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Title: The Other Side of Evolution
Its Effects and Fallacy
Author: Alexander Patterson
Release Date: December 21, 2013 [EBook #44479]
Language: English
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[Illustration: titlepage]
The Other Side of
Evolution
Its Effects and Fallacy
BY
REV. ALEXANDER PATTERSON
Director, Presbyterian Training School of Chicago
Author of
"The Greater Life and Work of Christ," "The Bible As It Is,"
"Bird's-Eye Bible Study" and "The Bible Manual."
[Illustration: logo]
CHICAGO
THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORTAGE ASSOCIATION
826 NORTH LA SALLE STREET
COPYRIGHT, 1903
BY
THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORTAGE
ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PREFACE.
Claims of Evolution. -- Interest in subject. -- Effect
on Christian belief. -- Opinion of eminent scholars.
-- Effect on the common man. -- Evolution being accepted
on exparte evidence. -- Question too important
to be left to science. -- The average man capable of
understanding the arguments. -- The court of last
resort. vii
INTRODUCTION.
Meaning of Evolution. -- Conversational and scientific
use of the word. -- Le Conte's definition. -- Spencer's
Spheres of Evolution. -- Theistic and Atheistic
Evolution. -- The origin of man, the vital point. -- The
Bible account and Darwin's. xix
CHAPTER I.
EVOLUTION IS AN UNPROVEN THEORY.
Nearly all evolutionists admit this. -- Citations from
Tyndall, Spencer, Huxley, Prof. Conn, Whitney,
Dr. J. A. Zahm, Dr. Rudolph Schmidt, and others. --
Evolution rejected by many and opposed. -- Complaint
of Prof. Haeckel on this. -- Prof. Virchow's
opposition. -- List of scientists who do not advocate
Evolution. -- Discarded theories of the past. --
Uncertainty of scientific theories in general. 5
CHAPTER II.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE AND EARTH.
The four problems facing Evolution, the origin of
matter, of force, the formation and orderly adjustment
of the universe and the origin of life. -- Evolution
makes no attempt at the first two. -- Spencer admits
it is the unknowable. -- Lord Kelvin's testimony. --
Prof. George Frederick Wright on the Nebular
Hypothesis. -- The solar system unique. -- The fire-mist
and its wonderful contents. -- Failure as to
origin of life. -- Le Conte's theory. -- Testimony of
Tyndall, Wilson, Conn, against spontaneous generation. 17
CHAPTER III.
EVOLUTION OF SPECIES.
Evolution's great field. -- No case of evolution known
--No cause of evolution known. -- How evolution originated
species. -- Argument from Geology. -- Geologists
opposing it; Sir J. W. Dawson, Sir R. Murchison, Barrande.
-- Prof. Conn's admissions. -- Haeckel's admissions. --
The argument from Morphology. -- Rudimentary parts. --
The Eohippus, "Old Horse." -- Argument from classification
of species. -- No agreed classification. -- Evolution's
phantom tree. -- No changes in Egypt's 4,000 years or
prehistoric man's longer time. -- Distribution of plants
and animals. -- Argument from Embryology. -- The
three-fold argument of Evolution. -- Facts opposing
Evolution. 26
CHAPTER IV.
THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.
The vital question. -- All evolutionists agree here. -- The
two accounts of Bible and Evolution. -- Arguments
from origin of species. -- Argument from similarity
of structure. -- Argument from human characteristics. --
Rudimentary organs in man. -- The "gill-slits." -- How
the brute became man. -- Prof. Edward Clodd's
account of "The Making of a Man." -- Edward
Morris' description of primeval man. -- The Theistic
Evolutionist's Adam and how he fell. -- The Missing
Link. -- The Calaveras skull. -- Neanderthal skull. --
Haeckel's "Pithecanthropus-Erectus." -- The Colorado
monkey's skeleton. -- Croatia skeletons. -- Argument
from the brain. -- Prof. Clodd's story of how
man got his brain. -- Argument from language. -- Prof.
Max Mueller's protest. -- Argument from prehistoric
man.--Antiquity of man. -- Testimony as to
man's recent origin from Prof. George Frederick
Wright, S. R. Pattison, Prof. Friedrich Pfaff, Winchell,
Dr. J. A. Zahm.--Argument from uncivilized
races. -- Argument from history of limits of man's
history. -- Evolution and religion. -- Evolution's ethics.
-- Christian experience.--Christ and evolution. 60
CHAPTER V.
EVOLUTION UNSCIENTIFIC AND UNPHILOSOPHICAL.
Four steps necessary to proof, Facts, Classification,
Inferences, Verification. -- Fails to account for
facts. -- Has no classification. -- False in inferences
and has no verification. -- Rests on imagination. --
Tyndall's "Scientific Use of the Imagination." --
Evolution the Doctrine of Chance revamped and clothed
in scientific terms. 112
CHAPTER VI.
EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE.
Evolution has no scriptural argument. -- The two accounts
mutually exclusive. -- Bible account appealed
to by all Scripture writers as Fact. -- Evolution's
interpretation of Scripture. -- Christ's testimony to the
facts of Scripture. -- Evolution and Bible doctrines. --
Importance of Adam as basis of Scripture doctrine. -- Man's
state and remedy as given by Evolution and by the Bible. --
The future of the Bible and of Evolution. -- Evolution in
its logical form is Atheism.--Evolution a relic of
heathenism.--Testimony of James Freeman Clarke, Sir J.
William Dawson. 120
CHAPTER VII.
THE SPIRITUAL EFFECT OF EVOLUTION.
Must affect the spiritual state. -- Effect on candidates for
ministry. -- Latent effect on faith. -- On experimental
religion. -- Evolution as a state of heart. -- A comfortable
theory to the impenitent. -- Prepares for "isms." -- Weakens
pulpit power. -- Eliminates faith in the supernatural and
eternal. -- Education's place in modern giving. -- Is this
the last form of unbelief? -- The common people and the
Gospel of the Cross. 137
PREFACE.
Evolution is claimed by its advocates to be the greatest
intellectual discovery of the past century, and, by some, the
greatest thought that ever entered the mind of man. In the words of
its greatest philosopher, Herbert Spencer, "It spans the universe
and solves the widest range of its problems, which reach outward
through boundless space, and back through illimitable time,
resolving the deepest problems of life, mind, society, history and
civilization." It has woven into one great philosophy the history
of the material universe, the entire organic creation, man and all
his faculties, the whole course of human history and the origin and
progress of all religion.
It also undertakes to account for the Bible, for what is popularly
called higher criticism represents the biblical branch of Evolution.
It has reconstructed the Bible and remanded its miraculous
narratives to the realm of myth. It has formulated a theology in
which the most sacred doctrines of evangelical belief are discarded.
In its central theory of the origin of man, it vitally affects the
doctrines of the nature of man, of sin and penalty, man's need and
the work of Christ. It even touches the person of Christ, for many
of its advocates say that He too comes within its scope. In its
radical and most consistent form, it utterly discards belief in God.
Most of the great teachers of Evolution, such as Ernst Haeckel of
Jena, are and have been atheists.
It is true that many evolutionists are theistic. But it is not
enough to be theistic. The devil is "theistic," so was Thomas
Paine. Christianity is far more than theism. It is the grossest
sophistry to teach that because a belief has some truth in it we
must therefore tolerate it. All false doctrine is sugarcoated with
truth. That we are not overstating the dangerous nature of the
theory will appear from the following opinions of competent scholars
and observers.
Prof. George Frederick Wright, the eminent geologist, says of
Evolution: "It is the fad of the present, which is making such
havoc and confusion in the thought of the age, leading so many into
intellectual positions, whose conclusions they dare not face and
cannot flank, and from which they cannot retreat except through the
valley of humiliation." (_Bibliotheca Sacra_, April, 1900.)
Prof. George Howison sounds this alarm: "It is a portent so
threatening to the highest concerns of man, that we ought to look
before we leap and look more than once. Under the sheen of the
evolutionary account of man, the world of real persons, the world
of individual responsibility, disappears; with it disappears the
personality of God." (_Limits of Evolution_, pp. 5, 6.)
There is a vital connection between Facts, Doctrines, Experiences,
Conduct and Prospects. These successively flow from each other.
Christianity rests on facts, from these we derive doctrines and from
doctrines come experiences, which give rise to conduct and that ends
in suitable prospects. Facts form the basis of Christianity. When,
therefore, Evolution attacks the Facts of the Bible, it attempts to
undermine the very basis of all Christianity. President Francis L.
Patton has said: "You may put your philosophy in one pocket and your
religion in another and think that, as they are separate, they will
not interfere, but that will not work. You have to bring your theory
of the universe and your theory of religion together. This is the
work of this age."
While all do not go the length of the radical evolutionists, yet
such is the natural working of the human mind, that this will be its
logical conclusion. If this theory is accepted, we must look for
widespread lapse from all Christian faith and, as conduct follows
belief in all intelligent creatures, we shall see also great moral
declension.
To the ordinary man, the matter appears in this light: If we cannot
believe a man's statements we will not take his advice. If we cannot
believe the Bible's narratives why should we believe its religion?
If it is not trustworthy as to facts of this world, why depend upon
it as to the other world? If it cannot teach correctly the nature of
insects and animals, why should it be able to tell us the nature of
God? The common man reasons rightly. The Bible must stand or fall by
its reliability all along the line of truth of every kind.
Evolution is being taught, or taken for granted to-day in high
schools, academies, colleges, universities, and seminaries. It meets
the Sunday School scholar at the first chapter of Genesis. A busy
city pastor says he has been asked about it every day in the week.
It is a living question and must be met. In every free library are
the works of Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley and others, and these
are read continually.
It does seem as if the other side of such a question ought to be
given and considered, if there be another side, and there certainly
is.
The theory of Evolution is being accepted to-day upon ex-parte
evidence. The books on Evolution are numbered by hundreds, those
giving the other side are few. Many do not even read for themselves
but rely upon the weight of noted names, or the supposed "consensus
of scholarship."
It is even asserted that none but scholars have the right to
discuss the subject. Dr. Lyman Abbott says in his "Evidences of
Christianity" that "those who are not scientists must be content to
await the final judgment of those who are experts on this subject,
and meanwhile accept tentatively their conclusions." Not to notice
this demand that we rest on an unfinished theory, might we not ask
permission to accept, "tentatively" at least, the Bible as it is,
while awaiting the conclusions of scientists as to what we shall
think or believe about it; especially in view of the fact that all
that has been done so far by Christianity on earth has been effected
by the conservative belief in the Bible.
But non-scientific people are able to comprehend Evolution. The
scientist to-day is able to state conclusions in language the
non-scientific can readily understand, and the evolutionist himself
tells us we can understand his facts and arguments. So we who are
not scientists may proceed to investigate a subject in which we
have so much at stake. The questions involved are too important to
be left to the scientist alone. The scientist is mainly a witness
as to the facts of nature. It is the duty of the whole body of the
intelligent Christian community, lay and clerical, to generalize and
draw conclusions. These form, as they have in the past, the court
of last resort in such discussions. The best generalizer will be,
not the scientist whose labors are necessarily confined to a single
science, or even to a department of it, and who may be even more or
less biased by his environment, but the best juryman will be the
intelligent non-scientific mind. It is before the judgment seat of
Christian Common Sense that this and all other theories must appear.
It is the man in the pew who says to this pastor, Come, and he
cometh, and to that professor, Go, and he goeth.
Nor is this examination premature. Evolution has been now for many
years before the public and its writings fill libraries. We may
assume that the evidence is now before us and, if not all in, at
least enough is given us by which to judge its nature and probable
outcome. This we may further assume in view of the fact that the
advocates of the theory admit that an increasing number of facts are
not giving increasing evidence but that their case is more beset
with difficulties than in the day of Darwin, the father of the
hypothesis, or rather, its step-father. So we may proceed with our
examination.
The author of this book makes no claim to being a scientist. He is
simply one of the great jury to whom this theory appeals. He has,
therefore, here simply considered the evidence and given herein his
conclusions. The facts and arguments of evolutionary writers will
form the chief source of the examination. Nearly one hundred writers
and works are cited. Out of its own mouth we will condemn it.
The citations in a book as small as this must be brief but care has
been taken that they are fair as to the points they are given to
show. It is not claimed that the citations from evolutionary writers
exhibit their opinion on the whole subject but that they do show
their fatal admissions and their general uncertainty on the whole
subject.
It will be shown that Evolution is not accepted by all scientists
and scholars; that it is rejected by some of the greatest of these;
that it is admittedly an unproven theory; that it has never been
verified and cannot be; that not a single case of evolution has
ever been presented, and that there is no known cause by which it
could take place. Its arguments will be considered one by one and
their fallacy shown. It will be shown to be, by its own principles,
unscientific and unphilosophical, and simply a revamping of the old
doctrine of Chance clothed in scientific terms. Finally, it will be
shown that it is violently opposed to the narrative and doctrines of
the Bible and destructive of all Christian faith; that it originated
in heathenism and ends in atheism.
Much of the material in this book has been presented by the author
in lectures upon the Bible during Bible institutes and conferences,
and he has been frequently requested to put it in printed form. He
hopes that where the arguments do not convince, they will at least
bring the reader to what Mr. Gladstone called "that most wholesome
state, a suspended judgment."
Among others, the following writers are cited: Agassiz, Abbott,
Argyle, Askernazy, Balfour, Brewster, Ballard, Bruner, Barrande,
Bunge, Brown, Bowers, Bixby, Bonn, Clodd, Conn, Cope, Clarke,
Cooke, DeRouge, Dana, Dawson, Dubois, Etheridge, Fovel, Fiske,
Gladstone, Galton, Gregory, Hilprecht, Huxley, Howison, Haeckel,
Haecke, Harrison, Herschel, Hartman, Harnack, Heer, Humphrey,
Hoffman, Hamann, Ingersoll, Jones, Kelvin, Koelliker, Liebig, Lecky,
LeConte, Lang, Meyer, Max Mueller, Monier, Murchison, Naegeli,
Paulsen, Pfaff, Petrie, Pattison, R. Patterson, Pfliederer, Patton,
Parker, Ruskin, Romanes, Reymond, Renouf, Schliemann, Sayce, Starr,
Schultz, Sully, Spencer, Schmidt, Sedgwick, Stuckenberg, Snell, See,
Townsend, Thomas, Tyndall, Thomson, Virchow, Von Baer, Wallace,
Winchell, Warfield, Wright, Whitney, Wagner, Woodrow Wilson, White,
Wiseman, Zahm, Zoeckler.
I especially acknowledge indebtedness to Prof. George Frederick
Wright, of Oberlin College, in revising this book and for his
valuable suggestions and corrections, and especially his favorable
introduction. To his works confirming many of my conclusions I
refer the reader, as follows: The Logic of Christian Evidence, The
Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences, The Ice Age in North
America, Man in the Great Ice Age.
ALEXANDER PATTERSON.
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.
In issuing a third edition of this book it is proper to state what
changes, if any, have occurred in the discussion.
While the belief in Evolution is wide-spread, no known cause or
causes have yet been discovered by which the supposed changes in
species occurred, for "Evolution" is not a force or energy of any
kind, but only the name of a theory by which the present order of
nature is supposed to have come. The method Darwin proposed was
by Natural Selection arising from the prodigality of production,
the small variations that occur in living things, the struggle for
existence and the survival of the fittest, aided by environment and
other causes all of which by slow degrees during infinite ages have
produced the progressive order of species.
This has been decided to be insufficient and has been abandoned by
evolutionary writers. It is now agreed that the changes must have
occurred in variations originating in the embryo or in the germ, or
in the very substance of which that is composed. But all this is far
beyond human ken as all writers admit, as follows: "We are ignorant
of the factors which are at work to produce evolution. We do not
even know whether the life processes are conducted in accordance
with the principles of chemistry and physics, or are in obedience to
some more subtle vital principle." (Metcalf, _Organic Evolution_.)
President David Starr Jordan and Prof. Vernon Lyman Kellogg, both of
Stanford University, say: "These changes or variations, if they do
occur, cannot be explained." (_Evolution and Animal Life, p. 112._)
This is universally admitted by scientific writers and the
search is now for some proof for Evolution along these lines.
But as President Jordan makes the still greater confession that
"science does not comprehend a single elemental fact of nature,"
and such writers as the late Lord Kelvin, president of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, agree thereto, the
required proof seems far off.
So the discussion is in even a less tangible state than in Darwin's
time, for that had a theory supposed to be sufficient, but now there
is no known cause which can be demonstrated or offers the slightest
explanation, as admitted above by these leading writers.
The facts which are advanced to support the theory are dealt with
in this volume and their fallacy shown, that all may be explained
without reverting to such an unproven theory as Evolution.
ALEXANDER PATTERSON.
_Chicago, April 15, 1912._
INTRODUCTION
BY PROF. GEORGE FREDERICK WRIGHT OF OBERLIN COLLEGE.
The doctrine of Evolution as it is now becoming current in popular
literature is one-tenth bad Science and nine-tenths bad Philosophy.
Darwin was not strictly an Evolutionist, and rarely used the word.
He endeavored simply to show that Species were enlarged varieties.
The title of his epoch making book was, "The Origin of Species by
Natural Selection." On the larger questions of the origin of genera
and the more comprehensive orders of plants and animals, he spoke
with great caution and only referred to such theories as things
"dimly seen in the distance."
Herbert Spencer, however, came in with his sweeping philosophical
theory of the Evolution of all things through natural processes,
and took Darwin's work in a limited field as a demonstration of his
philosophy. It is this philosophy which many popular writers and
teachers, and some thoughtless Scientific men have taken up and made
the center of their systems. But the most of our men of Science are
modest in their expressions upon such philosophical themes. Herbert
Spencer does not rank among the great men of Science of the day.
Lord Kelvin's recent remarks upon the subject are most truthful and
significant. (See below pp. 18, 24.)
Mr. Patterson does well to emphasize the fact that _orderly
succession_ does not necessarily imply _evolution from resident
forces_. The orderly arrangements of a business house proceed
from the activity of a number of free wills, each of which might
do differently, but act in a definite manner, through voluntary
adherence to a single purpose. God is all wise and good as well as
all powerful. His plan of Creation will therefore be consistent
whatever be the means through which he accomplishes it.
Mr. Patterson, also, does well to dwell upon the "uncertainties of
Science." Inductive Science looks but a short distance either into
space or time, and has no word concerning either the beginning of
things or the end of things. Upon these points the Inspired Word
is still our best and our only authority. While not saying that
all the points in this little volume are well taken, I can say
that I disagree with fewer things in it than with those in almost
any other on the subject, and that it is fitted to serve as a very
needful tonic in these days of the confusion of bad Philosophy and
fragmentary Science.
GEORGE FREDERICK WRIGHT.
Oberlin, Ohio, Aug. 10, 1903.
FOREWORD.
Before entering upon the discussion we need to enquire as to the
meaning of the word "Evolution" as applied to the theory. We must
also ask a definition of the theory as given by its best-known
writers; and also enquire as to the spheres it claims to cover. To
clearly state a question is often half the task of solving it.
MEANING OF EVOLUTION.
We must distinguish between the ordinary conversational sense of
the word Evolution and the technical use of the term as designating
a theory by that name. We speak of the evolution of the seed into
the plant and the further evolution of the flower and the fruit,
meaning by our words merely the natural progressive action of the
life within the plant. This principle the evolutionist applies to
the whole universe which he says came in a similar way.
Again we use the word Evolution to describe any succession of things
which show progress. Such an instance is given us in the change in
appliances for the use of steam from the time when its power was
first observed in the lifting lid of the tea-kettle to the time
when it drives the latest ocean liner. This is, however, simply the
succession of a series of things in advancing order, but without
vital connection. Their real relation is outside of themselves in
the minds of the inventors who, in turn, may be many and widely
separated. Succession is not Evolution nor does it prove or imply
such a process. That demands an intimate and genetic connection
between the things as they appear, the higher growing out of the
substance of the lower in physical things and the intellectual
likewise.
The theory of Evolution asserts that from a nebulous mass of
primeval substance, whose origin it never attempts to account for,
there came by natural processes, as a flower from a bud, and fruit
from the flower, all that we see and know in the heavens above and
the earth beneath.
Tyndall's statement of the scope of the theory is as follows: "Strip
it naked and you stand face to face with the notion, that not only
the ignoble forms of life, the animalcular and animal life, not only
the more noble forms of the horse and lion, not only the exquisite
mechanism of the human body, but the human mind with its emotions,
intellect, will and all their phenomena, were latent in that fiery
cloud." (_Christianity and Positivism_, p. 30.)
Dr. Lyman Abbott further defines its application to man thus:
"Evolution is the doctrine that this life of man, this moral,
this ethical, this spiritual nature has been developed by natural
processes." (_Theology of an Evolutionist._)
Herbert Spencer's celebrated definition is as follows: "Evolution is
a progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from general
to special, from the simple to the complex elements of life." But we
deny the right to apply this definition exclusively to the theory of
Evolution. Creation also proceeds on the same order, so also does
manufacture or any other intelligent operation.
