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Title: The Church, the Schools and Evolution
Author: J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
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THE CHURCH
THE SCHOOLS
and
EVOLUTION
by
J. E. CONANT, D.D.
Bible Teacher and Evangelist
Author of _Why the Pastor Failed_, _Is it Scholarly to Be
Orthodox?_ _Is Atonement by Substitution Reasonable?_
_Divine Dynamite_, etc.
Chicago
The Bible Institute Colportage Ass'n
826 North La Salle Street
Copyright, 1922
by
J. E. Conant
FOREWORD
The following pages have grown out of a paper, following the same outline
more briefly, which was read before the Pastors' Conference of the San
Juaquin Valley Baptist Association, the largest association in the Northern
California Baptist Convention. At the close of the reading a request for
its publication was enthusiastically and unanimously voted.
The author has since divided the paper into two chapters; in the first
chapter has added to and classified the quotations concerning evolution,
has enlarged the remarks on the influence of evolution on Scripture
doctrine, and has both enlarged upon and entirely rearranged the matter of
the second chapter, in an attempt to make it both more obvious and more
conclusive to the reader than it was felt to be to the hearers.
The term "Church" in the following pages is intended to cover that
fellowship, of every name, which includes all who have been really born
again. When organized church fellowship is referred to, the whole
evangelical Protestant fellowship in general is meant, as distinguished
from Roman Catholic, Greek church, or any other non-evangelical faith,
although true Christians are to be found within every fellowship. The term
"Schools," in its larger meaning, includes all institutions of learning
maintained at private, denominational, or public expense; more
specifically, those dominated by the present evolutionary philosophy are
meant. With notable exceptions in a few schools that refuse to be so
dominated, the whole educational system in general, especially in the
Northern States, has practically capitulated to the evolutionists, and the
schools that have so surrendered are particularly in mind in the following
discussion.
It is but a humble effort to point out what is obviously the only possible
solution for the present distressing and destructive controversy between
the Church and the Schools, but the author fondly hopes that it will prove
to be a real, even though small, contribution toward the ending of that
controversy.
It is sent out with the prayer that He who is Truth incarnate may lead
those in both the Church and the Schools who really want to know the truth
at all cost to a common attitude toward Himself, to a common, because truly
scientific, method of investigating truth in both the natural and the
spiritual realms, and therefore to a common goal which will unite them
against all those forces that seek to capture both the Church and the
Schools for the enemy.
J. E. Conant.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY--THE CAUSE
Page
I. =The Theory of Evolution is Unproven= 11
1. The Testimony =for= Evolution 12
2. The Testimony =Against= Evolution
a. In the Biological Realm; (i) The Doctrine of Natural
Selection; (ii) The Doctrine of Acquired Characters;
(iii) The Biogenetic "Law" 14
b. In the Geological Realm 19
c. The Whole Theory in General 20
II. =The Logic of Evolution is Destructive= 23
1. Evolution and =Inspiration= 23
2. Evolution and the =Fall of Man= 26
3. Evolution and the =Nature of Sin= 29
4. Evolution and the =Nature of Christ= 32
5. Evolution and the =Atonement= 34
6. Evolution and the =New Birth= 35
7. Evolution and the =Holiness of God= 40
CHAPTER II
THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY--THE CURE
I. =Truth Must be Classified Scientifically= 46
1. The =Realms of Truth= Must be Classified 46
2. The =Faculties of Investigation= Must be Distinguished 47
3. The =Different Kinds of Truth= Must be Separated 52
4. The =Primacy of Primary Truth= Must be Maintained 52
II. =Truth Must be Investigated Scientifically= 55
1. =Faith= Must be Given Precedence Over =Reason= 55
a. The Method of the Rationalist 56
b. The Method of the Believer 61
2. The =Spiritual Realm= Must be Given Primacy Over the
=Natural= 68
a. By Surrendering the Heart to God 70
b. By Interpreting Natural Truth in the Light of the Bible 76
The Church, the Schools and Evolution
CHAPTER I
The Present Controversy--the Cause
It must be so self-evident as to be axiomatic that there are two distinct
realms in God's universe. One is the realm that contains the Creator, and
the other that which contains His creation. Of course, if we are
pantheists, we will not admit that classification; but those who believe
and accept the Word of God are not pantheists.
