The English law fixes no precise limit for the legitimacy of the child. In France a child is regarded as lawfully begotten if born within three hundred days after the death or departure of the husband. There are a sufficient number of cases on record to show that gestation may be prolonged two, and even three, weeks beyond the ordinary, or average term. The variation of time may be thus accounted for: after insemination, a considerable interval elapses before fecundation takes place, and the passage of the fertilized germ from the ovary to the uterus is also liable to be retarded. There are many circumstances and conditions which might serve to diminish its ordinary rate of progress, and postpone the date of conception. This would materially lengthen the apparent time of gestation.
It is likewise difficult to determine the shortest period at which gestation may terminate, and the child be able to survive. A child may be born and continue to live for some months, after twenty-four or twenty-five weeks of gestation; it was so decided, at least, in an ecclesiastical trial.
We have not the space to describe minutely, or at length, the formation and growth of the foetal structures, and trace them separately from their origin to their completion at the birth of the child. The student of medicine must gain information by consulting large works and exhaustive treatises on this interesting subject.
What trifling contingencies defeat vitality! Conception may be prevented by acrid secretions, the result of disease of the reproductive organs. Leucorrheal matter may destroy the vitalizing power of the sperm-cells. There are many ways, even after impregnation, of compromising the existence of the frail embryo. Accidents, injuries, falls, blows, acute diseases, insufficient nutrition and development, in fact, a great variety of occurrences may destroy the life of the embryo, or foetus. After birth, numerous diseases menace the child. By what constant care must it ever be surrounded, and how often is it snatched from the very jaws of death!
What, then, is man but simply a germ, evolving higher powers, and destined for a purer and nobler existence! His latent life secretly emerges from mysterious obscurity, is incarnated, and borne upon the flowing stream of time to a spiritual destination—to realms of immortality! As he nears those ever-blooming shores, the eye of faith, illuminated by the inspired word, dimly discerns the perennial glories. Quickened by Faith, Hope, and Love, his spirit is transplanted into the garden of paradise, the Eden of happiness, redeemed, perfected, and made glorious in the divine image of Him who hath said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the LIFE."