The clearest account of the theory is that given by Prof. Le Conte,
as follows: "All things came (1) by continuous progressive changes,
(2) according to certain laws, (3) by means of resident forces."
(_Evolution and Religious Thought._) It is the latter clause in
which the real meaning of the theory lies. These "resident forces"
include exterior influences such as food, climate, etc.
The theories of Evolution are as many as the respective writers.
Each one has his own theory as to the scope and cause and operation
of it all. Theistic Evolution allows the intervention of God at the
creation of the primeval "fire-mist" and at the origin of life and
the production of man's spiritual nature. The atheist denies any
interference of a Creator at all. Haeckel says the best definition
of Evolution is "the non-miraculous origin and progress of the
universe." He and many others say that if the Creator is admitted at
any point, He may as well be admitted all along. This is consistent
Evolution.
The theistic and the atheistic evolutionist however agree in saying
that man was descended from the brute, as to his body at least, and
some even, as above shown, claim this descent for the whole man.
This doctrine as to man is the vital part of the whole theory and
in this all evolutionists are practically agreed. So that so far as
their effect on Christian doctrine and Bible fact is concerned, all
may be classed together.
CHAPTER I.
EVOLUTION AS AN UNPROVEN THEORY.
With perhaps the exception of Prof. Ernst Haeckel of Jena, all
evolutionists admit that Evolution is unproven. One of the latest
writers, and most impartial, is Prof. H. W. Conn, who says in
his "Evolution of To-day:" "Nothing has been positively proved
as to the question at issue. From its very nature, Evolution is
beyond proof.... The difficulties offered to an unhesitating
acceptance of Evolution are very great, and have not grown less
since the appearance of Darwin's _Origin of Species_, but have in
some respects grown greater." (pp. 107, 203.) He makes many such
admissions. Dr. Rudolph Schmidt writes, "All these theories have not
passed beyond the rank of hypotheses." (_Theories of Darwin_, p.
61.) Prof. Whitney, of Yale University, says, "We cannot think the
theory yet converted into a scientific fact and those are perhaps
the worst foes to its success who are over-hasty to take it and use
it as a proved fact." (_Oriental and Linguistic Studies, pp. 293-4_)
Tyndall said: "Those who hold the doctrine of Evolution are by no
means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they only yield
to it a provisional assent." (_Fragments of Science_, p. 162.) Dr.
J. A. Zahm writes: "The theory of Evolution is not yet proved by any
demonstrative evidence. An absolute demonstration is impossible."
(_Popular Science Monthly_, April, 1898.) Huxley said, "So long
as the evidence at present adduced falls short of supporting the
affirmative, the doctrine must be content to remain among the
hypotheses." (_Lay Sermons_, p. 295.) Down to the end of his life,
he said the evidence for Evolution was insufficient. (_Quarterly
Review_, January, 1901.)
This universal admission will be a surprise to the non-scientific,
especially in view of the astounding and sweeping claims the theory
has made. It will seem strange that a confessedly unproven theory
should be made the basis of all "modern thinking," the foundation
of a universal philosophy, the cause of a revolution in theology,
and the reason for rejecting the narratives of the Bible, and, on
the part of some, of abandoning Christianity and launching into
atheism. Yet such is the case. Well may we draw a long breath here
and say, Is this Science? Is it scientific to accept as true an
unproven theory and make it the basis of all belief? We have even
more startling facts to present as to this amazing form of unbelief.
In discussing Evolution, we must also continually distinguish
between fact and theory, between things proven and assumed. For the
writers continually intermingle these in a confusing way. We need
ever to ask concerning its statements, Is this proven or assumed?
The jury have a right to ask that everything be proved absolutely
before rendering a verdict for Evolution.
EVOLUTION IS NOT ACCEPTED BY ALL SCIENTISTS AND SCHOLARS.
The statement is often made that Evolution has "the Consensus of
Scholarship." This carries force to the non-scientific, indeed to
all, for we must rest our faith, for facts at least, on the opinion
of scientists. But while many have followed it, there remain many
scholars who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Prof. Haeckel, its
greatest living advocate, complains bitterly of the opposition of
many of the scientists of Europe, and that many once with him have
deserted him.
The late Dr. Virchow, the great pathologist and the discoverer of
the germ theory, was an active opponent of Evolution. He says: "The
reserve which most naturalists impose on themselves is supported
by the small actual proofs of Darwin's theory. Facts seem to teach
the invariability of the human and the animal species." (_Popular
Science_, pp. 50, 52.) Dr. Groette, in his inaugural address as
rector of the University of Strasburg, rejected Evolution.
Dr. D. S. Gregory of New York, editor of the Homiletic Review and
in a position to know the facts, vouches for the statement, that,
"It is a strange fact that no great scientific authority in Great
Britain in exact science, science that reduces its conclusions to
mathematical formulae, has endorsed Evolution."
The late Dr. J. H. W. Stuckenberg, of Cambridge, wrote me, that many
of the scientists of Germany reject the extreme views of Evolution,
and the inferences which men like Prof. Haeckel, of Jena, have
drawn from Darwinism. He quotes Dr. W. Haecke, a zoologist of Jena,
the home of Prof. Haeckel, as saying: "We the younger men must
free ourselves from the Darwinian dogma, in which respect quite a
number of us have been quite successful." Prof. Paulsen, of Berlin,
has exposed some of Haeckel's fallacies and regards his reasoning
as "a disgrace to Germany." He said the mechanical theory for
which Darwinism was held to stand, is rejected by such scientists
as Naegeli, Koelliker, M. Wagner, Snell, Fovel, Bunge, the
physiological chemist, A. Brown, Hoffman and Askernazy, botanists;
Oswald Heer, the geologist, and Otto Hamann, the zoologist. Of Carl
Ernst von Baer, the eminent zoologist and anthropologist, Haecke
affirms, that in early years he came near adopting the hypothesis
of Evolution into his system, but that at a later date he utterly
rejected it. The same change occurred in the late Du Bois Reymond
and Prof. Virchow, the eminent scientist of the University of
Berlin. (See also articles of Dr. Stuckenberg in _Homiletic Review_,
January, 1901, May, 1902.)
Sir J. William Dawson, the great geologist of Canada, utterly
rejected it and says: "It is one of the strangest phenomena of
humanity; it is utterly destitute of proof." (_Story of the Earth
and Man_, p. 317.) Dr. Etheridge, examiner of the British Museum,
said to Dr. George E. Post, in answer to a question, "In all
this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the
transmutation of species. This museum is full of proofs of the utter
falsity of these views." Thomas Carlyle called Evolution "the gospel
of dirt." Ruskin said of it, "I have never yet heard one logical
argument in its favor. I have heard and read many that are beneath
contempt." (_The Eagles Nest_, p. 256.)
Prof. Zöckler writes: "It must be stated that the supremacy of
this philosophy has not been such as was predicted by its defenders
at the outset. A mere glance at the history of the theory during
the four decades that it has been before the public shows that the
beginning of the end is at hand."
Such utterances are now very common in the periodicals of Germany,
it is said. It seems plain the reaction has commenced and that the
pendulum that has swung so strongly in the direction of Evolution,
is now oscillating the other way. It required twenty years for
Evolution to reach us from abroad. Is it necessary for us to wait
twenty years more to reverse our opinions? Why may we not pass upon
facts for ourselves without awaiting the "Consensus of European
Scholarship," which is after all so subject to perplexing reversals?
It makes plain people dizzy to attempt to follow leaders of opinion
who change with every wind that blows across the ocean.
Many citations will appear in the following pages which show the
strong exceptions taken by leading scholars against the theory
in whole or in part. Indeed, as said already, the arguments to
be given herein against Evolution are drawn from the statements
of leading evolutionists themselves. Some of these are earlier
opinions and some their latest utterances. In every case the state
of the discussion will be shown to be far from that "Consensus of
Scholarship" so airily claimed by the writers on the subject and so
unhesitatingly accepted by their followers.
It may be objected that some of these authorities are dead and that
later scholars differ from them. Not to mention the names of still
living writers named above, let us remark that all wisdom is not
left to our day. Socrates and Bacon are dead, yet their opinions are
still of value. Moses is dead, yet the Ten Commandments are still
believed if not obeyed. Our present evolutionary writers will also
one day be dead, yet they hope even then to be given some credit for
sense and science. The "consensus of scholarship" ought to include
wisdom past as well as present.
It is also to be remembered that there are thousands of quiet
thinkers who have never given in their adhesion to this startling
theory, and more, that the great masses of the church at least, have
no confidence in it. Those preparing to launch their ships upon this
current had better, as a matter of common prudence at least, wait a
while at least till the mists have rolled away.
DISCARDED THEORIES OF THE PAST.
Prof. George Frederick Wright says, "The history of science is
little else than one of discarded theories.... The so-called science
of the present day is largely going the way so steadily followed in
the past. The things about which true science is certain are very
few and could be contained in a short chapter of a small book."
(_The Advance_, May 12, 1902.)
It is sometimes charged to the church that it has held theories
which the discoveries of science have shown to be untrue. But it
must be borne in mind that these false theories were just as firmly
held by the scientists of the day as by the church.
Dr. Andrew White has written two great volumes on the warfare
between science and theology. He might write many and larger volumes
on the wars between the theories of science. Every one of these
discarded theories, and they are numbered by thousands, has been the
center of terrific conflicts.
Galileo's discovery of the satellites of Jupiter was opposed by his
fellow astronomers, who even refused to look at them through his
telescope. Dr. J. A. Zahm quotes Cardinal Wiseman as saying that
the French Institute in 1860 could count more than eighty theories
opposed to Scripture, not one of which has stood still or deserves
to be recorded. At a meeting of the British Association, Sir William
Thomson announced that he believed life had come to this globe by a
meteor. His theory lived less than a year. Mr. Huxley said that the
origin of life was a sheet of gelatinous living matter which covered
the bottom of the ocean. This theory had even a shorter life. Among
the most recent reversals of this kind is that of a universally held
theory, namely, that coral reefs are built up by the coral insects
in their desire to keep near the surface as the ocean's bottom
sinks. Prof. A. Agassiz has just demolished this theory.
Scholars were unanimous a short time ago that Troy was a myth. But
Dr. Schliemann's great discoveries have overthrown that "consensus
of scholarship." Prof. Harnack, one of the greatest of critics in
his great work, _The Chronology of the Christian Scriptures_, admits
that science, meaning Higher Criticism, has made many mistakes and
has much to repent of. Joseph Cook said, "Within the memory of man
yet comparatively young, the mythical theory of Strauss has had its
rise, its fall, its burial."
The thirty thousand citizens of St. Pierre on Martinique, trusting
in the assurances of the scientists, remained in their fated city
and the next day were overwhelmed in the most awful calamity of
modern times.
We may consider in this connection the dissatisfaction of some of
the greatest minds of evolutionary circles with the results of their
own theory.
Mr. Herbert Spencer is thus quoted, writing in his eighty-third
year: "The intellectual man, who occupies the same tenement with
me, tells me that I am but a piece of animated clay equipped with
a nerve system and in some mysterious way connected with the big
dynamo called the world; but that very soon now the circuit will be
cut and I will fall into unconsciousness and nothingness. Yes I am
sad, unutterbly sad, and I wish in my heart I had never heard of the
intellectual man with his science, philosophy and logic." (_Facts
and Comments._)
Prof. Frederic Harrison, the agnostic, thus writes: "The philosophy
of evolution and demonstration promised but it did not perform. It
raised hopes, but it led to disappointment. It claimed to explain
the world and to direct man, but it left a great blank. That blank
was the field of religion, of morality, of the sanctions of deity.
It left the mystery of the future as mysterious as ever and yet as
imperative as ever. Whatever philosophy of nature it offered, it
gave no adequate philosophy of Man. It was busy with the physiology
of Humanity and propounded inconceivable and repulsive guesses about
the origin of Humanity." (_North American Review_, December, 1900,
p. 825.)
From the opposite side of the field, President Woodrow Wilson
writes: "This is the dis-service scientific study has done for us;
it has given us agnosticism in the realm of philosophy, scientific
anarchism in the field of politics. It has made the legislator
confident that he can create and the philosopher sure that God
cannot." (_Forum_, December, 1896.)
UNCERTAINTY OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES IN GENERAL.
Another feature which strikes the non-scientific mind curiously
is the wide differences among great scientists as to the facts of
nature. The age of the earth is variously declared to be ten million
years by some, and by others equally able, a thousand million years.
The temperature of its interior is stated to be 1,530 degrees
by one, and 350,000 degrees by another. Herschel calculated the
mountains on the moon to be half a mile high, Ferguson said they
were fifteen miles high. The height of the Aurora Borealis is
guessed from two and a half to one hundred and sixty miles, and its
nature is still more widely described. The delta at the mouth of the
Mississippi was calculated by Lyell to have been 100,000 years in
forming. Gen. Humphrey, of the United States survey, estimated it at
4,000 years, and M. Beaument at 1,300 years.
The deposits of carbonate of lime on the floor of Kent Cavern in
England have been estimated by different scientists to have been
from a thousand to a million years in forming.
The discovery of radium and other similar substances, it is said, is
almost revolutionizing the theories of the constitution of matter
and affecting all physical science.
These facts are not cited to discredit science. No one in his
senses would fail to acknowledge our great debt to the earnest and
laborious workers in these varying fields. But these instances
of many such are cited to show that there is need for caution in
accepting proposed theories.
CHAPTER II.
EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE AND EARTH.
In undertaking to account for the universe, Evolution faces four
problems. 1. The origin of matter. 2. The origin of force. 3. The
formation and orderly arrangement of the universe. 4. The origin
of life. In all of these it fails; it confesses its failure in the
first two and last, and makes ludicrous attempts to explain the
third. We will consider each in turn.
1. Evolution fails to account for the origin of matter. Spencer
says this is the Unknowable. So that Spencer's great philosophy
rests on what he doesn't know and cannot find out. Darwin said as
to the origin of things, "I am in a hopeless muddle." Prof. Edward
Clodd wrote: "Of the beginning of what was before the present state
of things, we know nothing and speculation is futile, but since
everything points to the finite duration of the present creation, we
must make a start somewhere." (_Story of Creation_, p. 137.) Science
is what we know. Therefore Evolution rests upon an unscientific
foundation. Nor is there any other account conceivable than that
the Bible gives. As long as this first and fundamental fact is not
solved, the theory must be content to be at most a limited one, and
far from being that sweeping discovery which its advocates assert it
to be.
2. Evolution fails to account for the origin of Force. The great
forces which animate the universe, such as gravity, heat, motion and
light, must be accounted for by this theory to give it the standing
it demands. It makes no attempt to do this. Evolution is silent when
we ask, Whence came these mighty forces? Calling them Laws of Nature
does not answer the question. Laws need law makers and enforcers
also. Laws do not enforce themselves. As forces, they show the
ceaseless giving out of energy. Where is the dynamo from which this
perpetual energy originated and still proceeds?
In this connection, let us notice the reticence and limitations of
really great scientists as to the nature of these energies. Lord
Kelvin, the greatest living scientist, said at the meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he was
president: "One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts
for the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly for
fifty-five years. That word is failure. I know no more of electric
and magnetic force, or of the relation between ether, electricity
and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew and
tried to teach to my students of natural philosophy fifty years ago
in my first session as professor."
Haeckel himself, the greatest living evolutionist, admits: "We
grant at once that the innermost character of nature is just as
little understood by us as it was by Anaximander and Empedocles
2,400 years ago.... We grant that the essence of substance becomes
more mysterious and enigmatic the more deeply we penetrate into the
knowledge of its attributes." (_Riddle of the Universe._)
3. Evolution fails to account for the orderly movements of the
heavenly bodies which have the accuracy of a chronometer, aye,
which are the standards by which all chronometers are regulated,
so that the astronomer can calculate to a second when the heavenly
bodies shall pass any particular point of view or form their many
conjunctions. There is no collision, no noise. "There is no speech
nor language, their voice is not heard."
Our Solar System is unique in the heavens. Prof. See tells us
there is no other like it in the regularity of its orbits, and in
its distant position from the powerful attractions of the mighty
systems of the heavens. The earth, too, is the only world so
far known to be advanced enough for the production of life. Its
situation is far enough from the sun to be beyond its powerful heat
and electric energy and yet near enough to preserve and continue all
life. The arrangement of its surface into land and water proportions
gives the requisite amount of moisture over the land areas. The
atmosphere is mixed of gases in just the right proportions for life.
All this speaks as loudly as any mechanism can speak, of intention
and benevolence and control and careful adjustment; far from
that haphazard effect which comes from the undirected working of
"resident forces."
Evolution declares the universe began with a nebulous mass,
which Tyndall says was "fire-mist," and contracted as it became
cold; but Spencer says it was a cold cloud which became heated
as it contracted. We are left to the perplexity of deciding for
ourselves which theory we will accept. This is only one of many such
contradictions we shall meet. But however, or whatever it was, it
organized itself into the wonderful universe of stars by a rotary
motion which the contraction produced, and this threw off portions
as a carriage wheel throws off mud, each portion taking up a similar
motion and cooling in a similar fashion until it became cool enough
for living things.
Proof for all this is supposed to be seen in a nebula which is seen
in the constellation Orion, which has a spiral form and is supposed
to be a world in the making.
But in February, 1901, a new star appeared surrounded by a nebula
and this in rapid motion from the center. This sudden appearance
of a world in a nebulous state seems like the reversing of the
evolutionary process or indeed like a world being destroyed and
reduced to its first estate. Other facts are also contradictory,
such as the motion or revolution of some of the satelites in a
reverse order from that demanded by the theory.
Indeed the whole nebular theory is now being called in question.
Prof. George Frederick Wright of Oberlin University, thus writes of
it:
"The nebular hypothesis, which all forms of evolution now assume
for a beginning, involves the supposition that the molecules of
matter composing the solar system were originally diffused through
space like the particles of mist in a vast fogbank, and that then,
under the action of gravitation, they began to approach each other
and to collect in masses, which began to revolve about their axes
and to move in orbits around the center of attraction. Every step
in this supposition involves an added mystery. The existence of the
molecules in their original diffused state is but the beginning of
the mystery, though that is utterly incomprehensible.
"The power of gravitation which compels the separated particles
to approach each other is an utter mystery, which has completely
baffled all efforts at explanation by scientific men. The revolution
of the various masses of the solar system on their axes and in their
orbits is another mystery for which there is no solution.
"Thus is the thorough-going evolutionist at every point confronted
with an insoluble mystery, and he deceives himself if he fancies
that he has discovered anything which will take the place of the
Christian's conception of God as the creator, sustainer and ruler of
all things." (_Record-Herald_, Chicago, Dec. 24, 1902.)
Other facts are even more perplexing to this theory. The moon is
moving from her place at an increasing rate and astronomy cannot
account for it. The earth's axis of revolution has varied from time
to time. Only one star in a thousand has ever been catalogued. Of
only about a hundred is the calculation of the parallax possible, so
distant are they.
As to our earth, a well-known writer says: "No one of standing in
the scientific world of to-day is willing to go on record as having
a theory of his own regarding the internal fires of this planet or
attempting to account for their origin."
In view of this state of uncertainty, it seems to the non-scientific
mind hazardous to project across these vast ages a guess as to what
the conditions were and how the universe originated. And above all
to found on this guess a vast philosophy of the universe affecting
all we hold precious for this life and that to come. Well may we
hesitate before such demands.
4. The origin of life is a problem Evolution has sought in vain to
solve or account for by its natural or resident forces.
Prof. Le Conte labors hard to show that it might have come from the
union of the four gases, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen,
under some peculiar circumstances. If he had said under the direct
act of the Creator we could assent cheerfully. For these do enter
into the substance which forms the bodies of living things. But
the claim of Evolution is that all came by "resident forces,"
self-operating. Once admit the direct act of the Creator, and, as
Haeckel says, they might as well admit it along the whole process,
for the argument for a single instance is valid for the whole. So
they will have none of it.
Prof. Le Conte labors to show that protoplasm might be
self-originating, but Prof. Conn says, "Protoplasm is not a
chemical compound but a mechanism.... Unorganized protoplasm
does not exist.... It could never have been produced by chemical
process. Chemistry has produced starches, fats, albumens, but not
protoplasm." (_Method of Evolution._)
Lord Kelvin, in writing to the _London Times_, said:
"Forty years ago I asked Liebig, walking somewhere in the country,
if he believed that the grass and flowers which we saw around us
grew by mere chemical forces. He answered, 'No, no more than I could
believe that a book of botany describing them could grow by mere
chemical forces.'"
Tyndall, after laborious experiments during eight months, thus
candidly states the result, in an address before the Royal
Institute, London: "From the beginning to the end of the inquiry,
there is not, as you have seen, a shadow of evidence in favor of
the doctrine of spontaneous generation.... In the lowest, as in the
highest of organized creatures, the method of nature is, that life
shall be the issue of antecedent life."