It is inevitable, therefore, that the facts, the verities, the truths of
the universe should be classified according to their realms; those having
to do with the Person and relationships of the Creator being separable into
one realm, and those having to do with His creation into another.
That this classification is universally recognized, is a matter of common
knowledge. That class of truth which has to do with God we call
supernatural, or spiritual, truth, and that which relates to His creation
we call natural, or scientific, truth.
It is precisely because of this classification that there are two separate
institutions in the world, each of which is working in one of these realms.
The =Church= accepts it as her function to receive and propagate spiritual
truth, as God has revealed Himself in His character; while the =Schools=
accept it as their function to study and teach scientific truth, as God has
revealed Himself in His works. This is the entire logic of the existence in
the world of these two separate institutions, both of which are engaged in
the investigation and propagation of truth.
But although the Church and the Schools are entirely separate institutions,
and although they are engaged, one in the spread of spiritual truth and the
other in the diffusion of scientific truth, yet =truth is an eternal
unity=. This must be so, in the nature of things, for all truth proceeds
from and reveals the one and only God Who is its Source and of Whom it is
the consistent and perfect expression.
Conflict between these two realms of truth is, therefore, eternally
impossible. Men talk of a conflict between science and the Bible, but no
such conflict exists. If there is any contradiction, it is not between the
statements of Scripture and the facts of science, but between the false
interpretations of Scripture and the immature conclusions of science.
Herbert Spencer was right when he said:
It is incredible that there should be two orders
of truth in absolute and everlasting opposition.
Not until God begins to contradict Himself will these two realms of truth
ever be in conflict with each other.
The Church and the Schools, then, can never be in conflict until some
abnormal condition creeps into the one or the other; for, although working
in different realms of truth, each is yet receiving revelations of the one
God who can never be in conflict with Himself.
When these two institutions are in normal condition, each will not only not
destroy the work of the other, but each will make every possible
contribution to the success of the other, and antagonism between them will
be impossible. When conflict occurs, therefore, it is because the teachers
in one realm or in both have not arrived at the truth in their respective
realms.
And so when the Church denies the =facts=--not the unproven theories,
notice, but the clearly demonstrated =facts=--of science, something is
wrong with the Church. And when the Schools put forth =theories= that
undermine the very foundations of the Church and her work, there is
something wrong with the Schools.
Now it is no secret that the Church and the Schools, broadly speaking, are
in serious conflict with each other today. Where lies the cause? If the
Church is denying and fighting the demonstrated =facts= of science, then
the Church is clearly at fault and ought to get right at once.
But this is not so, for the conflict is altogether over unproven theories,
and has nothing to do with demonstrated scientific facts. And so this takes
us at once and completely out of the realm of science and lands us in that
of speculative philosophy--a fact that shows how unreasonable and even
foolish the conflict is. For the thing that has set the Church and the
Schools into battle array against each other is that speculative guess
concerning origins called the =Theory of Evolution=. This lies at the heart
of the opposition that each of these great institutions feels toward the
other.
It is true that a certain amount of the trouble arises from
misunderstanding, because the term "evolution" is used in so many loose,
illogical, and unscientific ways; but back of all misuse of the term there
is a fundamental cause on which this antagonism rests, and that cause is
found in the nature of the theory and its effects on those who consistently
believe it.
The technical meaning of the term may be said to be a structural change in
the direction of development into higher forms of existence, brought about
by internal force without external aid.
