Life, whether natural or spiritual, is a difficult subject to consider. It is acknowledged that the most complex of all the sections of the British Association is the biological—that is, the section that has to do with life. Take the subject of natural life, the only life the British Association discusses, there is a great deal of knowledge, on the human side, of how it starts, of its characteristics, of how it ends, but the most learned person in the world cannot tell us what life in itself really is. That is a secret known only to God, a secret no human person will ever be able to penetrate. And this can be more emphatically stated of spiritual life, than of natural.
Attempts from time to time have been made to discover the secret of natural life. For instance, very extensive experiments were made to ascertain if it could come of its own accord, to see if it could come spontaneously. These experiments have proved beyond a doubt that life can only come from pre-existing life, that spontaneous generation of life, as it was called, can never be.