And Mr. Huxley also admitted, "The doctrine that life can only come
from life is victorious all along the line." Prof. Conn states,
"There is not the slightest evidence that living matter could arise
from non-living matter. Spontaneous generation is universally given
up." (_Evolution of To-day_, p. 26.)
Wilson, the great authority on the cell says, "The study of the
cell has seemed to expand rather than narrow the enormous gap that
separates even the lowest forms of life from the inorganic world."
(_The Cell in Development and Inheritance_, p. 330.)
Here then, is the greatest chasm of all: Evolution fails at the
very start in the story of life. Yet this is its chosen field.
On this depends the whole theory. If there was a Creator at the
origin of life, why not at the origin of all living things? It
is simply a question of degree. The making of a single cell, the
simplest creature that lives, is as great a mystery as that of man.
Conceptually the one is as possible as the other.[1]
[1] See these points discussed more fully in Wright's Scientific
Aspects of Christian Evidences.
CHAPTER III.
THE EVOLUTION OF SPECIES.
This is Evolution's great field of labor. It was this which mainly
occupied Darwin's labors and is the basis of the whole sweeping
theory. This suggested man's animal origin and all that follows as
to man's history and religion and civilization. So that this is the
basal part of Evolution. Yet against this fundamental argument, two
great charges are made and admitted: First, not a single case of
evolution of species is known, and, second, no law or force by which
such changes could take place has been discovered. We will consider
these two fatal defects.
NOT A SINGLE INSTANCE OF EVOLUTION IS KNOWN.
In support of this assertion we might quote the admissions of nearly
every evolutionary writer. Prof. Winchell writes upon this point as
follows:
"The great stubborn fact which every form of the theory encounters
at the very outset is, that notwithstanding variations, we are
ignorant of a single instance of the derivation of one good species
from another. The world has been ransacked for an example, and
occasionally it has seemed for a time as if an instance had been
found of the origination of a genuine species by so-called natural
agencies, but we only give utterance to the admissions of all the
recent advocates of derivation theories, when we announce that the
long-sought _experimentum crucis_ has not been discovered." (_The
Doctrine of Evolution_, p. 54.)
Prof. Conn, in one of the most recent works upon Evolution, says:
"It is true enough that naturalists have been unable to find a
single unquestioned instance of a new species.... It will be
admitted at the outset on all sides, that no unquestioned instance
has been observed of one species being derived from another.... It
is therefore impossible at present to place the question beyond
dispute." (_Evolution of To-day_, p. 23.)
Here then is a fatal defect. The world has been ransacked for
evidence, the museums are full of specimens, the secrets of nature
have been explored in every land, the minutest creatures discovered
and analyzed. We have the remains of animals and plants of many
kinds thousands of years old, such as the mummied remains from
Egypt, and yet not a single instance of the change Evolution asserts
has ever been known! Yet this change of species is the fundamental
argument of Evolution. On this rests its theory of the origin of man
and all that flows from that assertion, and this basal assertion is
absolutely without an actual instance of fact.
The changes in certain species such as roses, primroses, tomatoes,
pigeons and dogs, are not new species, but only varieties, having
none of the traits of species, easily intermingling, propagating,
and readily reverting to their original forms, changes which true
species are not susceptible of. Darwin admitted that the continued
fertility of these varieties was one of his greatest difficulties.
One of the definitions of species is that they will not interbreed
and propagate. So that hybrids are sterile. "After its kind," is the
primal law of nature, and as Dr. Jesse B. Thomas says, "The stubborn
mule still blocks the way of Evolution."
NO CAUSE OF EVOLUTION IS KNOWN.
Evolution is not a force. There is no power or cause which is known
as Evolution. The word simply describes the order in which things
have been supposed to come. We must draw a clear line of distinction
between Cause and Order of Appearance. There is a certain order
in the succession of living things as they came, but what caused
that order is the very question at issue. The Duke of Argyle warns
against confusing these when he says, "Evolution puts forward a
visible order of phenomena as a complete and all-sufficient account
of its own origin and cause." (_Theories of Darwin._)
The absence of an agreed cause is admitted by evolutionists. Huxley
says, "The great need of Evolution is a theory of derivation."
(_Man's Place in Nature._) Darwin admits, "Our ignorance of the laws
of derivation is profound." (_Descent of Man._) "The laws governing
inheritance are for the most part unknown." (_Origin of Species._)
Prof. Conn in _Evolution of To-day_, says, "No two scientists are
agreed as to what is the cause of the supposed changes of species."
(p. 337.) Prof. Clodd traces it to the protoplasm which forms the
germ and ends his exhaustive treatise by saying the cause is still
unknown. (_Method of Evolution._)
Darwin's theory was Natural Selection. It is this which is
technically called "Darwinism," although some writers apply that
name to the general subject of Evolution. Natural selection is the
theory that inasmuch as minute variations occur in the struggle
of living things for existence, the variations which would prove
favorable to the welfare of the animal would be transmitted to
its progeny and be increased and so, in many generations, the
accumulating effects, aided by climate, food, sexual selection, and
other causes, would amount to a new species. Prof. Conn says of this
theory, "Natural selection is almost universally acknowledged as
insufficient to meet the facts of nature, since many facts of life
cannot be explained by it." (p. 243.)
Mr. Huxley said long before: "After much consideration, and with
assuredly no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear
conviction that as the evidence now stands it is not absolutely
proved that a group of animals, having all the characteristics
exhibited by species in nature, has ever been originated by
selection, whether natural or artificial." (_Lay Sermons_, 295.)
The theories as to what produced the supposed changes are as many
as the writers on Evolution. Prof. Conn says, "All agreement
disappears. Each thinker has his own views." And adds, "Thus far
we have seen no indication of the manner in which this evolution
has been manifested." (p. 20.) Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, lecturer on
zoology in the School of Medicine, Edinburgh, said: "Unless we can
give some theory of the origin of variations we have no material for
further consideration. Unfortunately we are very ignorant about
the whole matter." The various writers ascribe the changes to food,
climate, sexual selection, extraordinary births, isolation and many
other supposed causes. All these have been in turn combatted by
other evolutionist writers, and the war goes on and has produced
libraries of volumes. It is around this that the conflict rages and
the war is a merry one.
HOW EVOLUTION ORIGINATED SPECIES.
It is when Evolution gives the particulars of these changes that it
becomes especially interesting. We will, by way of lighting up the
examination, consider a few of the stories it tells us as to how
things came.
Spencer tells us how the backbone came to be, for the primitive
animals had none. Prof. Conn quotes his account as follows: "He
thinks the segmentation, the division of the spinal column into
vertebrae, arose as the result of strains. Originally the vertebrate
was unsegmented, but in bending its body from side to side in
locomotion through the water, its spinal column became divided by
the action of simple mechanical force." (_Evolution of To-day_, p.
65.) Thus what we usually consider a serious calamity, the breaking
of one's backbone, became one of the greatest blessings, for
what would we be without flexible backs, with which to follow the
meanderings of Evolution?
Evolution also tells us how legs originated. The earliest animals
were without legs. Some animal in this legless state found on its
body some slight excrescences or warts, which aided materially
its progress as it wiggled along, and thus it acquired the habit
of using these convenient warts. This habit it transmitted to its
posterity and they increased the habit until the excrescences,
lengthened and strengthened by use, became legs of a rudimentary
kind, which by further use developed a system of bones and muscles
and nerves and joints such as we have ourselves.
Spencer's account of the origin of quadrupeds is that the earliest
animals propagated by dividing into two parts, and in some of
these the division was not perfectly made, and so the animal had
duplicated ends, each of which had legs, forming finally the present
quadruple arrangement.
Eyes originated from some animal having pigment spots or freckles
on the sides of its head, which, turned to the sun, agreeably
affected the animal so that it acquired the habit of turning that
side of its head to the sun, and its posterity inherited the same
habit and passed it on to still other generations. The pigment spot
acquired sensitiveness by use and in time a nerve developed which
was the beginning of the eye. From this incipient eye came the
present wonderful combination of lenses, nerves and muscles, all so
accurately adjusted that, of the sixteen possible adjustments of
each part, only once in a hundred thousand times would they come
together, as they now are, by chance.
Land animals began thus, according to Evolution: In a time of
drought some water animals, stranded by the receding waters, were
obliged thenceforth to adopt land manners and methods of living.
Although, strangely, the whale by the same cause was forced to the
water, for it was once a land animal, but in a season of drought was
obliged to seek the water's edge for the scant remaining herbage,
and, finding the water agreeable, remained there and its posterity
also, and finally, the teeth and legs no longer needed, became
decadent and abortive as we see them now. Darwin inferred the
history of the whale's marine career from seeing a bear swimming
in a pool and catching insects with its wide-open mouth as it so
skimmed the water's surface.
The same drought produced another and wonderful change, for it is
to this that the giraffe owes his long legs and neck. The herbage
on the lower branches withering up, he was obliged to stretch his
neck and legs to reach the higher branches. This increased, as all
such changes increased, in his posterity, and finally after many
generations produced the present immense reaching powers of the
giraffe. So that the same drought deprived the whale of his legs and
conferred them upon the giraffe.
The mere recital of these speculations will be enough for all who
have not surrendered their judgment to the keeping of others. It
seems scarcely necessary to assure readers unacquainted with the
theory, that this is not exaggeration or caricature. We have simply
abbreviated, and rendered into untechnical language, the accounts of
evolutionary writers given in all seriousness and with high-sounding
scientific terms. Any such work will give many specimens of similar
accounts. Reply seems unnecessary, yet must be made.
1. All this is pure speculation. Not a single such change is known,
or has been observed.
2. All is based on Natural Selection, which evolutionists have
themselves discarded; yet for want of any other theory they are
constantly obliged to fall back upon it.
3. Such acquired traits are not transmitted, as Prof. Thomson of
Edinborough, tells us. Only characteristics inherited, or congenital
in the fertilized egg cell, are so transmitted. (_Outlines of
Zoology_, p. 66.) The "sports" such as the white robins and crows
occasionally seen, disappear as individuals and do not propagate as
distinct types.
Let us pause here to contemplate the spectacle of a theory, which
its own advocates admit is unproven, and which has been opposed by
some of the greatest minds, a theory which has not a single direct
fact of evidence, and has no way of accounting for the changes which
it declares have taken place; such a theory accepted as the basis
of every science, the foundation of a universal philosophy, taught
in educational institutions to youth as if demonstrated, demanding
immediate and universal submission, undertaking to revise Scripture,
to revolutionize theology, and to prescribe what we must do to be
saved and to save others! Surely it is safe to hesitate before such
demands.
We will not discount the great service done humanity in the patient
research in the realms of nature by laborious students. All this
should be given weight. We also admit the value of a theory as a
means to the ascertaining of truth. But we cannot consent that
the vast interests affected by Evolution shall be decided by "the
balancings of probabilities," or the mooted value of a theory.
This is no place for theories, which must be held tentatively, if
at all. This is a matter which affects the belief and lives and
hopes of millions, their welfare here and hereafter. Religion is
too sacred to be made a shuttlecock tossed about in the arena of
intellectual amusement.
Sir J. William Dawson said of some writers and their theories: "To
launch a clever and startling fallacy, which will float a week and
stir up a hard fight, seems as great a triumph as the discovery
of an important fact or law; and the honest student is distracted
with the multitude of doctrines and hustled aside by the crowd of
ambitious groundlings." (_Story of the Earth and Man_, 313.)
Evolution has much to say for itself, but, as we see, it is all
of the nature of circumstantial evidence. This seems to the
non-scientific mind as strange for anything called science,
which we have been accustomed to think means something known or
proven. We have been accustomed to see cases thrown out of court
when presenting no evidence and to fare badly in general on mere
circumstantial evidence. However, as Evolution is so persistent
for a hearing, we must examine what it has to advance for our
consideration. Its arguments are drawn from Geology, Classification,
Distribution of Plants and Animals, Morphology and Embryology.
THE ARGUMENT FROM GEOLOGY.
The argument from this science is that the fossils appear in the
strata of the earth in advancing order, the simplest first, and more
complex afterwards. The assumption is that the higher came from the
lower, by a chain of infinitesimal changes, through a long series of
ages. Now the facts are not as claimed. We will show this later. But
admitting that they are, the argument is wanting.
1. All this is pure assumption. No such changes are known in
existing species to have ever taken place, and the assumption that
these changes took place in geologic ages is wholly unwarranted. If
it cannot be predicated of the animals we see and know, how can it
be asserted of a period millenniums ago?
2. Mere succession is not evolution. The coming in orderly
succession is evidence of some plan but not necessarily of
evolution. An intelligent Creator would work in the same way,
especially if he had intelligent beings to instruct thereby, at the
time or afterwards.
3. Evolution in comparing the successive comings of the rocky strata
and the fossil creatures, compares two kinds of things that cannot
be made analogous. Rocks are not produced by evolution, the higher
growing out of the lower, as is claimed of species. That certain
species appeared with the lower rocks and strata, and higher orders
with later rocks and strata only proves of one, as of the other,
an advancing order of production but tells nothing of the cause of
either.
4. We are supported in these doubts as to the value of Evolution's
argument from Geology by the fact, that many of the most eminent
geologists deny any proof of evolution in their chosen science.
Sir Roderick Murchison said, "I know as much of nature in her
geologic ages as any living man, and I fearlessly say that our
geologic record does not afford one syllable of evidence in support
of Darwin's theory." The great Swiss geologist, Joachim Barrande
states, "One cannot conceive why in all rocks whatever and in all
countries upon the two continents, all relics of the intervening
types should have vanished.... The discordances are so numerous and
pronounced, that the composition of the real fauna seems to have
been calculated by design for contradicting everything which the
theories (of Evolution) teach us respecting the first appearance and
primitive evolution of the forms of life upon the earth." (Quoted by
Winchell, in _Doctrine of Evolution_, p. 142.)
Prof. Conn, an evolutionist, admits the presence of many facts
disclosed by geology which oppose the theory of Evolution. He says,
"In the earliest records geology discloses, we find not a few
generalized types but well differentiated forms, nearly all the
sub-kingdoms as they now exist, five-sixths of our orders, nearly
an equal proportion of sub-orders, a great many families and some
of our present species. All this is a surprise and an unexplained
problem." Such a result, he says, is not what Evolution would lead
us to expect. All the important classes of animals made their
appearance without warning. (_Evolution of To-day_, pp. 6, 100, 103,
118.)
Haeckel writes, "We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that various
groups have from the time of their first appearance, burst out into
an exuberant growth of modification of form, size and members, with
all possible, and one might almost say, impossible shapes, and they
have done this within a comparatively short time, after which they
have died out not less rapidly." (_Last Link_, p. 144.)
The testimony of geology, as adduced by geologists and even by
evolutionists, is that it does not sustain the claims of Evolution.
Species existed in present form from the earliest times. Geologic
species came in suddenly and went out suddenly. Some of the
simplest remain unchanged through all earth's transformations to the
present time. (Dr. Robert Patterson, _Errors of Evolution_, p. 221.)
The great fossil cemeteries show that the living creatures fell in
serried ranks, overtaken by cataclysms, in every act of life. Le
Conte tries to explain this by saying that there were "paroxysmal"
eras, but what the paroxysms were, or whence they came, he does not
say. The whole testimony is against Evolution and reverts to proof
of the Bible story of Creation. Professor Adam Sedgwick says: "At
succeeding epochs, new tribes of beings were called into existence,
not merely as the progeny of those that had appeared before them,
but as new and living proofs of creative interference."
THE ARGUMENT FROM CLASSIFICATION OF SPECIES.
This is one of the strong points of Evolution. It is claimed that
plants and animals can be so classified in an ascending order that
it is evident the higher came out of the lower. We object as follows:
1. There is no classification agreed upon by scientists. This comes
largely from want of agreement as to what a species is. Scientists
differ widely and radically. Spencer presents a review of all these
schemes of classification and ends by saying, "It is absurd to
attempt a definite scheme of relationship." His own plan of the
scheme he says is the figure of a "laurel bush squashed flat by a
descending plane." (_Principles of Biology_, p. 389.) This agrees
with his statement as to the absurdity of such schemes. Some arrange
the whole in a continuous straight line from the lowest up.
Darwin thought the whole came from half a dozen germinal forms.
Where these came from he did not say. Dr. J. Clark Ridpath said,
"The eagle was always an eagle, the man always man. Every species
of living organism has I believe come up by a like process from
its own primordial germ." (_Arena_, June, 1879.) Haeckel insists
that the theory demands but a single primeval germ as the ancestor
of all living things. He presented a tree, showing twenty or more
stages between primeval protoplasm and man, but this has been now
rejected by evolutionists. Prof. D. Kerfoot Schults represents
the classification as follows: "If all the animals that have ever
existed on the earth be represented by a tree, those now existing
on the earth will be represented by the topmost twigs and leaves,
and the extinct forms will be represented by the main trunk and
branches." (_First Book on Organic Evolution_, p. xiv.)
But the source of all, the primeval protoplasm, is wanting. The
missing primeval germ or germs leaves the tree without a root,
and Prof. Conn tells that even the sub-kingdoms are not united by
fossils. Spencer admits that not a single species has been traced to
its source or its family tree completed, and even the ancestors of
our living species are wanting.
Prof. Dana admitted as follows, "If ever the links (upon which
the doctrine of Evolution depends) had an actual existence,
their disappearance without a trace left behind is altogether
inexplicable." Here then is a tree without root or trunk or
branches, and having only the tips of outer twigs and leaves, in
other words, a phantom tree, a fit representation of the theory for
which it stands.
The present orders of plants and animals give a strong argument
against Evolution. It has been seen that Succession is not
Evolution. The mere coming of animals in orderly succession
shows only plan, but the means of executing that plan is not
shown thereby. But further, while in the geologic ages there was
Succession, here in our age is Simultaneousness of species, two
very different and contradictory phenomena. Why has Succession
ceased? Why have not the higher orders pushed the lower out, as in
the geologic ages, if Evolution was the cause? Yet here they all
exist quietly together as if they knew nothing of Evolution or its
requirements.
Nor have any such changes occurred in thousands of years, as the
mummied remains of cats and crocodiles and ibises in Egypt show.
Surely 4,000 years would show some evolution if there had been such
a thing; but it is not seen in all the 4,000 years, or even in the
more distant period since primeval man existed, for we have the
remains of animals found with man in his early history. Out of 98
species, 57 are the same as we have to-day unchanged, and still
others, as the lingula, the same as in ages past. Thus Evolution's
trusted argument from Classification utterly fails of demonstration.
DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS.
The distribution of plants and animals is another favorite argument
of this theory. Certain animals are said to be found only in certain
regions, the bison only in North America, the kangaroo only in
Australia, the armadillo only in Mexico. Evolution triumphantly
asks, Were they created only in these places? We now simply remark
that difficulties as to Creation do not prove Evolution. Evolution
says the ancestors of these came from other parts ages ago and by
long isolation and environment became what they are.
Facts again are against the theory. Huxley himself says that in the
neighborhood of Oxford are animal remains like those of Australia;
that Britain was once connected with the continent, and so these
animals passed over. The same is true he says of the isolated fauna
of New Zealand and South America. (Address in _Daily Post_, March
27, 1871.)
This argument might be used against Evolution as well as the
previous arguments. Two islands in the Pacific, only fifteen miles
apart, have the animals of Asia in one and of Australia in the
other. One of the Bermudas has lizards like those of Africa and
another like those of America. In fact it is evident that animals
and plants have scattered widely.
THE MORPHOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.
The comparative study of plants and animals presents another
argument for Evolution. It is found, for example, that there is a
similarity of plan in the fin of the fish, the wing of the bird,
the flipper of the whale, the leg of the animal and the arm of
the man. So also in a measure with all other corresponding parts.
This Evolution says, shows that all these animals are genetically
connected and all came from the same ancestors.
Huxley himself replies to this argument in these words, "No amount
of purely morphological evidence can suffice to prove that things
came into existence in one way rather than another." (_Study of
Zoology_, p. 86.) Another great scientist, Prof. Quatrefages,
professor of anthropology in the Museum of Natural Sciences, Paris,
writes on this as follows: "Without leaving domain of facts, and
only judging from what we know, we can say, that morphology itself
justifies the conclusion that one species has never produced another
by derivation." Prof. Conn admits, after going through the whole
subject with the latest facts, that unless some further explanation
can be found, homology does not prove descent. (_Evolution of
To-day_, p. 76.)
This resemblance of parts is just what we should expect in things
originating from one intelligent operator, whether Creator or
manufacturer. It is found in every factory. The wheel is the same
in the wheelbarrow, the cart, carriage and locomotive. In fact,
uniformity of plan proves unity in the cause, and not the diversity
of chance causes claimed by Evolution. If Evolution were true, there
would be as much diversity among organs as there is among the forms
of organs. If the operation of chance conditions has resulted in
radical changes in the forms of organs, why then is there not this
similar diversity among the organs themselves? Evolution has no
reply. Creation has such reply; God is one and his plan one. Why
should not the forms of all these things be alike, seeing they are
to live in the same climates, eat the same food and propagate in the
same manner?