There is also a scientific classification of the subject, into sub-organic,
organic, and super-organic evolution. Sub-organic evolution applies to the
development of non-living matter; organic, to the development of vegetable
and animal life; and super-organic, to the development of intellectual,
moral, and spiritual life. But while the subject is thus classified for
convenience, it is all one doctrine, and is meant to describe one process
of development from the non-living realm to the spiritual.
There is also one theory which is called causal, and another which is
called modal, evolution. According to the former, evolution is the first
cause of all life, which, of course, excludes God as the First Cause; and
according to the latter, evolution is the mode, or method, used by God in
creation.
Now, the Church has vital reasons for fighting this philosophical guess.
One reason is, that it is entirely unsupported by =facts=, and is therefore
altogether unproven. But if this were the only reason, the Church could be
convicted of the supreme folly of her entire history, for turning aside to
fight an unproven guess. A more vital reason is that the theory does not
stop with the natural realm, but goes right on up into the realm of
spiritual truth, and assumes to pronounce on the most vital spiritual
realities in such a way that the logic of the theory, if consistently
accepted, utterly destroys both the foundations of the Church and the
content of the Gospel. Indeed, evolution has been proclaimed to the world
as the ally of a philosophy which boasts of its capacity to drive
Christianity out of existence.
For the Church, therefore, to fail to fight a theory that strikes at her
very vitals would be to become a traitor to the Lord who bought her and
sent her into the world to preach His gospel. And so she is compelled to
choose between submitting to an unproven and destructive theory, which has
never saved =any= one who has believed it, and preaching the gospel of
God's grace, which has infallibly saved =every= one who has believed it.
The true Church is fighting the theory of evolution in order that the
message she is commissioned to preach may not be rendered of no effect
by a non-belligerent attitude toward it being mistaken for approval of it.
Not only the fact that the theory is entirely unproven, but also and more
particularly the nature of its influence on faith in the Bible compels the
Church to reckon with it. We will go into these two reasons for
antagonizing this speculative guess.
I. =The Theory of Evolution is Unproven.=
The reason we reflect on this for a few moments lies in what has already
been said. If evolution is a fact, then for the Church to refuse it and
fight against it would be to fight against God, which ought to bring her to
swift judgment for her mad folly. But if it is only an unproven theory,
then she is justified if she has good reasons for fighting its propagation.
We will therefore note what the scientists themselves have to say regarding
the theory.
1. Testimony =for= Evolution.
There are teachers of science who do not hesitate to assure us that the
doctrine of evolution is now no longer a theory but an assured fact. A few
representative quotations from that class will suffice.
Dr. P. C. Mitchell says, in a late edition of the "Encyclopedia
Britannica":
The vast bulk of botanical and biological work on living
and extinct forms published during the last quarter of the
nineteenth century increased almost beyond all expectation
the evidence for the =fact= of evolution.
Prof. S. C. Schmucker, of the West Chester, Pennsylvania, State Normal
School, in his book, "The Meaning of Evolution," says:
Among students of animals and plants there is no longer any
question as to the =truth= of evolution. That the animals of
the present are the altered animals of the past, that the
plants of today are the modified plants of yesterday, that
civilized man of today is the savage of yesterday and the
tree dweller of the day before, is no longer debatable to
the mass of biologists.
Professor Fish, then of Denison University, Granville, Ohio, not long ago
dictated to his class, of which the writer's daughter was a member, the
following statement:
Organic evolution is the key to all biological thinking of
today. It is not a =theory= but a =fact=, because the main
facts are true. Man is the off-spring of the lower animals,
and the ancestry can be traced back to the simplest forms
of animals known. All medical research takes that fact into
account.
Prof. S. W. Williston, department of paleontology, University of Chicago,
says:
I know of no biologist, whether of high or low degree,
master or tyro, who ventures to suggest a doubt as to the
fundamental truths of organic evolution.
Prof. William Patten, department of biology and zoology, Dartmouth College,
says:
Evolution is the accepted doctrine of the natural sciences
to the extent that it has long ceased to be a subject of
debate in standard scientific journals or in organized
conferences of men of science.
