

“Must I then, because I believe in a living Truth, be myself an unjust judge?” said the curate.  “But indeed the conclusions are opposed to no theology I have any acquaintance with; and if they were, it would give me no concern.  Theology is not my origin, but God.  Nor do I acknowledge any theology but what Christ has taught, and has to teach me.  When, and under what circumstances, life comes first into human ken, can not affect His lessons of trust and fairness.  If I were to play tricks with the truth, shirk an argument, refuse to look a fact in the face, I should be ashamed to look Him in the face.  What he requires of his friends is pure, open-eyed truth.”

“But how,” said the doctor, “can you grant spontaneous generation, and believe in a Creator?”

“I said the term was an absurd one,” rejoined the curate.

“Never mind the term then:  you admit the fact?” said Faber.

“What fact?” asked Wingfold.

“That in a certain liquid, where all life has been destroyed, and where no contact with life is admitted, life of itself appears,” defined the doctor.

“No, no; I admit nothing of the sort,” cried Wingfold.  “I only admit that the evidence seems in favor of believing that in some liquids that have been heated to a high point, and kept from the air, life has yet appeared.  How can I tell whether all life already there was first destroyed? whether a yet higher temperature would not have destroyed yet more life?  What if the heat, presumed to destroy all known germs of life in them, should be the means of developing other germs, further removed?  Then as to spontaneity, as to life appearing of itself, that question involves something beyond physics.  Absolute life can exist only of and by itself, else were it no perfect thing; but will you say that a mass of protoplasm—­that proto by the way is a begged question—­exists by its own power, appears by its own will?  Is it not rather there because it can not help it?”