The rudimentary, abortive and discarded parts found in some animals
form one of the strongest arguments Evolution advances. The favorite
instance it presents is found in the horse. The horse walks on one
toe and has splints further up the leg, which they tell us are the
remains of the other toes, and the callosities on the leg are the
remains of thumbs. The remains have been found of an animal as large
as a dog which resembles the horse and has two toes, and another
older animal, as large as a fox, which has four toes. Putting these
side by side, Evolution calls them all horses, and says the one-toed
animal came from the two-toed, and he from the four-toed, and that
this proves the evolution of the horse from the Eohippus (Old Horse)
as it is called.
1. Bearing in mind that this conclusion is pure assumption, and only
inference at best, let us remark that it violates the primal law of
evolution laid down by Spencer, that of evolution from the simple to
the complex. It should have shown first the one-toed horse, then his
development into a two-toed animal, and so on up to a horse having
five toes. This would be evolution. As it is, we see the opposite of
evolution, degradation, which often occurs in nature, and we see few
if any instances of any subsequent restoration to primal conditions.
2. Besides all this, that most necessary thing to a good horse,
a pedigree, is wanting. The connecting links are all missing in
his ancestral tree. For the ancestors of that first of horses are
unknown. But he is not alone in this, for even his owner has the
same sad want of proven descent, as we will see later. Just how the
horse lost his appendages, and why he dropped toe after toe in this
extraordinary manner the story leaves untold.
3. But another great objection exists. It takes time to breed
horses. It required all of the Tertiary period to produce the
one-toed animal from the four-toed ancestor and much longer time
was required to develop him from a totally different animal, where
more than a mere question of toes comes in. For we have to face
the difficulty, and the time necessary, to develop a good horse,
say from an alligator, and the still greater task of producing him
from an animal without toes at all, or even legs, or anything to
hang legs on, and simply a bag of jelly-like substance, which the
evolutionist assures us was the ancestor of all horses and their
riders. If it appears to the reader that life is too short for such
business we can say the geologist agrees with him, for he tells us
the age of the old earth itself was not one tenth long enough to
produce Evolution's horses, and still less their riders.
Another instance of Evolution's proofs is the swim-bladder of
fishes. This Evolution sometimes states is an incipient lung, and
that the fish learned in a drought to breathe air. Sometimes, as
the need of the theory demands, the swim-bladder is claimed as the
relic of a discarded lung. These however are two different and
opposing claims. Either as a prophecy or a relic the swim-bladder
is fatal to the claims of Evolution. If it is an incipient lung,
then here is intention, which Evolution rejects. If a relic, here is
retrogression, the opposite of evolution. The abortive organ is one
of the difficulties of the theory which Darwin admitted, and Prof.
Conn tells us, is not yet answered. Prof. Huxley said, "Either these
rudiments are of no use to the animal, in which case they ought to
have disappeared, or they are of some use to the animal, in which
case they are arguments for teleology." (_Darwinism_, p. 151.)
THE ARGUMENT FROM EMBRYOLOGY.
Evolution derives its greatest argument from the study of the
embryo. It makes three claims. First, that the germ of everything,
plant and animal, is the same, neither chemical analysis nor the
microscope showing any difference. If therefore, such vast variety
could come from origins so alike, why could not all we see come from
a similar origin, the primitive animal, which was also such a simple
cell? Second, in the growth of the embryo it recapitulates the
ancestral history of that particular organism. Third, all this when
compared with the geologic record, and the present orders of living
things as classified, presents the full succession of the forms of
life, the one supplying what the other lacks.
These claims must be examined separately.
1. The claim that the germs of all living things are alike is not
true. The resemblance is only superficial. Protoplasm, of which the
germ is composed, differs and is not homogeneous material. That
which builds the muscles is one kind, and that which builds brain
and nerves is entirely different. Prof. Clodd tells us it is not a
chemical compound but a mechanism. Nor could the germs be alike. For
the plant breathes carbon, the animal oxygen. The one oxidizes, the
other deoxidizes. There are still greater and deeper differences.
Tyndall says, "Under the most homogeneous material, there lie
structural energies of such complexity, that we must question
whether we have the mental elements with which to grapple with
them.... The most trained and disciplined imagination retires
in bewilderment from the problem. In that realm, inaccessible
to everything but mind, the wonders of Creation are wrought
out.... Here is determined the germ and afterwards the complete
organization." (_Fragments of Science_, p. 153.) So that these cells
or germs, which appear so alike, contain each in itself the entire
plan and life of the coming creature, to the color of a feather, the
trick of a hunting dog and the smile and dimples of a child.
2. The second claim that the course of each embryo traverses its
ancestral history, is not nearly so vociferously made as some
years ago. Prof. A. Agassiz writes, "Anything beyond a general
parallelism is hopeless." Prof. Conn admits "Embryology alone is
not a safe guide, and only when verified by the fossils can it
be relied upon. It seldom gives a true history.... The parallel
is largely a delusion.... It often gives a false history."
(_Evolution of To-day_, pp. 125, 134, 137, 150.) Prof. Thomson
writes, "Recapitulation is due to no dead hands of the past, but
to physiological conditions which we are unable to discover."
(_Outline of Zoology_, p. 63.) He also says that the young mammal
was never like a worm, a fish, or reptile. It was at the most like
the young of these in their various stages. So far from the course
of all being alike, Baer says he can tell the difference between the
embryo of the common fowl and duck on the second day. (_Principles
of Biology_, p. 1.) So far as this claim holds good, it forms an
argument against evolution. For here is a goal or ideal to which
all things strive. This is intention, and plan and purpose, all of
which is opposed to the main idea of Evolution. It is in line with
Creation.
3. The culminating argument for Evolution is given by arranging in
ascending classification the geologic orders of life (which we have
seen do not appear as Evolution demands), and placing alongside of
these the classification of present animals (which we have seen
is not agreed upon, and is as diverse as the writers themselves),
and then laying alongside of these two artificial arrangements,
the embryonic recital (which is now doubted and is often false to
the past history), and triumphantly pointing to the three-fold
combination. The gaps geology shows are thus filled by present forms
and what both lack, by the embryonic recital.
Here are compared three things which radically differ. The geologic
record shows progress from lower to higher, although not that
complete nor unvarying record necessary to the theory, while the
present orders of life exist simultaneously. Both show the existence
of separate things having no individual connection. The embryo is a
single individual, designed from its conception on a predetermined
plan, animated by internal forces, and limited to a certain end and
life. It is as Dawson says, a "closed series." The worlds of living
and fossil creatures consist of myriads of individuals, under many
widely different conditions, and aimed at widely different ends and
lives. The two are contradictory for the uses of Evolution.
What we do see in these three facts are three marks of personal
intelligence. In embryonic growth we see the plan of production.
In the coming of the fossil creatures we see the progress of the
plan in historical appearance. In the present display of nature
we see the ultimate purpose of the whole. It all forms one great
consistent plan and bears all the marks of personal and creative
work.
So that summing up the argument from comparison of the three facts,
the geologic order, the present classification, and the embryonic
growth, we find in the first absolute separation of species, in the
second no genetic connection as already shown under that argument,
and in the third different phenomena having no points in common
with the other two. The whole argument then fails of conclusion and
reverts as the former do, to proof against Evolution.
FACTS OPPOSING EVOLUTION OF SPECIES.
A theory to be proven must meet the facts and account for them. The
theory in question fails lamentably in this. There are countless
facts not only unaccounted for but diametrically opposed to it and
antagonizing it. We cite some of these:
1. _Degeneration in nature._ Nature shows a constant tendency
downward. Prof. E. D. Cope, an eminent evolutionist, writes: "The
retrogradation in nature is as well or nearly as well established
as evolution." The wild varieties of plants and animals are far
inferior to the cultivated kinds. The older species are far
superior to the present. The saber-toothed tiger is far superior
to the present animal. So also is the Mammoth as compared with
the elephant. Plants show degeneration in colors. The order of
superiority is from yellow, the lowest, to white, pink, red, purple
and blue, the highest. When they drop from blue to yellow, it
is degeneration. Some now having green flowers once had colored
blossoms. Progress is not seen to be upward in the flowers. So also
parasitism is degeneration both in plants and animals. The course of
nature is not, as it has not been, constant development upward. The
scripture statement "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in
pain," describes accurately the condition of nature (_Ro._ 8:22.)
2. _Continued unchanged species for ages._ The crustacea, for
example in Lake Tanganyika, Africa, remain as the receding ocean
left them ages ago.
3. _Species instead of increasing in number have decreased._ There
were 500 species of trilobites. They have all disappeared. There
were 900 species of ammonites; all are gone. Of the 450 species
of nautilus, only three remain. Indeed whole families have become
obliterated. All this is antagonistic to Evolution.
4. _Species continue the same under the most diverse environments._
Environment is claimed as a cause of the changes demanded by
Evolution. But the same species exist in the most diverse regions,
e. g., mosquitoes, whales and oaks.
5. _Adaptation of one species to another._ Darwin says that a
single case of the adaptation of one species to another would be
fatal to his theory. Yet he himself gives the data for hundreds of
such adaptations. He adduces the fact that a hundred head of red
clover produced 2,700 seeds. A similar number protected from insects
produced none. The fertilization of plants by insects is well known.
The Smyrna fig is said to owe its value to its fertilization by the
piercing of an insect. Some of these insects have been introduced
into California for that purpose. There is an orchid which can be
fertilized only by an insect falling into a cup of liquid which the
flower has, and escaping through a side opening in which it touches
the pollen.
Dr. Andrew Wilson writes: The colors of flowers--nay, even the
little splashes of a hue or tint seen on a petal--are intended to
attract insects that they may carry off the fertilizing dust, or
pollen, to other flowers. It is to this end also that your flowers
are many of them sweet-scented. The perfume is another kind of
invitation to the insect world. The honey they secrete forms a third
attraction--the most practical of all.
6. _Complex adjustments of nature._ Evolution in vain attempts to
account for the wonderful complex adjustments we see in nature, such
as the mimicry of animals and plants; the walking stick so closely
resembles a twig that it deceives the closest observer. The withered
leaf butterfly, with spots and wrinkles, is exactly like the thing
it imitates. This is true also of the leaf butterfly and of another
which exactly resembles a bird's dropping. Evolution cannot account
for the ventriloquism of insects, such as the cricket and tree toad;
the battery of the electric eel; the beauty of insects and fish
and shells and birds and flowers, especially the harmony of their
colors. Edible insects are plainly colored, the poisonous kinds
highly colored. Some butterflies have "scare-heads" on their wings,
exactly resembling an owl's head, and other insects have similar
frightful appearances which they thrust out when attacked. All this
tells of design and interest and often has the appearance of humor
in the creation of these numerous creatures.
7. _The mathematical adjustments of nature are as exact as the
multiplication table._ Illustrations of this are the accuracy of the
orbits of the heavenly bodies and the law of gravitation. The growth
of the cell proceeds on geometrical progression in the division of
parts into 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. The climbing plants form their coils
with mathematical accuracy and proportion. The proportions in which
chemicals will mix is mathematically fixed.
Prof. Tyndall thus calls our attention to crystallization: "By
permitting alum to crystallize in this slow way we obtain these
perfect octahedrons; by allowing carbonate of lime to crystallize,
nature produces these beautiful rhomboids; when silica crystallizes
we have formed the hexagonal prisms capped at the end by pyramids;
by allowing saltpeter to crystallize, we have these prismatic
masses, and when carbon crystallizes we have the diamond."
(_Fragments of Science_, p. 357.) "Looking at it mentally we see the
molecules [of sulphate of soda] like disciplined squadrons under
a governing eye, arranging themselves into battalions, gathering
around distinct centers and forming themselves into distinct solid
masses, which after a time assume the visible shape of the crystal
now held in my hand. Here then is an architect at work, who makes no
chips nor din, and who is now building the particles into crystals
similar in shape to these beautiful masses we see upon the table."
(_Belfast Address._)
8. _The structure of living things shows the true principles of
architecture._ A Mr. McLaughlin, a noted Scotch mathematician, tried
by mathematical calculation to ascertain the shape of a building
which would contain the most room with least material and yet embody
the greatest architectural strength in its retaining walls. After
many laborious calculations, he found after he had arrived at a
conclusion that the honey bee had long before given the same plan
of structure in its cell. The human skull is a true dome, and the
spinal column a true pillar. The ribs of the ship are copied from
the fish, the yacht from the duck, and its deep fin from the fish.[2]
[2] See "Number in Nature," Hastings, Boston, for further
illustrations of this.
Evolution pretends to account for every one of these facts by chance
changes, extending through countless ages as has already been shown
in its amazing account of the origin of legs, eyes, backbones and
other members. Surely this is an appeal to credulity! The faith of
the Christian is sometimes taxed but what shall we say of the faith
of the evolutionist? Which is more credible, the simple account of
miraculous creation or this long, involved and absolutely unseen and
unknown process?
9. _The age of the earth._ Prof. George Frederick Wright, the
geologist, tells us that geologic time is not one-hundredth part
as long as it was supposed to be fifty years ago, and the popular
writers who glibly talk of the antiquity of man are behind the
times and ignorant of the new light which as a flood has come from
geology.[3]
[3] See Man in the Glacial Period, by Prof. Geo. Frederick Wright.
Summing up the case, Prof. Francis M. Balfour tells us: "All these
facts that fall under our observation contradict the crude ideas
of those so-called naturalists, who state that one species can be
transmitted into another in the course of generations." So also Sir
David Brewster declares: "We have absolute proof of the immutability
of species, whether we search for it in historic or geologic times."
Dr. Etheridge, the famous English authority on fossils, says:
"Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not
founded on observation and wholly unsupported by fact. Men adopt a
theory and then strain their facts to support it. I read all their
books, but they make no impression on my belief in the stability of
species. Some men are ready to regard you as a fool if you do not go
with them in all their vagaries, but this museum is full of proofs
of the utter falsity of their views."
CHAPTER IV.
THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.
The central point in the whole theory is the descent of man from
the brute. It is this which, as stated, gives it importance to the
Christian. But for this, the hypothesis would be but a curious
scientific theory. It is a matter of comparatively minor interest
how the universe or the various species came. It is only because
these theories are used to assert the animal origin of man that they
are dealt with here.
It is in this claim as to the origin of man that all the various
theories of Evolution agree, however they may vary in other matters,
and, as this is the vital point, these theories are considered as
one in this discussion. This is a question merely of fact. Did or
did not man descend from the brute or was he specially and divinely
created? This is the question in a nut-shell. The two accounts
are as follows placed side by side. Darwin's account is accepted
substantially by all evolutionists.
THE BIBLE ACCOUNT.
(Gen. i:26, 27; ii:7; v:1, 2.)
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness....
And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he
him; male and female created he them.... And the Lord God formed man
of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life and man became a living soul.... In the day that God created
man, in the likeness of God made he him: male and female created he
them; and blessed them and called their name Adam."
EVOLUTION'S ACCOUNT.
(From Darwin's Descent of Man, ii, 372.)
"Man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and
pointed ears, probably arborial in its habits and an inhabitant
of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had been
examined by a naturalist, would have been classed among the
Quadrumana, as surely as would the common and still more ancient
progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The Quadrumana and all
the higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial
animal, and this through a long line of diversified forms, either
from some reptile-like, or some amphibian-like creature, and this
again from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the past,
we can see that the early progenitor of the Vertebrata must have
been an aquatic animal, provided with branchia, with the two sexes
united in the same individual."
The Bible account is circumstantial, with mention of places and
rivers of undoubted historical character. It is accepted by
subsequent Scripture writers and made the basis of their historical
and spiritual teachings. The evolutionary account is lacking in all
of this. There are no exact data nor any attempt to give any. No
description save an imaginary one is ever given. As no one was there
to see, the whole is fanciful.
The two accounts are utterly irreconcilable. Whatever the Scripture
account means it does not mean Evolution, and literary justice
demands that we do not impose upon a writer a meaning he did not
intend or give.
Prof. Pfliederer writes, "There is only one choice. When we say
Evolution we definitely deny Creation. When we say Creation we
definitely deny Evolution." Prof. James Sully says, "The doctrine
of Evolution is directly antagonistic to that of Creation." (_Bible
Student_, July, 1901, quoted by Prof. Warfield.)
How anyone can accept both accounts passes all understanding. The
late Dr. John Henry Barrows, president of Oberlin University, tells
of meeting a Hindu boy in his visit to India, who had attended the
mission schools and learned there the shape and situation of the
earth. He had of course previously been taught the Hindu cosmogony
that the earth was surrounded by salt water and that by a circle
of earth and that by successive circles of buttermilk, sweet cane
juice, and other "soft drinks" with intervening circles of land.
Dr. Barrows asked the boy which belief he would hereafter hold. He
replied that he would believe both. This might be possible to the
Hindu boy, but it surpasses all previous intellectual feats that any
intelligent person can accept both the Bible account and Darwin's
account of the creation of man.
We will review the arguments for and against the evolutionary
account of the origin of man from the following spheres and subjects:
1. The Argument from the Evolution of Species. 2. From Similarity
of Structure in Animals and Man. 3. Rudimentary Organs in Man. 4.
Human Characteristics in Animals. 5. History of the Evolution of Man
from the Brute. 6. The "Missing Link." 7. The Brain. 8. Man's Mind
and Consciousness. 9. Language. 10. Pre-historic Man. 11. Antiquity
of Man. 12. Savage Races. 13. History of Mankind. 14. Religion. 15.
Ethics. 16. Christian Experience. 17. Christ.
1. ARGUMENT FROM THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
On this argument rests the theory of man's animal origin. But for
the desire to prove that such is man's origin, the argument would
never have been conceived. We introduce it here again to call
special attention to this fact. We have seen that there is decided
difference of opinion on this theory; that many object to it; that
there is not a single case of such origin of species known; that
there is no law or force or cause agreed upon or known by which
such origin of species could take place; that there are countless
objections and facts against it; that its arguments are confessedly
insufficient; and they are at best but inferences and only "the
balancing of probabilities."
If therefore the proofs of the Origin of Species are wanting the
whole theory of Evolution falls in ruins to the ground. There would
seem no need to proceed further. Yet Evolution lightly steps over
the ruins of its previous claims and proceeds to further assertions.
Some of the greatest of the exact scientists stop here. Prof.
Dana, the great geologist, says: "Man's origin has thus far no
sufficient explanation from science. The abruptness of transition
from preceding forms is most extraordinary and especially because it
occurs so near the present time." (_Elements of Geology._)
Prof. Virchow, the most eminent pathologist of Europe, wrote as
follows: "There always exists a sharp line of demarcation between
man and the ape. We cannot pronounce it proved by science that man
descends from the ape, or from any other animal. Whoever calls to
mind the lamentable failure of all attempts made very recently to
discover a decided support for the '_generatio aequivoc_' in the
lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world
will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly
discredited, should be in any form accepted as the basis of our
views of life."
Many more such expressions might be quoted from eminent scientists
to the same effect. But as we will use these under the respective
heads of the foregoing order of argument, we pass on here to the
arguments as stated.
2. SIMILARITY OF STRUCTURE IN ANIMALS AND MAN.
It is well known that the internal and external form of man is like
that of the lower animals. This, Evolution claims, is an argument
for genetic connection. The same argument would prove that a
locomotive was born from a stage coach, and that from a cart,
and that from a wheelbarrow. Similarity of structure proves only
uniformity of design. An intelligent maker of any nature would so
operate, and man himself so manufactures now. Why should not God
make man on the model of the lower animals, seeing he is to live in
the same world, under the same conditions, eat the same food and
propagate in the same way? There is no reason for departure from a
form which has proved useful and appropriate. All the parts in the
human form have been thus tested in the lower forms and found right
for their purpose and are now, as we would expect, applied to man.
Man is the climax of all. All is for his use in the lower worlds of
plants and animals; then why not use their frame and inner organs
also? The mechanic uses the same appliance such as the wheel in his
most complex construction as well as in the simplest engine.
But there are parts in the human frame not found in the lower
orders. Wallace, one of the greatest evolutionists, says the soft
human skin cannot be accounted for by natural causes, nor the
valves in the human veins which are in different position from
those of the brute, nor the human foot nor larynx, nor the human
voice, especially the female voice, nor the absence of hair on
the body, nor why man is short armed and long legged, while his
ape-man ancestor is the reverse. Many more such problems vex the
evolutionist. Creation accounts for all this, and does so by one
simple, sweeping argument in place of Evolution's complex and
bewildering maze of speculations.
Ruskin teaches us in this extract that God works by law and does
not deviate therefrom even where it seems to us that He might have
wrought differently: "But God shows us in Himself, strange as it may
seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection
of obedience, an obedience to his own laws; and in the cumbrous
movement of those unwieldiest of His creatures, we are reminded,
even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the
human creature, 'that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not.'"
(_Seven Lamps of Architecture_, II., p. 78.)