Prof. Charles B. Davenport, department of experimental evolution, Carnegie
Institute, Washington, D. C., says:
I do not know of a single modern scientific
man who does not believe in evolution.
And Prof. Frank R. Lillie, department of embryology, University of Chicago,
says:
I feel pretty impatient over the statements of certain
religious teachers that evolution has collapsed.
These statements are sufficiently representative to indicate the attitude
toward the theory of evolution of a great section of the scientific world
today, including many science teachers in schools founded and endowed by
the Church for the giving of Christian education.
But it is not true that the theory is universally accepted or even
scientifically proved to be a fact. Let a few scientists of at least equal
eminence with those quoted above bear their testimony.
2. Testimony =Against= Evolution.
But before we quote this testimony it may be well to pause a moment for a
little information that may make it more intelligible to us.
The so-called proofs of evolution are derived from both the biological and
the geological realms of natural science.
=a.= We will consider, first, the so-called proofs taken from the
=biological= realm.
Darwin's theory was arrived at from data taken from the biological realm,
and consists of two doctrines. One is the doctrine of =natural selection=,
which was his own personal contribution to the discussion, and the other is
that of =the inheritance of acquired characters=, which he borrowed from
Lamarck. The former is the doctrine meant when pure Darwinism is referred
to.
(i). The Doctrine of Natural Selection.
Darwin himself said:
We cannot prove that a single species has changed,
and, also,
Many of the objections to the hypothesis of evolution are so
serious I can hardly reflect on them without being
staggered.
Dr. N. S. Shaler, department of geology, Harvard, says:
It begins to be evident that the Darwinian hypothesis is
still essentially unverified.... It is not yet proven that
a single species of the two or three million now inhabiting
the earth had been established solely or mainly by the
operation of natural selection.
Professor Fleischmann, of Erlangen, has said:
The Darwinian theory of descent has in the realms of nature
not a single fact to confirm it. It is not the result of
scientific research, but purely the product of the
imagination.
And John Burroughs, although an evolutionist up to his recent death, said
of Darwin, in the August, 1920, "Atlantic Monthly":
He has already been as completely shorn of his selection
doctrines as Samson was shorn of his locks.
If these statements from scientific men mean anything at all, they mean, at
least, that pure Darwinism is altogether unproven, if not that it is dead.
(ii). The Doctrine of Acquired Characters.
Spencer made this doctrine the fundamental one in his evolutionary
philosophy. Its importance was so vital to him that he said:
Close contemplation of the facts impresses me more strongly
than ever with the two alternatives--either there has been
inheritance of acquired characters, or there has been no
evolution.
It is of great interest, therefore, to note what competent scientists have
said about this doctrine.
Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan, department of science, Columbia University, says:
Today the theory has few followers among trained
investigators, but it still has a popular vogue that is
wide-spread and vociferous.
Alfred Russell Wallace, in his "Autobiography," said:
All the available evidence is opposed to the doctrine of
acquired characters.
Prof. William Bateson, in his 1914 Presidential Address before the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, said:
We have done with the notion that Darwin came latterly to
favor, that large differences can arise by the accumulation
of small differences.
He also remarks that the new knowledge of heredity shows that whatever
evolution there is occurs by loss of factors and not by gain, and that in
this way the progress of science is
destroying much that till lately passed for gospel.
And commenting on these remarks of Bateson, Prof. S. C. Holmes, of the
University of California, says they are
an illustration of the bankruptcy of the present
evolutionary theory.
Then Prof. George McCready Price, department of geology, Pacific Union
College, Helena, California, has said very recently:
It has long since been definitely settled that acquired
characters are not transmitted in heredity.
And in another place he exclaims:
If cells did not maintain their ancestral character in a
very remarkable way, what would be the use of grafting a
good kind of fruit on to a stock of poorer quality? The very
permanency of the graft thus produced is proof of the
persistency with which the cells reproduce only "after their
kind."
