healthy and strong, engage in the reproductive act, the wife will conceive. When one of the sperm cells of the husband unites with the germ cell or egg of the wife, conception or impregnation takes place. This is the beginning of life, the creative moment of a new life, a new being. It is at this creative moment that an immortal soul is started upon its eternal voyage, nine months before it makes its visible appearance in the world.
All life begins with a cell.—Every living being begins life as a single cell of protoplasm. The cell from which a child is formed is produced by the union of two cells, the germ cell of the mother and the sperm cell of the father. The germ cell is much larger than the sperm cell. At the point where the sperm cell enters the ovum a new cell is formed. This new cell is the beginning of a new life and is called the embryo. The embryo receives its nourishment for several days from the food material stored up in the ovum.
When the sperm cell fuses with this minute ovum, 1-120th of an inch in diameter, the ovum becomes attached to the velvety inner surface of the womb. At this point of the womb the mucous membrane begins a rapid growth and in a very few hours has enveloped the ovum.
What takes place the first twenty-four hours.—In the rapidly growing ovum marvelous processes are going on. In part the physical processes have been studied. The vital and psychical processes that are taking place, far more wonderful than the physical, cannot be understood or comprehended by mortal man. So rapidly has the embryonic cell divided itself into two cells, these two into four cells, and these into eight, then into sixteen, until many thousand cells have been produced in the first twenty-four hours.
The first thirty days.—During the next thirty days this multiplication of cells by division goes on rapidly. The embryo is now receiving life, air, water and nourishment from the mother through the rudimentary beginning of the placenta. The placenta when developed is a membrane composed largely of blood vessels, entirely surrounding the embryo and is attached to the womb near the top. At this point the umbilical cord, which connects with the child at a point called the navel, merges into and becomes a part of the placenta. These thousands of cells, under the control of some invisible agency or law within the mother and the embryo, begin to arrange themselves in layers and groups. In this way the rudimentary organs one by one, step by step, begin to form. At the end of the first thirty days the embryo is about one inch long and one-fourth of an inch in diameter. At this time it has no resemblance to a human being. Separate from all connection with the mother, no scientist could tell whether it is the embryo of a rat, a rabbit, a dog or a human being. It is this resident physical, mental and soul-life received from its parents that will determine for it a human body.
The second thirty days.—During the next thirty days, new cells will be produced rapidly, new organs will be started, other organs will take on more definite form and the embryo will be many times larger and will have a very distinct resemblance to a human being. During the latter part of the second month this human embryo will possess a very distinct appendage resembling a tail; the neck will be nearly as large around as the body; the arms and legs, fingers and toes, ears, eyes, nose and mouth will all be quite distinct, and the head will appear overgrown. The embryo at the close of the second month will be about four inches in length and one and one-half inches in diameter.