3. RUDIMENTARY ORGANS IN MAN.
Evolution points to certain features in man which it claims came
from his brute ancestry, such as the long hairs in the eyebrow,
which they say came from the ape-man, the tips of the ear, and the
hair on the forearm, which slants from the hand to the elbow. The
whole outside ear is also claimed as a relic from that brute and is
unnecessary for hearing. So also of the five toes when a solid foot
would have been better, although most of us think not. They also
point to some evidences of a tail which they say was rubbed off when
the ape-man learned to sit down. This, however, many apes do now
with no signs of decreasing tails. Many internal members and organs
are pointed to, which are too numerous here to mention. One instance
is as good as the whole catalogue, and one reply also.
All this proves too much for the theory. Here is the loss of useful
organs and the survival of others not needed. This is not evolution,
at least not the kind we have been asked to build our hopes upon for
progress. Further, these so-called "relics of the brute" are counted
as having no use save to support Evolution. The "gill-slits" in the
neck of the human embryo are the favorite instance of this kind of
fact. Haeckel and, after him others, picture the forms of fish,
dog and man in embryonic state, and say in triumph, There is proof
of the descent of the man from the dog and of him from the fish;
and this resemblance has survived to tell the tale, there being no
other use for it. But this is not the only feature that "survives."
Heads and mouths and eyes also "survive." Why are these not pointed
to as proofs of descent? Because we can see use for them, while
there appears to be no use for the "gill-slits" except to prove
Evolution. If we could see some use in the "gill-slits" in the neck
of the embryo, the argument of Evolution would fall to the ground.
Evolution's argument from the gill-slits and all other "relics of
the brute" rests therefore on ignorance, a very unsafe foundation
for a scientific theory, for knowledge is constantly increasing,
especially of the human frame, and there is not the slightest doubt,
reasoning from analogy and past experience, that there is use for
these peculiar embryonic features.
We repeat the argument of Huxley as to these rudimentary parts:
"Either these rudiments are of no use, in which case they should
have disappeared; or they are of use, in which case they are
arguments for teleology." (_Darwinism and Design_, p. 151.)
Evidences of this nature are of that kind called circumstantial, and
in law are least relied upon, for on such evidence some innocent men
have been hung. Shall we condemn the whole race to a bestial origin
on the same evidence? All arguments founded on such facts are weak,
puerile and unworthy of scientists. No wonder that Prof. Paulsen
said Haeckel's speculations are "a disgrace to the philosophy of
Germany." Shall we suspend a philosophy of the universe upon a few
long hairs? Shall we allow the guess as to the origin of the tip of
the outer ear to revolutionize theology? Shall we risk our eternal
destiny on the supposed uselessness of the so-called "gill-slits" in
premature puppies? Yet this is the demand of Evolution reduced to
plain English.
4. HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS IN ANIMALS.
The human characteristics found in animals form an argument for
Evolution. We find the animals have memory, love, hatred, jealousy;
that they can think and plan, use means and weapons, admire things
of beauty, and some have sports. All of this, so Evolution claims,
points to genetic connection with man. But all this only shows
uniformity in the inner as in the outer being. There is as much
reason for the one as for the other. Life is the same wherever we
find it. The forces which operate in the rain drop are the same
as in the universe of boundless space. The intellectual nature of
man is the same as that of angels who have no genetic connection
with us. Even devils are the same in the intellectual nature
as God himself. Mind is the same thing wherever it exists. To
say therefore that because animals have certain characteristics
like those of man, they are the ancestors of man, is a leap to a
conclusion entirely unwarranted by either facts or logic. Yet it is
on such conclusions that Evolution rests. Creation would proceed on
the same comprehensive plan, and we have seen that man does also. He
applies his forces as he does his materials to the most varied uses.
Nor has any instance of the development of a brute or his faculties
to any approach to man's faculties ever been known. The highest
animal is still immeasurably below the lowest and most bestial man,
not only in the grade of the faculties that they have in common,
but in others which the animal does not possess and cannot acquire.
There is a great gulf fixed which they do not pass over--as our next
section will show.
5. HISTORY FROM THE BRUTE TO THE MAN.
Many have essayed the relation of the story of the change from the
brute to the man. In doing so, some have covered themselves with
ridicule, yet the attempts continue to be made as do others to
produce perpetual motion. To bridge this chasm is necessary in order
to sustain Evolution, for this is the heart of the question. It is
said that a famous professor of history abandoned his chair because
of the uncertainty of the facts of history. One would expect that
the attempt to relate what happened before man had any history,
or even existed, would be even more hazardous. Yet we are given
the account with such assurance as sometimes to deceive the very
elect--who abandon their Bibles. Haeckel's attempt was the most
impressive, and swept all before it, for a year or two. He presented
a many-branched tree, whose roots were protoplasm, its trunk
protozoa, its successive branches sponges, fish, reptiles, birds,
marsupials, monkeys, apes, man-apes, and the topmost branches, man.
Of the twenty-one stages, half have been proved to be "wrong" by
evolutionists and the rest are "doubtful."
The home of the primeval man, or ascending-ape, whichever it or he
was, is one of the difficult facts to settle. Haeckel locates it at
the bottom of the Indian ocean. He can thus defy disproof. Another
says it was in the tropics somewhere. This is also a safe assertion.
The difficulty is that the remains of the pre-historic man are found
in the northern regions, while the ancestor animal was a denizen of
the tropics. So another declares that the original home was in the
northern regions, to which a pair of wild animals of the ancestor
kind were driven by something or somebody, and their retreat cut
off, and so they were forced to the life in caves and adopted the
habits we find among cave dwellers.
But although our ancestor cannot be located we are told just who and
what he was. Thus Prof. Edward Clodd, an authoritative evolutionist,
tells us in his book, "The Making of a Man," as follows: "Whichever
among the arboreal creatures possessed any favorable variation,
however slight, of brain or sense organ, would secure an advantage
over less favored rivals in the struggle for food and mates
and elbow room. The qualities which gave them success would be
transmitted to their offspring. The distance in one generation would
be increased in the next; brain power conquering brute force and
skill outwitting strength. While some for awhile remained arboreal
in their habits, never moving easily on the ground, although making
some approach to upright motion, as seen in the shambling gait of
the manlike apes, others developed a way of walking on their hind
legs, which entirely set free the fore limbs as organs of handling
and throwing. Whatever were the conditions which permitted this, the
advantage which it gives is obvious. It was the making of a man."
(p. 126.)
It seems difficult, indeed unfair, to take this seriously. We must
assure the reader that the author of this description shows no
intention of humor either here or elsewhere in his work, or indeed
any consciousness of it. All is given in perfect sobriety. We must
therefore accept it as a profound scientific deliverance of the most
authoritative kind and deal with it accordingly, and believe that
walking on the hind legs and throwing things with the fore limbs was
"the making of a man." How easily men are made!
1. This argument rests on the theory of Natural Selection now
discarded by most evolutionists.
2. Apes have done all he here claims and far more. The chimpanzee
has been taught to sit at a table, to drink out of cups, to eat
with a knife and fork, to wipe his mouth with a napkin and use a
toothpick, but has got no further in the ways of good society, and
as to increase of cranial development, has obtained none save as the
effects of undue potations have produced an enlarged feeling.
3. The whole account is purely imaginary as no professor of
Evolution was there to observe the facts. It is in short an
intrusion into the realm of fiction, which clearly belongs to Mr.
Kipling in his wonderful jungle stories.
Again in his book on "Man and His Ancestor," (p. 67.) Prof. Morris
gives us a full description of this unseen and purely hypothetical
ancestor as follows: "It was probably much smaller than existing
man, little if any more than four feet in height, and not more
than half the weight of man. Its body was covered, though not
profusely, with hair; the hair of the head being woolly or frizzly
in texture and the face provided with a beard. The face was not
jet black, like a typical African, but of a dull brown color; the
hair being somewhat similar in color. The arms were long and lank,
the back being much curved, the chest flat and narrow, the abdomen
protruding, the legs rather short and bowed, the walk a waddling
motion somewhat like that of the gibbon. It had deep set eyes,
greatly protruding mouth with gaping lips, huge ears and general
"ape-like aspect." Prof. John Fiske thought it was much more than a
million years since man diverged from the brute. During an active
geologic age before the cave-man appeared on the scene, "a being
erect upon two legs and having the outward resemblance of a man
wandered hither and thither upon the face of the earth." (_Destiny
of Man_, p. 55.)
We read all this with astonishment that anyone could penetrate the
dim vista of millions of years ago and transcribe such a detailed
and circumstantial account of what then existed. It reads like a
picture from life. Yet not only was the writer not there, but no one
else was present, for this was the father of us all, according to
Evolution.
We are told that, given time enough, all this series of changes
from the primeval cell to the modern philosopher or scientist is
possible. But time for this is limited by the age of the earth. For
Lord Kelvin has stated that only a few million years are possible
on any calculation and this would all be needed for the change from
ape to man to say nothing of the interminable ages necessary for the
change from the protozoa to the fish and then to land animals and so
on to mammals and up to the ape.
The after life of the ape-man is described with the same
circumstantiality as the coming to manhood's estate. Dr. Robert
Patterson combines the various features of Evolution's description
and this creature's history in the following extract: "It is a
fearful and wonderful picture they give us of the origin of marriage
from the battles of baboons, of the rights of property established
by terrible fights for groves of good chestnuts, of the beginning
of morals from the instincts of brutes, and of the dawnings of
religion, or rather of superstition, from the dreams of these
animals; the result of the whole being that civilization and society
and law and order and religion are all simply the evolution of the
instincts of the brutes and that there is no necessity for the
invoking any supernatural interference to produce them." (_Fables of
Infidelity._)
It is here we meet the "theistic" account of the origin of man.
It was to this creature we are told God imparted a soul or spirit
supernaturally. For this strange creature was the Adam of theistic
Evolution. Eve they say nothing about. Nor are we told how or when
the soul was imparted, whether in a single animal, a pair, or a
herd; whether awake or asleep. Nor are we told what they did next,
or how the soul-ape got along with the rest of the species. Nor are
we told what particular state, or act, or habit, entitled him to the
new nature he received. It seems as if the ability to "stand on the
hind legs and throw things with the fore limbs," which Prof. Clodd
tells us was the "making of a man," scarcely entitled him to such a
divine inheritance as an immortal soul.
This also was the Adam who fell according to the theistic
evolutionist, though how such a creature could "fall" seems
difficult to conceive. It was this thing whose sin, Paul tells us,
brought death on the whole race. It was this who is a type of
Christ who is "the Second Adam." Out and out Evolution has but a
fraction of the difficulties, either physical or spiritual, to face
that this make-shift compromise "theistic" theory has before it. It
is not surprising that the thorough-going evolutionist rejects this
strange compound of fiction and theology.
We appeal to the common, every-day man of fair judgment: Which
takes more faith, or if preferred, credulity, the accepting of
that strange, complex, unauthenticated account of man's origin or
the simple and, with an omnipotent God in mind, entirely possible
account of the Bible? "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man
became a living soul." Which is the more noble, the more satisfying
to our desires for a high and divine origin as well as high and
divine destiny?
6. THE MISSING LINK.
The Missing Link is the great desideratum of Evolution, for the
evolutionist indignantly disclaims the present apes or monkey as
ancestors. He tells us the connecting link was a creature superior
to these. But of which he is unable to show any specimen. It is
purely mythical. We have the remains of millions of animals
reaching through all the ages and why is this particular specimen
wanting?
Dr. Rudolph Virchow, the great discoverer of the germ theory, has
for thirty years, according to Haeckel, "opposed the theory of man's
descent from the brute." (_Last Link_, p. 27.) He himself says: "The
intermediate form is unimaginable save in a dream.... We cannot
teach or consent that it is an achievement that man has descended
from the ape or other animal." (_Homiletic Review_, January, 1901.)
Dr. Friedrich Pfaff, professor of natural sciences in the University
of Erlangen, writes on the question as follows: "Nowhere in the
older deposits is an ape that approximates more closely to man,
or man that approximates more closely to an ape, or perhaps a man
at all. The same gulf which is found to-day between man and the
ape goes back with undiminished breadth and depth to the tertiary
period. This fact alone is sufficient to make its unintelligibleness
clear to every one who is not penetrated by the conviction of the
infallibility of the theory of the gradual transmutation of and
progressive development of all organized creatures. If, however,
we now find one of the most man-like apes (gibbon) in the tertiary
period, and this species is still in the same low grade, and side
by side with it, at the end of the ice period, man is found in the
same high grade as to-day, the ape not having approximated more
nearly to man, and modern man not having become further removed from
the ape than the first man, every one who is in a position to draw
a right conclusion can infer, that the facts contradict a theory
of constant progression, development and ceaselessly increasing
variation from generation to generation, as surely as it is possible
to do." (_Age and Origin of Man_, Am. Tr. Soc., p. 52.)
From time to time the discovery of the "missing link" is announced
and telegraphed through the civilized world, only to be remanded to
its place among the remains of brutes or men. We will consider the
instances of such as they have been presented:
1. The Calaveras Skull now in the California State Museum. This has
been shown recently to be a hoax. It was placed in a mine shaft 150
feet deep, by Mr. R. C. Scribner, a storekeeper at the mine, as a
practical joke. This he lately acknowledged to the Rev. W. H. Dyer,
of Los Angeles, a clergyman of the Episcopal church.
2. The Neanderthal Skull. This was found in 1856 in Prussia. It had
narrow receding forehead and thick ridges over the eyes. It was
claimed by the evolutionists as from two to three hundred thousand
years old. Dr. Meyer of Bonn examined the evidence, and found it
to be the skull of a Cossack killed in 1814. Many other scientists
agreed with him. (_Bible Science and Faith_, p. 278.)
3. The Colorado specimen. Prof. Stephen Bowers of the Mineralogical
and Geological Survey of California, gives this account of another
such discovery: "A few years ago the newspapers contained an account
of the discovery of a skeleton in Colorado, by a Columbia College
professor, which he was pleased to call the 'missing link' between
man and the apes. He gave this remarkable creature an antiquity of
a million and a half of years. The friable bones were carefully
wrapped in cotton and shipped east. But scarcely had the learned
professor gotten away with his prize when certain cowboys came
forward and claimed the bones to be that of a pet monkey which they
buried but a dozen years previously."
4. The late find of skeletons at Croatia, Austria, is heralded as
the discovery of a connecting link. But these are skeletons of men
and not of brutes. They are degraded men and nothing is better known
than the possibility of degeneracy in man. We have degenerates now
with all the peculiarities of these low specimens, retreating brows
and jaws and flat faces. Degeneracy does not prove evolution. While
the shape of these skulls is low and long it has not been shown that
their cubical capacity is much less than that of normal man.
5. The Pithecanthropus Erectus. This is the most popular relic
with Evolution. It consists of a piece of a skull from the eyes
upward, a leg bone and two teeth. These were found in Java by Dr.
von Eugene Du Bois in 1891. The cubic measurement of the skull is
60 inches, the same as that of an idiot, that of a normal man being
90 inches, and of an ape 30. These specimens were found at separate
places and times. The skull is too small for the thigh bone. The age
of the strata in which they were found is uncertain. Authorities
are divided as to the nature of these. Haeckel admits that the
belief that this is the missing link is strongly combatted by some
distinguished scientists. At the Leyden congress, it was attacked by
the illustrious pathologist Rudolph Virchow.
The assumptions based upon this specimen and necessary for evidence
are as follows: First, that it is as old as claimed, a hundred
thousand years at least, or a million as stated by some. Second,
that these bones belong to the same individual. Third, that they are
the remains of a full-grown individual. Fourth, that they are the
remains of a human or semi-human being. Fifth, that they are not
the remains of an idiot whose capacity the brain represents.
With all these unproven assumptions, and against the opinion of many
of the finest scientists in Europe, Haeckel and some evolutionists
have declared this is the missing link. They place this piece of
a skull of one creature upon this leg of another and insert these
teeth belonging to a third, all so far separated in life that they
probably did not even know each other, and rechristen the whole
"Pithecanthropus Erectus," which may be freely translated "The ape
that walked like a man," being thus the first that arrived at that
point which Prof. Clodd tells us was "the making of a man." And this
specimen is Haeckel's _Last Link_, and this he says demonstrates the
truth of Evolution.
The evidence of bones and other remains is now generally suspected.
It has been found that even in the case of recent remains, as in
criminal trials, experts are often unable to decide whether they are
human or brute, recent or remote, and what part of the frame they
occupied. It is said that Wallace, the great cotemporary with Darwin
in the promotion of the theory, now admits there is no evidence of
an evolutionary link between man and the lower animals.
7. THE ARGUMENT FROM THE BRAIN.
The brain forms the principal difference between man's body and the
brute's. The brain is especially used as proof by the evolutionist.
It is the organ of mind. Its size corresponds with the intellectual
state of the creature. It is the theory of Evolution that there was
an increase in the size of the brain in some of the man-apes of that
day, although none such is seen now.
Prof. Edward Clodd thus describes these supposed brain changes after
the Ice Age: "The changes by which he met these new conditions were
in a very small degree physical. They were almost wholly mental. The
principal physical change was in the growth of the brain and the
expansion of the cranium, giving rise to a less bestial physiognomy
and an advanced mental power." (_Man and His Ancestor_, p. 181.)
How could man adapt himself by increasing the size of his brain?
Why should the passing away of the ice age increase the size
of the brain? However, he disposes of the whole matter, after
arguing through pages of supposition and assumption, by stating,
"The absence of facts forces us to confine ourselves largely to
suggestions and probabilities." (_Making of a Man_, p. 188.) But
probabilities are not science and we have a right to ask from those
claiming to be scientists actual facts and not guesses, for so
great an assertion as the descent of man from the brute.
The capacity of the ape brain is 30, of the human 90 cubic inches.
There is no evidence of change in either the ape or the man. The
prehistoric man has as good a head on his shoulders as his modern
descendants. Bruner says the most ancient skulls even exceed
ours. Dr. Pfaff says the stone age men are equal to the present
generation. So if education does not increase the size of man's
brain, why should the new tricks of Prof. Clodd's ancient "arboreal
creature" enlarge that individual's brain 200 per cent? On the
other hand, the ape of to-day and the ape of 3,000 years ago as
mummied and preserved in Egypt are the same. The big-brained ape
of Evolution has unaccountably disappeared and even his skull is
missing.
8. MAN'S MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
Evolution claims that all man's faculties have been derived from the
brute, as was his physical frame. It is fair to say that this is
met at the door by the protest of some of the greatest scientists,
themselves sympathetic with Evolution.
Prof. John Fiske wrote on the origin of mind: "We can say when mind
came on the scene of evolution, but we can say neither whence nor
why.... It is not only inconceivable how mind should have been
produced from matter, but it is inconceivable that it should have
been produced from matter." (_Darwinism_, pp. 63, 69.) Prof. Dana
has said, "The present teaching of geology is that man is not of
nature's making.... Independently of such evidences, man's high
reason, his unsatisfied longings, aspirations, his free will, all
afford the fullest assurance that he owes his existence to the
special act of the Infinite Being whose image he bears." (_Geologic
Story_, p. 290.)
Prof. George H. Howison writes on this theme: "To make evolution
the ground of the existence of mind in man, is destructive to the
reality of the human person and therefore, of the entire world of
moral good and of unqualified truth." (_Limits of Evolution_, p. 6.)
Lord Kelvin, the most eminent living scientist, wrote in a letter to
the London Times, "Every action of human free will is a miracle to
physical and chemical and mathematical science."
9. LANGUAGE.
Evolution has long tried to create an argument for the derivation of
man's speech from the cries of animals. This is met however by the
philologist with positive denial. Prof. Max Mueller says: "There is
one barrier which no one has yet ventured to touch,--the barrier of
language. Language is our Rubicon and no brute will dare to cross
it.... No process of Natural Selection will ever distill significant
words out of the notes of birds and animals." (_Lessons on the
Science of Language_, pp. 23, 340, 370.)
False claims have been made for the languages of savage people and
ancient races. Darwin said that the people of Terra del Fuego were
the lowest in the scale, so far as discovered, and their language
correspondingly crude. But further investigation shows that they
have 32,430 words; over twice as many as Shakespeare used. The
language of some of the tribes of the Congo is described by a
missionary as more complex than Greek. The history of languages
shows the same want of evidence for an evolutionary origin. The
oldest forms are the most complex. Modern Greek and Latin are
simpler than the ancient forms. English is an improvement in this
respect on the old Anglo Saxon, whose grammatical forms it has
largely cast off and reduced the language to greater simplicity.
A scientist is now endeavoring to ascertain the speech of monkeys.
He has ascertained that these animals have different sounds for
different wants, a fact as to other creatures that he could have
ascertained by a visit to the nearest poultry yard. The hen has as
many calls as the monkey, and as many meanings too. Her call for
food is one sound. Her cry of alarm at a passing hawk is another,
and her brood perfectly understands all, and without previous
education. All animals and birds, and many insects too, have sounds
with meaning in them, but language is another matter.