Then in speaking of Mendel's discoveries in the realm of heredity, and
which have now become scientifically demonstrated laws, he says that
the whole foundation of biological evolution has been
completely undermined by these new discoveries.
And he sums up the conclusions to which present-day scientists are coming,
in the words:
The principles of heredity, as now understood, have brought
us back to that great truth which is given in the first
chapter of our Bible, that each form of plant or animal was
designed by the Creator to reproduce only "after its kind."
The one who accepts this testimony, therefore, is compelled to conclude
that the doctrine of acquired characters is also dead.
(iii). The Biogenetic "Law."
In addition to the two forms of the theory above noted, Haeckel added
emphasis to these so-called biological proofs by putting forth a doctrine
that came to be called the biogenetic "law," even though it was nothing but
a hypothesis. It was called the recapitulation theory, because it was
imagined that the developing human embryo recapitulates or passes through
successive stages of the more mature forms of some of the lower animals.
Concerning this theory Dr. A. Weber, University of Geneva, Switzerland,
said in the "Scientific American Monthly" for February, 1921:
The critical comments of such men as O. Hertwig, Kiebel, and
Vialleton, indeed, have practically torn to shreds the
aforesaid fundamental biogenetic law. Its almost universal
abandonment has left considerably at a loss those
investigators who sought in the structures of organisms the
key to their remote origins or to their relationships.
So it would seem that if this form of the theory is utterly destitute of
proof, the whole biological foundation of the theory is gone.
It is perfectly in harmony with scientific testimony, therefore, that
Professor Price says concerning this phase of the theory:
The science of twenty or thirty years ago was in high glee at
the thought of having almost proved the theory of biological
evolution. Today, for every careful, candid inquirer, these
hopes are crushed; and with weary, reluctant sadness does
modern biology now confess that the Church has probably been
right all the time.
If these men have borne faithful testimony to the situation as it now
exists in the biological realm, the only conclusion possible is that the
borrowed portion of Darwin's theory has also utterly collapsed.
It is passing strange, in view of these facts, that competent and scholarly
men of science should still cling to a theory so utterly discredited by
eminent scientists. Is it because they are determined to believe in
evolution in spite of such evidence to the contrary, or is it because there
is still left a foundation for the doctrine lying back of all this which
has not yet been disturbed, even though "the biological clues have all run
out," as Professor Price says they have?
The supposed evidence of geology, with its theories of uniformity and
successive ages, forms precisely such a foundation.
=b.= We will consider, therefore, in the next place, the so-called proofs
taken from the =geological= realm.
Dr. T. H. Morgan, who was quoted above as against the theory of the
inheritance of acquired characters, rests his faith in the theory of
evolution on a geological foundation. He says:
The direct evidence furnished by fossil remains is by all
odds the strongest evidence we have in favor of organic
evolution.
Has present-day science anything to say about this? In spite of the
collapse of the supposed biological proofs, are there any tangible and
scientifically established proofs in the geological realm?
Professor Price, who, as noted above, is a geologist, and therefore speaks
according to first-hand knowledge, shows that fossil remains are deposited
over many thousands of square miles in widely separated sections of the
earth, not only in the opposite order from that required to prove the
theory of evolution, but in a great variety of orders, demonstrating, as he
says, that they cannot be arranged off into ages, but that they simply
indicate different forms of life that existed side by side. He then
exclaims:
=How much of the earth's crust would we have to find= in this
upside down order of the fossils, before we would be
convinced that there must be something hopelessly wrong with
the theory of Successive Ages which drives otherwise
competent observers to throw away their common sense and
cling desperately to a fantastic theory in the very teeth of
such facts?
Then he tells us that
the theory of Successive Ages, with the forms of life
appearing on earth in a precise and invariable order, is dead
for all coming time for every man who has had a chance to
examine the evidence and has enough training in logic and
scientific methods to know when a thing is really proved.
And he concludes that the work of strict inductive science has destroyed
this "fantastic scheme" forever,
and thus =leaves the way open= to say that life must have
originated by just such a literal creation as is recorded in
the first chapters of the Bible.
If these statements have any meaning at all, they can mean only that the
geological foundation for the theory of evolution has also collapsed.
=c.= It remains for us to listen to the testimony of a few more men of
science concerning the =whole theory= of evolution in general.
Professor Virchow, the greatest German authority on physiology, and once a
strong advocate of the theory, has said:
It is all nonsense. It cannot be proved by science that man
descends from the ape or from any other animal. Since the
announcement of the theory, all real scientific knowledge has
proceeded in the opposite direction.
Professor Tyndall, in an article in the "Fortnightly Review," said:
There ought to be a clear distinction made between science in
a state of hypothesis and science in a state of fact. And
inasmuch as it is still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of
exclusion ought to fall upon the theory of evolution. I agree
with Virchow that the proofs of it are still wanting, that
the failures have been lamentable, and that the doctrine has
been utterly discredited.
Prof. L. S. Beal, physiologist and professor of anatomy in King's College,
London, says:
The idea of any relation having been established between the
non-living and the living by a gradual advance from lifeless
matter to the lowest forms of life, and so onward to the
higher and more complex, has not the slightest evidence from
the facts of any section of living nature of which anything
is known.
Professor Zoeckler, of the University of Greifswald, says:
The claim that the hypothesis of descent is scientifically
secured must most decidedly be denied.
DeCyon, the Russian scientist, says:
Evolution is pure assumption.
Prof. George McCready Price says:
In almost every one of the separate sciences the arguments
upon which the theory of evolution gained its popularity a
generation or so ago are now known by the various specialists
to have been blunders, or mistakes, or hasty conclusions of
one kind or another.
And Sir J. William Dawson says:
"The evolution doctrine itself is one of the strangest
phenomena of humanity." It is "a system destitute of any
shadow of proof, and supported merely by vague analogies and
figures of speech, and by the arbitrary and artificial
coherence of its parts." And he concludes that it is
"surpassingly strange" that such a theory should find
adherents.
To this list might be added such names as those of Professor Henslow,
former President of the British Association; Prof. C. C. Everett, of
Harvard; Dr. E. Dennert; Dr. Goette; Prof. Edward Hoppe, the "Hamburg
Savant"; Professor Paulson, of Berlin; Professor Rutemeyer, of Basel; and
Prof. Max Wundt, of Leipsic.
After all this contrary testimony on the part of such unquestioned
authorities, we are forced to conclude not only that the testimony for
evolution is far from unanimous, but also that the theory is altogether
unproven, and that it is therefore utterly unscientific to teach it as a
fact, especially when those who do so furnish us with no direct evidence
whatever.
So long, therefore, as there is an unbridged gulf in the sub-organic realm
between nothing and matter, in the organic realm between the non-living and
the living, and in the super-organic realm between animals and man, the
Church cannot be blamed for being scientific enough to refuse to accept
such an unproven and discredited theory, at least until a few =facts= are
forthcoming. Until then we must conclude that all the proofs the scientists
can furnish rest altogether on inferences and assumptions.
When evolutionists can produce =matter= from nothing or increase =energy=
by any natural means known to man, or bring forth the =living= from the
non-living, or bring into existence even one new and distinct =species=,
then they will be in a position to compel the Church to listen to proofs;
but until then the Church is forced to reject evolution.
The most serious aspect of the controversy, however, lies in the second
objection mentioned above.
=II. The Logic of Evolution Is Destructive.=
It is destructive of all the fundamental doctrines the Church was sent into
the world to preach.
1. It destroys the doctrine of the =inspiration of the Bible=, by denying
its inerrancy and infallible and final authority.