10. PREHISTORIC MAN.
The remains of early races form an argument used by Evolution. These
remains are found in many places in caves and are accompanied by
tools of stone and vessels of pottery and the remains of animals.
These degraded peoples are pointed to by Evolution as man in a state
of development.
If the preceding arguments were well founded this would appear
reasonable enough. But in view of the fallacious character of the
prior reasoning, we must halt at this claim. There are many and
conclusive reasons for rejecting this unproven claim. For it is
unproven. It is only inference and assumption.
1. These men of the cave do not necessarily represent man in a
course of progress, for we find to-day the same classes of people
with their stone tools and pottery and living as prehistoric
man lived. There to-day exist men in every stage of the supposed
progress from the cave man to the highest in civilization. Such
remains could be had in any burial place of these savage peoples.
Prehistoric man, so-called, is still with us and we can interview
him as to his state and history.
2. We have seen that modern man has not developed in brain capacity
above prehistoric man. It is also true that he has not developed
physically. Dana tells us that the skeleton found at Mentone
compares favorably with the best modern men. Indeed we have
degenerated in many respects. We have almost lost the sense of
smell as compared with savage peoples or even animals. Our teeth
are certainly not improving. If we are to find perfect specimens
we do not look at the most advanced classes but to the reverse.
Those who live to extreme old age are generally in the lowly ranks.
But why has physical development ceased at all? Why are there not
some superior beings by this time? But alas, there are no marks
or indications of wings or halos on either the great saints or
scientists of the day.
We are told that while physical evolution has ceased among men,
evolution now works along mental lines of progress. This is a
radical shifting of the ground of evolution, for heretofore all
this has been not only omitted but discarded. If evolution is
anything, it is physical. Nor does Evolution give any account of
the causes of the stoppage of physical development and the change
to mental evolution. We will also show later that this supposed
progress has not been such as claimed.
11. ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
Evolution asserts that a vast antiquity for man has been proven
by remains that have been found. It is commonly said that these
remains are hundreds of thousands of years old. But the claims for
these vast periods are now being greatly reduced and generally
discredited. Dr. Zahm says of these speculations: "We could not
give a better illustration of the extremes to which the unguided
human intellect is subject than the vacillating and extravagant
notions of the antiquity of man." (_Bible Science and Faith_, p.
315.) The age of the peat beds of Abbeville, in France, in which
human remains were found, was once estimated at 20,000 years. The
estimate has been reduced to a fifth of that age. The remains of the
animals found with man are supposed to prove his extreme antiquity.
The remains of the mammoth were once cited as such proof. But the
mammoth has been found in such a state of preservation that its
flesh has been fed to the dogs.
The enormous ages which have been credited to these remains are well
illustrated by the discovery of a skeleton at New Orleans while
digging for the gas works. From the depth of the stratum in which
it was found it was estimated by scientists at the age of 57,000
years. Soon after, the gunwale of the skeleton's Kentucky flat boat
was found in the same stratum, and the age therefore of the remains
was reduced from 57,000 to 50 years. The evidences from peat bogs,
stalagmite formations, stone, iron and bronze tools are all now
considered unreliable by scientists. So many exposures of mistakes
in the estimate of age from these have been made, that the whole is
looked upon with suspicion. Instance after instance might be given.
It has been claimed that we can arrange these past races in an
ascending order as they worked in stone, bronze, or iron, in their
successive history. This is a false theory. We have all these "ages"
existing to-day. On the other hand, Dr. Livingstone found no stone
age in Africa. Dr. Schliemann found in the ruins of Troy the bronze
age below the stone age. The early Egyptians used bronze, the
later ones stone tools. In the Chaldean tombs all these are found
together. Europe had the metal age while America had the stone age.
(_Creation and Evolution._ Prof. Townsend.)
These prehistoric races to which Evolution points us as representing
man in his early state, do not represent that early world. They are
found at the outer limits of the world and not at the acknowledged
center whence man came. They are, in short, what we find to-day
at the outlying regions of earth. They therefore, are exceptional
peoples and not representative of the world at that time, or now.
The dynasties of Egypt were once cited against the Bible narrative,
but these have been reduced to moderate figures. A thousand years
was taken off by one discoverer recently from the age of the
middle kingdom. There is a question whether the Egyptian dynasties
were successive or in some cases contemporary. There is also the
well-known fact that the Egyptians had years of varying length.
They often counted dynasties by years of three months and also of
a month! Dr. Flinders Petrie lately discovered in the tombs of the
kings, preceding the first dynasty of Egypt at Abydos, Grecian
pottery of Mycean clay, and this in a tomb estimated to date from
5,400 B. C.! (_Atlantic Monthly_, October, 1900.)
The same kind of estimating is now being done from the Assyrian
tablets and their records. We must remember these old kings were
great boasters and liars, too. We don't know the basis of their
calculations. Perhaps Assyria also had three month years. If their
method was like Egypt's, and they were connected as we know by much
intercourse and literature, we may expect like inaccuracy. The
ancient dates given in the inscriptions found in Nuffar recently,
are already suspected by scholars. The date for the temple uncovered
there was 3,200 B. C. This number is the product of forty multiplied
by eighty; evidently a round number for eighty generations, and not
at all a careful or exact chronological statement.
However, let us compare the two accounts, the Bible and the
Assyrian. The one precise in statement, accurate in ten thousand
points as demonstrated, with us for thousands of years, trusted and
tried. The other inexact, mythical in its legends, having all the
marks of inaccuracy, just discovered, made by people we know nothing
of and having no character to speak of, and full of vain boastings
and absurd claims. Which is the true and which the false? Let the
jury decide. We will abide the verdict.
Prof. A. H. Sayce of Oxford, writes: "The light that has come
from the remnants of the past has been fatal to the pretenses of
critical skepticism. The discoveries of Abydos have discredited
its methods and results. They have shown that where they can be
tested they prove to be absolutely worthless. It is only reasonable
to conclude that methods and results, that thus break down under
the test of monumental discovery, must equally break down in other
departments of history where no such test can be applied. It is
not the discoveries of the higher critics, but the old traditions
which have been confirmed by archaeological discovery." (_Homiletic
Review_, March, 1901.) This statement is made by one of the most
able archaeologists and semitic scholars in the world.
The age of man on earth has much testimony from science agreeing
with the Bible account. From many the following are cited:
Dr. J. A. Zahm, the distinguished scholar, says, "I am disposed to
attribute to man an antiquity of about ten thousand years. It seems
likely that the general consensus of chronologists will ultimately
fix on a date which shall be below rather than above ten thousand
years as the nearest approximate to the age of our race." (_The
Bible, Science and Faith_, p. 311.) He quotes many other authorities.
Prof. Winchell tells us, "The very beginnings of our race are still
almost in sight." (_Sketches of Creation._) Dawson thinks man has
been on earth about seven thousand years. Geology agrees that man
did not exist before the ice age. The stone age is fixed at about
seven thousand years ago by others.
Professor George Frederick Wright tells us, "The glacial period did
not close more than ten thousand years ago. This shortening of our
conception of the ice age renders glacial man a comparatively modern
creature. The last stage of the excessive unstability of the earth
was not so very long ago and continued down to near the introduction
of man." (_Bibliotheca Sacra_, April, 1902.)
S. R. Pattison, F. G. S., tells us, "Science shows to us a number of
converging probabilities which point to man's first appearance along
with great animals about 8,000 years ago." (_Age and Origin of Man
Geologically Considered, Am. Tr. Soc._, p. 29.)
Dr. Friedrich Pfaff, professor of natural science in Erlangen, thus
sums up the evidence from geology as to man: "(1) The age of man
is small, extending only to a few thousand years. (2) Man appeared
suddenly: the most ancient man known to us is not essentially
different from the now living man. (3) Transitions from the ape to
the man, or the man to the ape, are nowhere found. The conclusion we
are led to is that the Scripture account of man, which is one and
self-consistent, is true.... This account of man we accept by faith,
because it is revealed by God, is supported by adequate evidence,
solves the otherwise insoluble problems, not only of science and
history, but of inward experience, and meets our deepest need....
The more it is sifted and examined the more well founded and
irrefragable does it prove to be." (_Age and Origin of Man_, Am. Tr.
Soc., pp. 55-56.)
12. SAVAGE RACES.
Evolution delights to compare savage peoples alternately with
present civilized races and with the brute. Prof. Conn says, "There
is a greater difference between a Newton and a Hottentot, than
between the Hottentot and the orang-outang." He fails to notice, or
state, that the first is a difference of degree only, and the latter
a difference of kind. It would be possible to develop a Hottentot
into a philosopher, but no attempt is ever dreamed of, to change an
orang-outang into a Hottentot. On the other hand, the lowest savages
have under culture shown their human inheritance of faculties beyond
the brute. Two pigmies taken to Italy learned to speak Italian in
two years with fluency. They showed themselves superior to many
European children, and one became proficient in music. The skill of
this race with poisoned arrows, pits for game, and cultivation of
various kinds, is well known.
The savage races show the opposite of evolution. They are races in
ruins. Max Mueller says, "What do we know of savage tribes beyond
the last chapter in their history? They may have passed through
ever so many vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive may
be for all we know a relapse into savagery, or corruption of what
was something more rational and intelligible in former ages."
This estimate of this great scholar is attested by facts. Where
to-day is the Hindu race that could build the Taj Mahal? What Greek
race to-day could reproduce the architecture or statuary of their
ancestors? The ruins of all eastern and many western lands point to
fallen races as well as ruined structures. The world's history is
that of the fall of great nations such as Egypt, Babylonia, Greece,
Rome, in all of which are sad examples of architecture and peoples
alike in decay.
13. THE ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY.
History is appealed to to show the progress of man and his
continuance in the evolutionary line since his origin in the brute.
Our present civilization is pointed to and compared with the past
and we are told that this is the result of evolution.
Some remarks of a preliminary kind are called for here. It is to be
remembered that history does not cover a very long period, that the
record is often broken, and that the facts are often very uncertain.
Large sections of the world we know historically nothing or little
of, such as Asia and Africa. We must remember that progress is
confined mostly to Europe and America and these form but a third
of the population of the world. Also that European progress is a
comparatively recent matter. We are now considering the entire
history of the race and must take in these vast outside regions
to arrive at correct conclusions. To judge the entire progress
of mankind from a short-sighted view of a limited portion is as
unscientific as it is unscriptural.
We must also remember that Europe owes its progress to the influence
of Christianity. For to-day it is the Christian nations only that
have progress and the most Christian have the most progress. No
fact is better seen or proven. Lange states, "Among human tribes
left to themselves, the higher man never comes out of the lower.
Apparent exceptions do ever, on close examination, confirm the
universality of the rule in regard to particular peoples, while the
claim, as made for the world's general progress, can only be urged
in opposition by ignoring the supernal aids of revelation that have
ever shown themselves directly or collaterally on the human path."
(_Commentary on Genesis_, p. 355.) We have seen that so far as
present savage races are concerned they have made no progress, and
semi-civilized races, such as the Egyptians, Chinese and Hindus have
retrograded.
We need also to consider the vast and great civilizations which
existed in remote antiquity as is now revealed by archaeology. The
recent discoveries in Assyria and Babylonia and Egypt show vast
empires of culture as well as national extension and power, and that
their earlier culture was the greatest. So Prof. Hilprecht, of the
University of Pennsylvania, testifies of Babylonia: "The flower of
Babylonian art is found at the beginning of Babylonian history."
(_Recent Researches in Bible Lands_, p. 88.) Horace Bushnell tells
us, "All great ruins are but a name for greatness in ruins."
It is to Egypt we must go for the earliest records of human
civilization. Here the account of Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, gives
us the facts: "The earliest culture and civilization to which
the monuments bear witness was in fact already perfect. It was
full-grown. The organization of the country was complete. The arts
were known and practiced. Egyptian culture as far as we know at
present has no beginning." (_Recent Researches in Bible Lands_, pp.
101, 102.) "The older the culture, the more perfect it is found to
be. The fact is a very remarkable one, in view of modern theories of
development and of the evolution of civilization out of barbarism.
Whatever may be the reason, such theories are not borne out by the
discoveries of archaeology. Instead of the progress one should
expect, we find retrogression and decay. Is it possible the Biblical
view is right after all and that civilized man has been civilized
from the outset?" (_Homiletic Review_, June, 1902.) Prof. Flinders
Petrie tells us that the Great Pyramid bears on its stones the marks
of the solid and tubular drill, edged with stone as hard as diamond,
and cutting one-tenth of an inch at a revolution, and showing no
sign of wear. They had also straight and circular saws. The same
building reveals scientific and astronomical knowledge equal in
some respects to modern science.
Not only were the past civilizations great, but, in many respects,
far above the present. So that the race has even fallen from higher
levels. Lecky thus writes of the Greeks: "Within the narrow limits
and scant populations of the Greek states, arose men, who in almost
every conceivable form of genius, in philosophy, in epic, dramatic
and lyric poetry, in written and spoken eloquence, in statesmanship,
in sculpture, in painting, and probably in music, attained the
highest levels of human perfection." (_History of European Morals_,
p. 408.) Galton says of the same civilization: "The millions of
Europe, breeding as they have for two thousand years, have never
produced the equal of Socrates and Phidias. The average ability of
the Athenian race is, on the lowest possible estimate, nearly two
grades higher than our own; that is, about as much as our race is
above the African negro." (_Hereditary Genius_, p. 320.)
It does seem as if such testimony of these great scholars should
make us not only chary of the theory which claims ever upward
and onward progress, but also more modest in our boasted modern
progress and position. Prof. Frederick Starr of the Anthropological
department of Chicago University, says that the American race is
reverting to the Indian state. He bases this on measurements of
faces of 5,000 children. This is a dismal outlook. It is not what
Evolution has promised us. The followers of Evolution have reason to
be indignant at such a turn in its course. However, we may comfort
them and ourselves with the hope that if Evolution fails us we have
other resources.
EVOLUTION AND RELIGION.
Consciousness of God and the hereafter is the great distinction
between man and brute. This is the basis of all religion. Of this
Evolution gives the origin in the dreams of animals.
According to that department of the evolutionary theory popularly
called Higher Criticism, all religion, including Israel's and
Christianity, was derived from fetishism and from that it developed
to animism, and so to polytheism and finally monotheism. But the
lowest savages have, according to anthropology, the belief in a
Supreme Being. Andrew Lang says, "It is among the lowest savages
that the Supreme Beings are regarded as eternal, moral, powerful."
(_Making of Religion_, p. 206.) Fetishism and animism are processes
of decay, says Dr. John Smith, quoting Hartmann, DeRouge, Renouf,
Lang and others. (_Integrity of Scripture_, p. 68.) Traces of
monotheism are found in China, India, Egypt and elsewhere. In all
nations is this decay found save in one, Israel.
It is further found that mankind had an original theistic religion
common to the race, which is just what the Bible teaches. All the
evidence is to the effect that the further back we go, the purer the
religions are found to be. The earliest Romans were more pure in
religion than the later people. The early Greeks more so than the
more recent. The early handwritings give a purer and more theistic
religion than the later books. Dr. Jacob Chamberlain thus sums up
the evidence for the Hindu Vedas: "They all teach the Godhead is
one, that he is good, that man is in a state of sin, not at peace
with the Holy One, that man is in need of holiness and purity, that
there can be no harmony between sinful man and a holy God unless
sin is in some way expiated and expurgated, and that this is the
greatest and most worthy end of existence." (_Northfield Echoes_,
August, 1900, p. 256.)
The ruins of Assyria and Egypt point to a religion resembling that
of the Israelites. So far is this noticed that some have said
that Moses copied much of what he taught Israel from them. This
conclusion is not necessary. The fact is that man had a deposit of
truth at the beginning, and all men had the same. Both Moses and
Egypt and Assyria therefore, had much of what survived from that
early revelation. The fact here stated agrees with the Bible account
and not with Evolution.
"The study of the mythology and philosophy of the heathen world
does not show an evolutionary progress to a higher state, but
the reverse." (Francis M. Bruner in _The Evolution Theory_.)
Christianity has not been a development of these religions, for
it is and was, antagonistic to them at every point. It was an
opposing force introduced suddenly and utterly at variance in every
particular with all about it.
Sir M. Monier said in an address in 1887: "There can be no greater
mistake than to force these non-christian writings into conformity
with some scientific theory of development, and then point to
the Christian's Holy Bible as the crowning product of religious
evolution. So far from this, these non-christian books are all
developments in the wrong direction. They begin with some flashes of
true light and end in utter darkness."
EVOLUTION AND ETHICS.
Evolution has a system or systems of Ethics. It traces the beginning
of the sense of right and wrong to the instincts of animals, such as
the parental instinct, the recognition of marital rights, and the
right to respective properties such as nests and burrows. So that
the animal, or man, came to see that it was best on all accounts to
be good to oneself and others. So Mr. Spencer's definition of right
is the happiness of oneself, one's offspring and others. Acts are
good or bad as they increase happiness or misery. He ignores the
moral instinct and exalts expediency and utility. This is the level
of the uncivilized or savage races.
Dr. James Thompson Bixby of Leipsic, makes humanity the goal of
Evolution's ethics. "The test of what is morally good is the
tendency of the given motive to help forward the progress of the
race toward the ideal humanity." (_Ethics of Evolution_, p. 212.)
Every Bible believer will see how far short these fall of the
standard of holiness and happiness the Bible places before us. But
when or where did any people ever aim to help forward the "ideal
perfection of humanity" who did not have the mighty impulse which
the Bible, and only the Bible, gives to that object? There is not
even the sense of brotherhood necessary for the motive. To point
natural man to that is to ask him to act outside his nature.
The law of the Struggle for Existence never taught Christian ethics.
The self-sacrificing Christian has something which never came from
Evolution. The Cross is the final test of Evolution. By it that
theory and all other false theories are weighed in the balances
and found wanting. The struggle for existence is the law of self
and is the antithesis of the Cross, which is the very opposite of
the struggle for existence. Nor is the struggle for existence the
law of the lower creature. That law is to bring forth fruit, to
propagate their species. That is the plant's goal; when it has so
done it retires or dies. The little bird will struggle more fiercely
for its young than for its food, or even for its life, which it
imperils often to save its brood. Below the unfallen creation and
regenerated humanity is the unregenerated selfish man. Not Evolution
but Revolution can create Christian ethics. History does not present
an instance of progress in ethics save as aided by the Bible.
EVOLUTION AND CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.
In undertaking to account for man, Evolution must account for the
fact of Christian experience. Conversion revolutionizes a man. It
turns him against his natural likes and dislikes. He even turns
against himself and the selfish becomes unselfish. This is not
development, for that operates according to the nature of the thing.
Develop a wolf and you may get a dog. Develop man from the savage
state and you may have the condition of the Greek in the highest
state of culture and yet in the lowest state of vice. Introduce
Christian experience and you have Christianity with all the
civilization which proceeds and flows from it.
There is no such consistent body of testimony for any fact, science
or truth as there is for Christian experience. It is the same in
all ages, in all lands and in all classes of society, and in all
circumstances of life. This evidence is perfectly legitimate and
must be considered by the student of human life and character.
Let Evolution then account for Conversion which changes man's
inner nature, and gives a life which lives contrary to natural
human instincts and conduct; and Christian hopes which yearn for
deliverance from sin and self and long for the highest spiritual
state and hasten to meet the holy and all-seeing God.
The missions of our great cities as well as those of the foreign
field are full of witnesses for the transforming effect of Christian
experience. The author of this book can vouch for the following
from personal knowledge. A business man in Illinois became addicted
partly from use in disease to alcohol and the use of morphine and
also cocaine. He used all these and in excessive quantities; as
much as forty grains of morphine in a day. He tried seven "cures."
He visited Europe to consult specialists. He spent in all over
$15,000 in seeking a cure and all in vain. By the persuasions of
Christians he was led to seek relief in prayer and experienced what
Christians call conversion and was immediately delivered from all
his appetites. The author of this saw him three months after and
found him a sober man and without any desire for drink or drugs.
He saw him again a year after and he was still rejoicing in full
deliverance. Since beginning this book, a correspondence was had
to verify the case still further, and he is reported as follows:
"In January, 1899, his weight was 113 pounds. In January, 1901,
his weight was 183 pounds. He is an official member of a prominent
church, a director of the Young Men's Christian Association and a
great worker in both." No evolution can account for such a change.
It is as great a miracle as cleansing the leper.
Prof. George Romanes of Oxford, was, it is said, brought back from
infidelity to faith by the letters of a Japanese missionary friend,
dealing with experimental and practical religion. Evolution asks
for facts. Here are facts, and they tell not of Evolution but of
Regeneration.
EVOLUTION AND CHRIST.
Evolution cannot account for Christ. Without entering here on
an argument for His divinity, we simply present him and ask the
evolutionist to account for such a character and life. Let us listen
to what the enemies of Christianity say of Christ.
Renan said: "The incomparable man to whom the universal conscience
has decreed the title of the Son of God, and that with justice....