Over and again in the early verses of Genesis we are told that God created
the various species to reproduce =after their kind=. But evolution says
that this is not true, for as a matter of fact, the various species have
continuously evolved from one to another all the way to man.
To a mind that is working normally, these two propositions are mutually
exclusive. And so those who retain their intellectual integrity and
consistency, and who therefore cannot accept two contradictory propositions
at the same time, are compelled to =make a choice= between them.
Huxley saw this when he said:
The doctrine of evolution is directly antagonistic to that of
creation. Evolution, if consistently accepted, makes it
impossible to believe the Bible.
When Professor Schmucker; therefore, speaks of the creation story as
the poetical account of Genesis;
when Dr. S. B. Meeser, of Crozer Theological Seminary, describes the
Scriptures as
the survivals of the fittest of those communion experiences
which men, who have lived intensely in the moral interest,
have had with God;
when Dr. H. C. Vedder, of the same seminary, says the Scriptures
"grew in ... accuracy" as they were written;
when Dr. W. H. P. Faunce, President of Brown University, can say:
Mr. Gladstone's last book is called "The Impregnable Rock of
Holy Scripture." The very title shows a conception of the
Bible at the farthest removed from the present Biblical
scholarship, to which the Bible is a growth, not a rock;
when Dr. Ernest D. Burton, of the University of Chicago, says:
Some among us have been constrained to admit that the books
[of the Bible] are not infallible in history or in matters of
science, and not wholly consistent and therefore not
ultimately and as a whole inerrant in the field of morals and
religion;
and when Dr. Shailer Mathews, of the same University, urges us to think the
gospel
in terms of evolution,
and then shows us what that means to him when he says:
For in the New Testament there are conceptions which the
modern world under the dominance of science [at the heart of
which lies the evolutionary philosophy] finds it impossible
to understand, much less to believe;
these men are simply demonstrating the fact that they still retain their
intellectual integrity and consistency, and that they are therefore
entirely unable to accept the doctrine of evolution and believe in an
inerrant Bible at the same time. That is, the logic of the doctrine of
evolution destroys for them the faith that, in its original manuscripts,
the Bible as it came from God to man was "truth unmixed with error," with
the resulting confidence that He who gave it has preserved it to us by His
providence essentially as it was given.
This means that these men and all who agree with them have rejected that
Word which is forever settled in heaven, in order to accept a hypothesis
which is never settled on earth; that they have given up the Book which has
stood unchanged through the centuries against every conceivable form of
assault, and taken in its place a set of scientific speculations that have
either to be revised or discarded for new speculations every few years;
that they have turned from an inspired, inerrant and authoritative
revelation of God, and turned to an unproven theory which makes the Bible a
human document, of supreme value, so they say, as unfolding the religious
evolution of the race, but full of errors because of the human element in
it.
The result of this is the so-called "scientific" or "historical" method of
interpreting the Bible, which means, to quote Dr. Meeser, that while the
Scriptures
have the wisdom of experts in religion, [yet] "authority" is
scarcely the term to describe their value, and may, when
applied to them, obscure their real character.
"But why make all this ado about it," say the evolutionists; "it is all
simply a question of interpretation."
That is absolutely right. It is the interpretation of the evolutionists set
in opposition to that of the Holy Spirit; and the true Church, compelled to
make a choice, takes that of the Holy Spirit.
2. The logic of evolution destroys the doctrine of the =fall of man= and
its result in total depravity.
After an address somewhat along these lines in one of the largest normal
schools in the world, the science professor said to the writer, "Yes, but
you know there is evolution and =evolution=."
That is indeed true. We are all aware of the fact that there are various
kinds, shapes, and colors of evolution, from theistic to atheistic; but the
fact still remains that =every= theory is =still evolution=, and that =any=
theory of evolution whatsoever, if it means anything at all, means steady
=progress= from lower to higher. Progress is certainly the one thought that
is vital to any definition of evolution, and progress =downward= is
excluded by the very meaning of the word, and so evolution under =any=
theory can mean nothing but progress =upward=.