Between thee and God there will be no longer any distinction."
Jean Paul Richter said: "The holiest among the mighty, the mightiest
among the holy, He lifted with pierced hands empires off their
hinges and turned the stream of centuries out of its channel and
still governs the ages." (Dr. Liddon's _Bampton Lectures_.)
Rousseau testified as follows: "What sweetness, what purity in his
morals! What force, what persuasion in his instructions! His maxims
how sublime! His discourses, how wise and profound! such presence
of mind, such beauty and precision in his answers, such empire over
his passions! It would be much harder to conceive that a number of
men should have joined together to fabricate this book than that a
single person should furnish out the subject to its authors. Jewish
writers would never have fallen into that style, and the gospel has
such strong and such inimitable marks of truth that the inventor
would be more surprising than the hero." (_Emilius and Sophia_, or
An Essay on Education, pp. 79, 80, 81.)
Thomas Paine: "The morality that he preached and practiced was of
the most benevolent kind. It has never been excelled." (_Age of
Reason_, p. 5.)
Robert Ingersoll, to M. D. Landon, in a letter giving permission to
print his speeches: "In using my speeches do not use any assault
I may have made on Christ which I foolishly made in my earlier
life. I believe Christ was the perfect man. 'Do unto others' is the
perfection of religion and morality. It is the _summum bonum_."
(_Homiletic Review_, November, 1899, p. 475.)
Theodore Parker: "Shall we be told such a man never lived--the whole
story is a lie? Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived, that
their story is a lie? But who did their works and thought their
thoughts? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have
fabricated Jesus? None but a Jesus." (_Discourses on Religion_, pp.
362-3.)
Napoleon Bonaparte: "Everything in Jesus Christ astonishes me. His
spirit overawes me. Between him and whoever else in the world there
is no possible line of comparison. I search in vain in history to
find the similar to Jesus Christ, or anything which can approach the
Gospel. In him we find a moral beauty before unknown, and an idea of
the Supreme superior even to that which creation suggests."
To say that Jesus was an evolution of that age, as some
evolutionists do say, and that we may look for even a greater in the
future, is to be guilty not only of blasphemy but of gross ignorance
as to the age in which Jesus came. There was nothing in that age to
give rise to such a character. He came as a flash of lightning in a
dark sky, or, according to the Bible figure, as the rising of the
sun in the world's night.
CHAPTER V.
EVOLUTION UNSCIENTIFIC AND UNPHILOSOPHICAL.
Before making so serious a charge against a scientific theory as
that it is both unscientific and unphilosophical, we will show
that others have held a similar view and that among these are many
scholars. We have already seen Prof. Paulsen's remark that Haeckel's
reasonings are a "disgrace to the philosophy of Germany." Prof.
George Frederick Wright calls Evolution a "fad," "the cast-off
clothing of the evolutionary philosophy of fifty years ago." The
Duke of Argyle says, "It is such a violation of and departure from
all that we know of the existing order of things as to deprive it of
all scientific base."
EVOLUTION FAILS IN ALL THE STEPS OF SCIENTIFIC PROOF.
There are four stages of proof necessary for a full demonstration.
1. Observation of facts.
2. Classification of these facts.
3. Inferences legitimately drawn therefrom.
4. Verification of these conclusions.
1. It fails in its facts. That this is true is evident from the
reticence of the exact scientists to commit themselves to the
theory. If the facts were all that they say, these laborious and
faithful laborers in the laboratory and field would acknowledge the
case. In the presentation of facts, the theoretical evolutionist
culls out and magnifies those looking his way and passes in silence
or minifies those antagonistic to the theory. It makes much of the
change of a low salt water animal into its fresh water form, and
passes over the immutability of all the great species. Evolution
dwells upon the splints in the leg of the horse and passes over
lightly the vast unbridged gaps between organic and inorganic
matter, the origin of the vertebrates, the countless missing links
between the species. It rests its argument on the "gill-slits"
in the necks of embryonic fish, puppies and infants, and passes
airily over the origin of matter, of life, of consciousness and of
Christian experience. It presents ex-parte evidence.
2. Evolution fails in classification. We have seen the testimony of
Evolution itself on this point. Nor is there any agreed definition
of species. Not a single species has been traced to its origin.
The species defy chronological classification. The most primitive
species exist to-day and the most advanced were in existence almost
at the first. Nor can the classifications which are attempted
be advanced as proof of evolution. They are as evidential of
manufacture or of creation or of any other process of intelligent
mind.
3. Evolution rests on inferences. As its great philosopher, Spencer,
has said, no inference is warranted unless it accounts for all the
facts. Not only does no inference of Evolution do this, but it
admits again and again that it is beset with countless difficulties.
Nor are these inferences the only ones that might be drawn. It is
not only necessary to draw an inference but to show that no other
inference is possible. Some of these are the wildest possible
deductions from the facts,--as for example, the theories as to the
origins, already cited, as to whales and giraffes. Sir J. William
Dawson, the eminent geologist, says of Evolution's deductions as
follows: "It seems to indicate that the accumulated facts of our age
have gone altogether beyond its capacity for generalization, and but
for the vigor which one sees everywhere, it might be taken as an
indication that the human mind has fallen into a state of senility
and in its dotage mistakes for science the imaginations which are
the dreams of its youth." (_Story of the Earth and Man_, p. 317.)
The works of writers on Evolution abound in such phrases as "seems
to be--I infer--it is conceivable--it might have been--it is
probable--I think--apparently--must have been--no one can say--not
difficult to conceive,"--and other unscientific terms, and on such
deductions they project other inferences, and so leap skilfully from
one supposition to another across the quagmire of Evolution.
Evolution is undertaking a philosophical impossibility--the proving
of a negative, that there could be no other method than derivation.
This is the philosophical basis of the whole theory.
4. Finally Evolution fails in the fourth step. It admits again
and again that it has not demonstrated its case. Not a single
instance of evolution of species has been shown or produced, and
no law of the change is given. The gaps it does not bridge are
many. We specially need to notice that it gives no account of the
origin of matter or force. It can give no account of the origin
of life. It utterly fails to account for man's self-consciousness
or intellectual, moral or spiritual nature. It takes no account
whatever of the other world or life and entirely disregards the
facts of Christian experience. In short, so far from being a great
universal philosophy, it is simply a disjointed combination of
unproven theories.
The evolutionist, Prof. Conn, admitting the missing factors, says
candidly, "It is therefore impossible to make Evolution a complete
theory." (_Evolution of To-day_, p. 6.)
Sir J. William Dawson thus sums up the evidence: "The simplicity
and completeness of the evolutionary theory entirely disappear when
we consider the unproved assumptions on which it is based and its
failure to connect with each other some of the most important facts
in nature; that in short, it is not in any true sense a philosophy,
but a mere arbitrary arrangement of facts in accordance with a
number of unproved hypotheses. Such philosophies, falsely so-called,
have existed ever since man began to reason on nature, and this last
of all is one of the weakest and most pernicious of all. Let the
reader take up either Darwin's great book or Spencer's Biology and
merely ask, as he reads each paragraph, What is here assumed and
what is proved? and he will find the fabric melt away like a vision.
Spencer often exaggerates or extenuates with reference to facts and
uses the art of the dialectician where argument fails." (_Story of
the Earth and Man_, p. 330.)
Prof. William Jones tells us Evolution is "a metaphysical creed
and nothing else; an emotional attitude rather than a system of
thought." (_Homiletic Review_, August, 1900.)
EVOLUTION RESTS ON IMAGINATION.
The evolutionist not only uses his imagination but claims the right
to do so. Tyndall has written an essay on the Scientific Use of the
Imagination. Now when the pictures of an evolutionist's imagination
are held up as facts, as in the description of man's development
from the brute, he leaves the realm of science and enters that
of fiction. Mr. Gladstone has said of this: "To the eyes of an
onlooker their pace and method seem to be like a steeple-chase. They
are armed with a weapon always sufficient if not always an arm of
precision, 'the scientific imagination.' They are impatient of that
most wholesome state a Suspended Judgment." (_Homiletic Review_,
October, 1900, quoted by Dr. Jesse B. Thomas.)
EVOLUTION IS THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCE.
The language used by the evolutionist is peculiar for persons
claiming to believe in law as the great agency of nature and to
base their conclusions on the operation of fixed causes. The
changes which together make up the birth of a new species are
occasioned they say by "chance happenings," "undesigned variations,"
"accidental variations," "utterly undetermined antecedents,"
"unintentional variations," and other like expressions. The synonyms
of this idea are exhausted by them in describing the way in which
the changes first occurred, by which one species began the journey
up to another stage of existence. It is simply a revival and
revamping of the old doctrine of chance.
Prof. Frank Ballard says of this: "Chance manufactured protoplasm
out of nebulosity.... To accept this after rejecting faith on the
ground of its difficulty, is to quibble and cavil."
An illustration of the appeal to chance and its use is found in the
following account as given by Prof. Ernst Haeckel, the greatest
living teacher of Evolution, of how tree-frogs became green: "Once
upon a time there were among the offspring of ancestral tree-frogs
some which among other colors exhibited green, not much, perhaps
not even perceptible to our eyes. The occurrence of this color was
spontaneous, a freak. The descendants of these greenish creatures,
provided they did not pair with frogs of the ordinary set, became
still greener and so on, until the green was pronounced enough to
be of advantage when competition set in." (_Last Link_, p. 176.)
Here the origin of greenness in the tree-frog begins with a chance
happening and is promoted by a chance union of the greenish frog
with one not in "the ordinary set," but of the more select circle
of the green, and the favoring chances continued in this same
remarkable way until the color became of use in protecting them.
It was with similar chance happenings, Evolution tells us, that all
the great kingdoms, classes, orders, families, genera and species
originated. It was by chance happenings that the present beautiful
and infinite variety of nature came. It was by unintended accidents
that the wonderful adjustments in the universe came. It has been
calculated that the possibility of the letters of the alphabet, if
thrown promiscuously, coming together in the present order is once
in five hundred million million million times. What would be the
chances of the innumerable combinations of nature coming together
in the order in which they are by the chance happenings to which
Evolution attributes them?
CHAPTER VI.
EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE.
The interest in the question of how things came to be centers for
the believer in the Bible narrative and doctrine. We have been
accustomed to bring all things to Bible testing and so far with
assured results. The Bible has never failed and we believe will not
fail now. We therefore ask, What does it teach as to Evolution? We
are amazed to find Evolution makes no appeal to the Bible, and the
Bible makes no allusion to Evolution. They are strangers to each
other. The argument from Scripture for Evolution has not yet been
written. The best the theistic evolutionist can say as to the Bible
account of the origin of man is an apology for its narratives, or
some explanation which vaporizes its facts into figures of speech.
We have heretofore given the Bible account and that of Evolution
printed in parallel columns (p. 61). The reader is again referred to
these, and asked to notice the differences in these two accounts.
The Bible account is not the description of the slow transformation
of an ape into a man-like ape, and that into an ape-like man, and
that into a cave man, and he into a stone-tool man, and that again
into a pottery-making savage, and he into a weapon-making barbarian,
and he into a Chinese and after that into a Roman or Greek, and
last into an Englishman and American and he into a spiritual being
in the image and likeness of God. Common literary honesty demands
that we give an author his own intended meaning. If the Bible
meant Evolution why did it not give it? Two accounts more utterly
dissimilar could scarcely be given than the Bible account of man's
creation and the account of Evolution. We may take one or other and
be consistent but the rules of literary exegesis and common sense
and Scripture alike forbid taking both.
To call it "poetry" or an "allegory" is no explanation. Why did not
the writer make poetry or allegory which had some agreement with
facts? Why lead us into a perplexing situation when he might as well
have given us some other account or omitted it altogether?
The differences between these two accounts are obvious. The
Bible account describes a definite act, the Evolution account
a long-continued process through millions of years. The Bible
account is a production _de novo_ of a new and original creature;
the Evolution account gives one of a numerous line of ancestors;
the Bible account presents us with a perfect creature "in the
likeness of God;" the Evolution account with a brute slightly
raised above the common herd. The Bible account gives a descriptive
narrative with accompanying events; the Evolution account leaves
all the events unknown save as guessed at by the imagination of the
various writers. The Bible account gives a high and noble origin
by a special and creative act of his Creator; Evolution tells of
a degraded origin from a brute by the operation of blind forces.
The Bible account is noble and satisfying and, to one who believes
in an omnipotent God, credible, calling for belief in one creative
act; the Evolution account is filled with difficulties and paradoxes
calling for the wildest stretch of imagination and the utmost
application of credulity.
The Bible account is frequently referred to as an actual history
by other Scripture writers; the evolutionary account has not one
Scripture reference or the slightest hint from Scripture of its
having any place whatever in fact. The Bible account agrees with
and is the basis of the spiritual teachings of the Bible; the
evolutionary account has no such agreement and needs to be explained
away to be allowed any place whatever in sacred writings. If the
Bible is the book the common consent of the wisest of all mankind
and of every age has affirmed it to be, it should have some
intimation of this "greatest discovery of the human mind." For the
Bible does touch on the greatest problems of the world and life.
Not only does the Bible give a very different account of the
origin of man, but also of nature. Its definition of the beginning
of things is as follows: "By faith we understand that the worlds
have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not
been made out of things which do appear." (Heb. 11:3.) The term it
applies to this is Creation. It gives also a circumstantial account
of the coming of the present order as we have it, closing with man's
creation.
EVOLUTION'S INTERPRETATION OF THE BIBLE.
In order to bring the evolutionary theories within the possibility
of Bible sanction, a theory of interpretation is adopted which calls
the narratives of Creation and the Fall myths, legends, allegories,
parables, "scenic representation," or "idealized history" according
to the theological bias of the interpreter. These all amount to
the same thing, for they do away with the historical value of the
accounts. It is only a play upon words to say they are "parables"
for parables are not unhistorical. Every one of Christ's parables
is true to life and facts. It is claimed that the Bible narratives
are poetry and therefore are not historical. The evolutionist for
his purpose confounds poetry and fiction. They are not synonymous.
A poetical form does not imply fictitiousness. The Psalms have much
history under their poetical form. But the first chapter of Genesis
is not poetry. Hebrew poetry has a well-defined form as seen in the
poetical books. This chapter does not conform to that form, and
accordingly it is printed not in poetical form but as prose in the
Revised Version. The mere repetition of certain phrases is not the
mark of poetry, but is characteristic of the oriental languages in
which the Bible was written.
But who is to decide what in the Bible is historical and what is
not? What is to hinder anyone from so discarding any fact whatever
in the Bible? Why has not the enemy of Christianity the same
right to apply this reasoning to the accounts of the death and
resurrection of Christ? Where will this process end? The proclaimer
of such theories is putting a weapon into the hands of the opponent
of Christianity that he will use one day to the destruction of the
faith of many. Once having permission to apply these terms, it is
easy to make these narratives, or anything else in the Bible, mean
anything or nothing as is desired. As an ancient writer said,
"Twenty doctors can make a text read twenty different ways." We
protest against this loose method of interpretation for many reasons:
1. We object to every new theory interpreting the Bible to suit
itself.
2. There is not the slightest warrant in these narratives or
elsewhere for such interpretation. They are given as facts and are
always so treated. Creation and the Fall are everywhere spoken of as
actual facts both by Christ and all other Scripture writers.
3. It is on this system of interpretation that every false system
rests, such as Mormonism. All the modern vagaries support themselves
from Scripture by accommodation of its language to their doctrines.
4. The Bible is not a book of puzzles, a delphic oracle, to be read
in any way suited to the occasion or desires. It has a plain meaning
and is for everyday people and everyday needs.
5. The acceptance of the Bible account as unquestioned fact and the
literal interpretation of it by Christ and his apostles ought to be
enough for anyone calling himself Christian or even for any other
who will accept good human testimony. These writers were 1900 years
nearer the date of the events in question than we. They had access
to knowledge now lost to us. From any standpoint, we may rest our
view of these narratives on the testimony of the New Testament
Scriptures. The references of the New Testament to the Old are
numbered by hundreds. Any Bible with references, or any text book or
Bible with Helps will show these. It is enough here to give those
Christ refers to.
Christ himself cites from twelve books and about twenty-four
narratives as follows: Creation, Matt. 19:4; Law of Marriage, Matt.
19:5; Cain and Abel, Matt. 23:35; The Deluge, Matt. 24:37; Abraham,
John 8:56; Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's wife, Luke 17:28-32; Manna,
John 6:49; Brazen Serpent, John 3:14; Shew Bread, Matt. 12:3, 4;
Elijah and his Miracles, Luke 4:25, 26; Naaman, Luke 4:27; Tyre and
Sidon, Matt. 11:22; Jonah and "The Whale," Matt. 12:39; The Books of
Moses, John 5:46; The Psalms, Luke 20:42; Moses and The Prophets,
Luke 24:27; Isaiah, Matt. 13:14; Daniel's Prophecies, Matt. 24:15;
Malachi, Matt. 11:10; The entire Old Testament, Luke 24:44. Of
not one of these does he convey the slightest hint of aught but
trustworthiness and literal interpretation.
6. The still more serious issue is presented of asserting that
both Paul and Christ either did not know that these were myths, or
knowing so gave no intimation that they used them in any way other
than as true narratives. This would not only shake all confidence
in Christ as divine and his apostles as inspired, but would shake
all confidence in any fact or teaching from Scripture whatever. For
Scripture rests on facts and these facts on witnesses. To these,
appeal is constantly made. On the truth of these all depends. Here
then is a "mythical" Adam made the basis of marriage; a "mythical"
Adam and his fall, the argument for man's need and Christ's work,
and the same "mythical" Adam made the proof of the resurrection. In
short the whole system of Bible truth is attacked by these theories,
from credibility in Christ himself to the last hope of the believer
in the world to come.
Whom shall we believe? Shall we credit Evolution which admits that
its theory is unproven and full of difficulties, with not a single
case of Evolution to support it, nor a power which could produce it,
and with countless facts to antagonize it, or shall we believe Jesus
Christ who was never mistaken, or false in his facts, or teachings,
and who believed these chapters, cited them and accepted their
narratives without question?
EVOLUTION AND BIBLE DOCTRINES.
We have arrived at the vital point in this discussion. If Evolution
were only a scientific question, it would interest a limited circle.
As a deeply religious question it interests all. That Evolution
affects vitally all evangelical belief is apparent to the most
superficial inquirer. It is not only a matter of historic fact but
of doctrinal teaching. Man's nature and need as a descendant from
the brute is one thing, and as a spiritual being, fallen from the
likeness of God, another. The responsibility in either case is very
different and therefore has to do with eternal destiny for weal or
woe, and also with the work of Christ.
The theology of the Higher Criticism which is also the theology of
Evolution, of which it is the Biblical branch, is thus summed up
by an evolutionary writer, in a recent article giving the articles
of belief of the theology of Evolution: "The Bible can no longer
speak with unquestioned authority.... Poor old Adam disappears....
Christ's divinity is only such as we may possess ... the atonement
is only such as we see in all life and nature.... As to the future
life we find ourselves left very much in the dark.... We no longer
regard going to heaven as the center of our interest." (Theodore D.
Bacon quoted in _Homiletic Review_, Nov. 1902.)
Evolution teaches, as stated by Dr. George A. Gordon, of Boston:
"Man's state and fate is on account of the irrationality he has
brought up with him from the animal world." (_Immortality and the
New Theodicy_, p. 100.) The future of man according to Evolution
is that as he has risen from the brute state he ought not to be
punished for his defects but rather rewarded for having done so
well. Evolution teaches that man has in himself the elements of his
salvation. These if developed will produce the change he needs for
this world and that to come. He will proceed on the same lines as he
has traveled to reach his present state. Development is the Saviour
of Evolution. The Bible says that to develop man is to develop sin
and, "Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." It requires
the intervention of the Supernatural in Regeneration to save man.
Evolution is self-saving.
The future is radically affected by the theory of Evolution. The
development of mankind is its objective point. To bring man to a
point of development will bring the Kingdom of Heaven. The fate of
the individual is not made much of. He is sacrificed for the race
or species. But while not much is made of the individual the general
teaching is that somehow it will be well with all at last. It is
a fact that all universalists are evolutionists. Evolution makes
Heaven and Hell terms which mean little or nothing. The present
social state of man is the great quest. Evolution is a bridge which
reaches neither shore. It knows not whence man came nor where he
goes.
1. The Bible rests its doctrines upon its facts. There is no
character in Scripture aside from Christ upon whose historical
character so much Scripture doctrine depends as upon Adam. The
creation of man is made the basis for the sanctity of marriage by
Christ, who quotes the words of the account in Genesis. (Matt.
19:4-6; Mark 10:6-9.) Paul makes this narrative the basis of his
great argument for the state and need of man and the work of Christ.
"Through one man sin entered into the world and death through
sin.... Death reigned from Adam to Moses.... By the trespass of the
one the many died ... the judgment came of one unto condemnation
... as through the one man's disobedience the many were made
sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be
made righteous." (Rom. 5:12-21, R. V.) Here the actuality of the
narrative is the very basis of the declaration of man's state in
sin and a type of the extent and nature of Christ's work. So also
the use by Paul in the account of the resurrection doctrine: "As in
Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Cor.
15:22-45.)
2. The Bible teaches that man was made in the image of God. That
image was Christ who is elsewhere declared to be "the effulgence of
his glory and the very image of his substance." (Heb. 1:3.) In this
image man was made. This is a very different picture presented to us
from that given by the evolutionist of a brute "which could stand on
its hind legs and throw things with its forelegs."
3. The Bible teaches that all are guilty and condemned and lost,
and without excuse. It teaches that man fell from a high state as
a race and as a race is responsible for his condition. It cites
death as the proof of this. It teaches that man is inherently averse
to God by nature and wilfully continues to do wrong and in short
is condemned and lost. It teaches that he once had the truth and
wilfully gave it up for sin. That he does so now in spite of the law
of God written in his conscience and that out of Christ he is lost
and without hope. (Rom. 1-5; Ep. 2:1-3, 11, 12.)
4. The Bible teaches that what man needs is a pardon, a
reconciliation with God, a ransom, a regeneration, a resurrection.
He must be translated from death to life, from the kingdom of
darkness to that of light. If he has not all this he is lost and
doomed.
5. The Bible teaches that in order that man might enjoy this, Christ
had to come and die, "the just for the unjust that he might bring
us to God." He died as a sacrifice, as an offering, as a ransom, as
a propitiation, as a reconciliation. His death made it possible in
justice as well as in mercy to save man.
6. The Bible gives a description of man's means of salvation which
is most opposite to the hope held out by Evolution. It is by a
radical and supernatural change that he becomes right and only
as all men so change or are changed will the world become right.
Conversion is not Evolution but regeneration, the implanting of a
new and opposite nature.
7. The Bible teaches a different outcome of human life and history.
It points to an end by supernatural means to the world and a
judgment for mankind and the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven
by supernatural means. It cites the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah and the Deluge as examples of the world's end. It gives the
most awful combination of earthly figures as the picture of the
doom of the impenitent and the most beautiful figures earth and sky
can furnish or the mind of man conceive as the home of the saved.
Nothing could be more different than the theologies of Evolution and
of the Bible.
Many well-meant volumes have been written to reconcile Evolution
and evangelical belief. None are satisfying, although the eagerness
with which some were at first received are witness to the desire to
retain both beliefs.
The theistic evolutionist thinks that to find a place for the
Creator somewhere along the line is enough. St. James rebukes this
insufficient theology in these words: "Thou believest that there is
one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble."
(Jas. 2:19.) So also Christ himself said: "Ye believe in God believe
also in me.... I am the way, the truth and the life.... No man
cometh unto the Father but by me.... He that honoreth not the Son
honoreth not the Father which hath sent him.... For as the Father
hath life in himself even so gave he to the Son also to have life in
himself.... He hath committed all judgment unto the Son that all men
may honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth
not the Son honoreth not the Father." Theism then is not enough in
the opinion of Jesus Christ.
The whole Christian system is in question in this theory. The
whole aim of Evolution is to dispose of the supernatural as much
as possible. The radical evolutionist gets rid of God entirely he
thinks. The theistic evolutionist limits the interference of the
supernatural to the creation of matter, of life, of man's spiritual
nature, and the incarnation and work of Christ. The tendency of
evolution is to make the miracles of Christ mythical and the
phenomena of conversion natural. The theistic evolutionist is on
a side hill. He must go up or down. He is not consistent, and, as
the human mind asserts its right to consistency, he is forced,
willingly or unwillingly, often unconsciously, to the one side or
the other, and he finds himself led along lines which take him
far from evangelical belief. In its consistent form, Evolution
leaves no room for a Creator. Indeed Haeckel, the greatest of
living evolutionists and the legitimate successor to Darwin's
place and greatness, states, as already quoted, thus: "It entirely
excludes supernatural process, every prearranged and conscious act
of a personal character. Nothing will make the full meaning of
the theory of descent clearer than calling it the non-miraculous
theory of creation." (_History of Creation_, pp. 397, 422.) Another
evolutionist, Carl Vogt, says: "Evolution turns the Creator out
of doors." Infidels all accept of it gladly. Every atheist is an
evolutionist.
EVOLUTION A RELIC OF HEATHENISM.
James Freeman Clark thus writes: "In the system of the Greek and
Scandinavian mythology, spirit is evolved from matter; matter up
to spirit works. They begin with the lowest form of being; night,
chaos, a mundane egg, and evolve the higher gods therefrom." (_Ten
Great Religions_, p. 231.)
Sir J. William Dawson, the late eminent geologist of Canada, writes
of the theory as follows: "The evolutionist doctrine is one of the
strangest phenomena of humanity. It existed most naturally in the
oldest philosophy and poetry, in connection with the crudest and
most uncritical attempts of the human mind to grasp the system
of nature; but that in our day a system destitute of any shadow
of proof, and supported merely by vague analogies and figures of
speech and by arbitrary and artificial coherence of its own parts,
should be accepted as a philosophy and should find able adherents to
string upon its thread of hypothesis our vast and weighty stores of
knowledge, is surpassingly strange." (_Story of the Earth and Man_,
p. 317.)
Evolution is working towards a pantheistic atheism. This is
expressed in the creed of the late Cecil Rhodes, the late magnate of
South Africa, as follows: "I believe in Force Almighty, the ruler of
the universe, working scientifically through natural selection to
bring about the survival of the fittest and the elimination of the
unfit."
CHAPTER VII.
THE SPIRITUAL EFFECT OF EVOLUTION.
It is apparent that the adoption of such a theory as Evolution must
affect the spiritual state of the person receiving it. Man's mental
and spiritual natures are intimately connected. While those in a
settled previous spiritual experience may carry Evolution as "a
working theory" only, those in an immature state will be vitally
affected. Especially is this true of youthful minds. It is indeed
a fact that many young men have started with high purposes to
prepare for the ministry, and even for foreign missions, and have,
after adopting these modern theories, abandoned their purpose, and
thousands have abandoned all personal religion. Pastors can tell of
many such instances.
Some have said that the adoption of Evolution has helped their
faith. They fail to see that bringing the Bible down to their faith
is not bringing their faith up to the Bible. It is a weakening of
faith and not a strengthening of it. This apparent increase of faith
simply prepares the way for its utter ruin. The first step leads to
a wider divergence, as many have shown, that leads to wreck of all
faith in a supernatural God or world or Bible. The mind will follow
its natural workings. Loss of faith in the facts of the Bible leads
to loss of faith in its truths. The acceptance of this theory still
further leads to a lessening of the sense of our need of Christ that
the Bible teaches and man should feel. And further the acceptance
of this theory, while it may not affect materially the minds of
experienced Christians, will through them affect others.
There is also a latent unconscious loss of faith that is realized
only in some great emergency, when in "the storm and stress" of life
the soul looks out for something to hold to. It is then that the
rotting platform of unbelief goes down in wreck. The other extreme
is also a cause of ruin. In the time of great prosperity when all
the allurements of life and time and sense present themselves, it
requires all the purpose one has to stem the tide of temptations. It
is here that a false belief will work havoc. The mind conceives that
after all sin is not so hateful or salvation so needed or doom so
fearful.
The effect on experimental personal experience is evident. Instead
of looking for a regeneration, a revolution of the inner state, the
believer in Evolution necessarily looks for a change from education
or other form of development. Such a thing as conversion or a
baptism of the Holy Ghost he will cease to look for or desire. There
will come declining feeling, lessening devotion, prayer will become
perfunctory and there will come increasing occupation with and love
for other things. Evolution as a belief makes right many things that
were before held to be wrong. It is an easy religion to hold. It
strikes the world at the angle of least resistance and enables the
holder to accept almost anything that the natural man desires. The
conflict of "the flesh and the spirit" ceases; the flesh, that is
the natural man, has conquered.
These theories in many seem to be but evidences of a previous wrong
state of heart. The wish is father to the thought. The theory is
accepted because it allows the laying aside of views that restrain
the desires. Such persons are willing to admit the existence of God
and his contact with man at Creation if relieved from any nearer
relationship. It is therefore worse than unbelief. It is antagonism.
It is enmity. Christ said, "Men love darkness rather than light
because their deeds are evil." The heart and life are the basis
of their opinions. It is evident that argument here fails. "A man
convinced against his will remains an unbeliever still."
Evolution is a comfortable theory to the world. It elevates man.
It hides the presence of God. It calls for no repentance or
consecration. It boasts of human progress and claims merit therefor.
In short it is the worship of man rather than the worship of God. It
deifies man and it ignores Christ. Once committed to this theory,
there is no extreme the person may not reach. Some have abandoned
Christ and Christianity because of it. It is in fact in doctrine and
experience and conduct, the antithesis of Christianity.
Such a theory as Evolution and its vaporizing method of Bible
interpretation, prepares the way for "isms" of every kind. It is to
this we are indebted for the swarm of these that afflicts the church
to-day. Once allow that the Bible may be interpreted to suit such
theories and any heresy or absurdity can prove its position from the
Bible as all of them by this same process do.
It is already weakening the power of the pulpit, and this in turn is
one great reason for the declining effect of the preached word. Once
received into a minister's heart the edge of his sword is dulled if
indeed the sword is not itself sheathed. He may not preach Evolution
either as a method of creation or a method of salvation, but his own
inner faith is weakened in the old truth which had such power to
convert the souls of hearers. When openly advocated and taught, it
is useless to seek revivals among those so taught. So it is the fact
that conversions to-day are mainly confined to the young and others
not affected by the error.
All the indications point to the further weakening of the hold upon
men of the supernatural and the eternal. To eliminate the former
and, while acknowledging the latter, to disparage all reference to
the future life, seems to be the tendency of the day. As already
cited, one of its chief advocates tells us, "Heaven is no longer the
center of the Christian's hope." The consequence is the material and
intellectual interests receive chief attention and other agencies
take the chief place religion should have. Education received in
the United States over $200,000,000 in gifts during the last few
years, to say nothing of the many fold more received from incomes
and public funds. Meanwhile the causes of Christ are languishing,
missions are dwarfed, small churches in great masses of the
population are struggling for existence against fearful odds, while
the money of professed Christians pours in these mighty streams for
all other purposes. No sensible person will disparage education, but
"Religion is the chief concern of mortals here below."
Further it is the few who can take advantage of the higher education
for which these millions are given. But five per cent of the
common school scholars can attend college. The many must toil for
existence. It is to the poor the gospel was preached by its Founder.
It is to the poor it means most. To those who have little else it is
the all in all. It is to these it should be preached in its freedom
and fullness. The principles of natural selection of the fittest
which sends millions to higher institutions and neglects the masses
of the people is the opposite of the gospel.
Cardinal Newman wrote: "There is a special effort made almost
all over the world, but most visibly and formidably in its most
civilized and powerful part, to do without religion.... Truly
there is at this time a confederacy of evil marshalling its
hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself and taking
measures enclosing the church of Christ as in a net and preparing
the way for a general apostasy." (_Quoted in "Christianity and
Anti-Christianity."_ S. J. Andrews, p. 4.) Whether this is the
final form of unbelief is difficult to say. It bears the marks of
anti-christianity the apostle speaks of. The unbelief of the latter
days will rest on belief in the unvarying stability of nature. (2
Peter 3:4.) The coming of this theory is aimed to dissipate any
looking for supernatural changes such as the Scriptures teach are
coming to earth, such as the last day, the coming of Christ, the
resurrection and all the vast series of changes therein declared.
Hence that wholesome fear of God so operative in deterring evil and
stimulating good is removed. Based on this unbelief, the enemy of
God and man can advance to the accomplishment of his purposes as
never before. All satanic methods before this have been crude and
coarse compared with this last invention. It is the most subtle and
sweeping of all evil methods to ensnare the mind of man. Based on
what is called science, promoted by the scholars of the day, taught
in the fountains of learning and preached from pulpit and platform,
it must have a widespread effect. Heretofore attacks on Christianity
have been made from without. This is from within. It is the trusted
leaders who are now undermining the fortress in which they live.
But revivals always begin at the bottom. It was a few poor fishermen
who commenced the gospel age. It is their successors to whom we
must look as we have in the past for return of apostolic power.
"God chose the foolish things of the world that He might put to
shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the
world that He might put to shame the things that are strong; and
the base things of the world, and the things that are despised did
God choose, yea and the things that are not, that he might bring to
naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God."
(1 Cor. 1:27, 28, R. V.) So we look hopefully to God for that only
which will deliver the church from this and all other pestilent
evils, theoretical and practical, a revival of true religion by the
power of the Holy Spirit, and the preaching of the old gospel of the
cross of Christ.
INDEX.
Page
Abbeville, peat beds, 90
Abbott, Dr. Lyman, xi, 3
Abydos tombs, 92
Adam, 77-127
Adjustments, complex, 56
Adaptation of species, 55
Agassiz, 13, 50
Age of earth, 15
Antiquity of man, 90
Ape-man, 75
Ape, relics of, 68
Assyrian antiquity, 93
Assyrian religion, 103
Armadillo, 43
Architecture of body, 58
Askenazy, 9
Aurora Borealis, 16
Authors, list of, xiv
Babylonian civilization, 99-103
Backbone, origin of, 31
Baer, Carl Ernest von, 9
Balfour, Prof. Francis M., 59
Ballard, Prof. Frank, 118
Barrande, Joachim, 38
Barrows, Dr. John Henry, 62
Beaument, M., 16
Bee, cell of, 57
Bermuda lizards, 44
Bible account, 61
Bible interpretation, 121, 123
Bible theology, 131
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 111
Bowers, Prof. Stephen, 81
Brain, argument from, 84
Brewster, Sir David, 59
Brown, A., 4
Bruner, F. M., 104
Bunge, 9
Calavaras skull, 80
Carlyle, Thomas, 9
Chamberlain, Dr. Jacob, 103
Chance, 115
Chimpanzee, 74
Christ, 109
Christ and the Old Testament, 126
Christian experience, 107
Classification, 41
Clodd, Edward, 17, 29, 73, 75, 83, 84, 85
Colorado skeleton, 81
Conn, Prof. H. W., 5, 25, 27, 29, 30, 39, 42, 48, 50, 96, 115
Consensus of scholarship, 10
Congo languages, 87
Cook, Dr. Joseph, 13
Cope, E. D., 53
Coral theory, 13
Croatian skeleton, 81
Cross, test of evolution, 106
Crystallization, 57
Dana, Prof., 42, 64, 86, 89
Darwin, Chas., 5, 17, 29, 41, 55, 61, 87
Darwinism, 29
Dawson, Sir J. W., 9, 36, 95, 114, 116, 135
Degeneration, 53
De Rouge, 102
Distribution, 43
DuBois, Dr. Von Eugene, 82
Earth, age temperature, 15, 20, 23, 58
Egypt, mummied animals, 58, 85
Egyptian dynasties, 92
Egyptian civilization, 100
Embryology, 49
Eohippus, 46
Etheridge, Dr., 9, 59
Ethics, 105
Evolution--Meaning, 1
Definitions, 3
Unproven, 5
Scientists reject, 7
Cause of, 30
No case of, 26
Geology against, 38
Phantom tree, 42
Mental, 89
Unverified, 112
Chance, 115
Bible, 120
Conversion, 107
Eyes, origin of, 32
Fiske, Prof. John, 85
Force, origin of, 18
Fossils, 59
Foval, 8
French Institute, 12
Galileo, 12
Galton, 101
Geology, argument from, 37
Geologist, testimony of, 38
Germ, the, 50
Giraffe, origin of, 33
Gladstone, 117
Green frogs, 118
Great Pyramid, 100
Greeks, 101
Gregory, Dr. D. S., 8
Grote, Dr., 8
Haeckel, Ernst, xiv, 3, 5, 8, 9, 19, 23, 39, 41, 118
Haecke, Dr. W., 8
Harmann, Otto, 9
Harnack, Prof., 13
Harrison, Frederick, 14
Hartmann, 102
Heathen origin, 135
Heer, Oswald, 9
Herschell, 15
Hilyrecht, Prof., 19
Hindu Vedas, 103
History, 98
Higher Criticism, 13, 94
Hoffmann, 9
Home of primeval man, 72
Howison, Prof. Geo., xiv, 86
Human characteristics, 70
Humphrey, Gen., 16
Huxley, 6, 13, 25, 29, 30, 44, 45, 48, 69, 72
Ingersoll, Robt., 110
Jones, Prof. Wm., 116
Kelvin, Lord, 18, 24, 74, 86
Kangaroo, 43
Kent Cavern, 16
Kipling, 74
Koelliker, 8
Land, animals, origin of, 33
Lang, Andrew, 102
Lange, 99
Language, 86
Lecky, 101
Le Conte, Prof. Joseph, 3, 23, 24, 40
Legs, origin of, 32
Liebig, 24
Life, origin of, 23
Livingston, Dr., 91
Lyell, 16
Making of a man, 73
Mathematical adjustments, 56
Matter, origin of, 17
Mental changes, 90
Mentone skeleton, 89
Meyer, Dr., 81
Mind and consciousness, 85
Missing link, 78
Mississippi Delta, 16
Molecular creation, 50
Monier, Sir M., 104
Monkey language, 88
Moon, mountains of, 15
Morphological argument, 44
Mueller, Prof. Max, 86, 87, 97
Murchison, Sir Roderick, 38
McLaughlin, 57
Naegeli, 8
Natural selection, 29, 34
Neanderthal Skull, 80
Nebular Hypothesis, 21
New Orleans skeleton, 91
Newman Cardinal, 142
Origin of life, 23
Orion, Nebula, 21
Paine, Thomas, viii, 110
Parker, Theodore, 110
Patterson, Dr. Robert, 40, 70
Pattison, S. R., 95
Patton, Prest. Francis L., xiv
Paulsen, Prof., 8
Petrie, Prof. Flinders, 110
Pfaff, Dr. Frederick, 79, 85, 95
Pfliederer, Prof., 62
Pithecanthropus-Erectus, 82
Poetry, 121
Post, Dr. Geo. E., 9
Prehistoric man, 89
Protoplasm, 49
Quatrefages, 45
Religion, 102
Renan, 109
Renouf, 102
Reymond, DuBois, 9
Rhodes, Cecil, 136
Richter, Jean Paul, 109
Ridpath, J. Clark, 41
Rocks, origin of, 37
Romans, 103
Rousseau, 110
Rudimentary organs, 67
Ruskin, 9, 67
Savage Races, 96
St. Pierre, 13
Sayce, Prof. A. H., 93, 100
Schliemann, 13, 91
Schmidt, Dr. Rudolph, 5
Schults, D. Kerfoot, 41
Scientific theories, 15
Sedgwick, Adam, 40
See, Prof., 19
Simultaneousness, 42
Snell, 8
Solar System, 19
Species, evolution of, 26
Spencer, Herbert, xv, 2, 14, 17, 20, 31, 41, 105, 114
Spiritual effect, 137
Star, Prof. F., 101
Stone age, 91
Stuckenburg, Dr. J. H. W., 8
Succession, 2, 37
Sully, Prof. James, 62
Swim-Bladder, 48
Taj Mahal, 97
Terra Del Fuego, 87
Theistic Evolution, 4, 77
"Theistic," Adam, 77
Theology of Evolution, 128
Thomas, Dr. Jessie B., 28
Thomson, Sir Wm., 13, 34
Thomson, Dr. J. Arthur, 30, 51
Thompson, Dr. James, 105
Troy, 13
Tyndall, 2, 5, 20, 24, 50, 52
Universe, evolution of, 17
order of, 19
Varieties, 28
Vedas, Hindu, 103
Virchow, Dr. Rudolph, 7, 9, 65, 82
Wagner, M., 8
Wallace, 66, 83
Whales origin, 33
White, Andrew, 12
Whitney, Prof., 5
Wiseman, Cardinal, 12
Wilson, Woodrow, 15
Wilson, on the cell, 25
Wilson, Andrew, 55
Winchell, 26, 94
Wright, Geo. Frederick, xv, 12, 21, 58, 95, 112
Zahm, Dr. J. A., 6, 12, 90, 94
Zoeckler, 9
Books by Rev. Alex. Patterson
BIRD'S-EYE BIBLE STUDY
With Introduction by Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman
A synopsis of all the books of the Bible, with statement as
to their classification and interrelation; a summary of the
broad teachings of the Scriptures, with general view of the
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chapters on "How to Study the Bible," "The Way of Salvation,"
"How to Win Souls to Christ," "Power in Prayer," "The Work of
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Especially adapted for use by pastors, evangelists,
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THE OTHER SIDE OF EVOLUTION
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Oberlin College.
This book undertakes to show that Evolution is not accepted by
all scientists and gives names of many who oppose it; that it is
admittedly an unproven theory; that it has never been verified
and cannot be; that not a single case has ever been known, or
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