But the Word of God says that man has gone =down= from a condition of
purity and innocence into a condition of such sinful enmity against God,
that he is not only not subject to the law of God, but is utterly incapable
of bringing himself into subjection to it. And the experience of every
Christian gives sorrowful but certain evidence to that fact.
This condition the Bible describes as being =dead= in sin. And since death
is not death at all until it is total, man, therefore, being dead, is
totally dead--and this is total depravity.
This means that the only progress possible to man in his natural state is
=progress in corruption=. For total depravity, which is total spiritual
death, does not mean that the last limit of corruption has been reached,
but that while death is total, corruption may have just begun.
The reality of the natural man's spiritual death is abundantly illustrated
in human history. After man fell into sin, and died, he was given fullest
opportunity to recover himself and to demonstrate thereby that he was still
spiritually alive. But the corruption of spiritual death worked until man
was so far down in the filth of his moral putrefaction that the only way
God could save the race from extinction was to save the one family that had
accepted spiritual life from Him, and blot the rest of the race out in the
flood.
Then, starting out again under more favorable circumstances than before,
man went from bad to worse until, in one great universal brotherhood, he
rose up and defied God at the Tower of Babel, and God had to smash the
brotherhood into fragments by the confusion of languages.
Time after time God tried man and found his progress downward always, no
matter how favorable the circumstances that surrounded him, until finally
he came to earth Himself in the Person of His Son. This brought both the
reality and the completeness of man's spiritual death to a demonstration
that can never be refuted, for at the cross man displayed, to its eternal
uncovering, the awful corruption of that spiritual condition that could not
tolerate in its presence incarnate purity and holiness, even though he had
to become the murderer of God manifest in the flesh to get away from it.
Even in his worship man's progress is steadily downward. Beginning with
God, he progresses downward until he is worshipping birds, then beasts, and
then creeping things.
But evolution says that man is =coming up= from primitive conditions into
fuller life. And so the evolutionist cannot tolerate such doctrines as
these which the Word of God sets forth. To a consistent evolutionist, man
is not spiritually dead, for that would make progress out of the question.
And if progress upward is denied--if the only progress possible to the
natural man is progress in corruption, then the whole doctrine of evolution
is gone.
This is why it becomes necessary for Canon E. W. Barnes, of Westminster
Abbey, when he accepts evolution, to reject the Bible. He says:
The inevitable acceptance of evolution means giving up belief
in the fall and in all the theology built upon it by the
theologians from St. Paul onward. Man was not made perfect
and then marred; his evolution is still proceeding.
So here again it is utterly impossible for the consistent evolutionist to
accept the Bible doctrine of the fall of man.
3. The logic of evolution destroys the doctrine of =sin=.
The Bible makes man's fall deliberate and wilful, and his continued
attitude of sinful enmity against God, in spite of all God's offered power
to change it into love, one of excuseless lawlessness and rebellion.
This makes man entirely responsible for his sin and accountable to God for
everything sin does in his life. And so the Bible says:
Every one shall give account of himself to God.
And those who go out of this life in the unconfessed and therefore
unforgiven sin of rejecting God's mercy in Christ shall "go away into
everlasting punishment," where there will be "weeping and gnashing of
teeth."
But to the evolutionary philosophy, sin cannot be "exceeding sinful," for
it is either inherent in the process of evolution, or, at worst, but an
unfortunate slip in the working out of that process, if, indeed, it is not
even a mark of budding virtue.
John Fiske says:
Theology has much to say about original sin. This original
sin is neither more nor less than the brute inheritance that
every man carries with him.
Rev. Dwight Bradley, a Cleveland, Ohio, pastor, says:
There is no escape for intelligent people today from the
acceptance of the law of evolution.... It follows that what
we call evil [sin] is the remains of a lower form of life....
We are in the midst of the slow process of ridding ourselves
of our animal inheritance.
And Dr. Shailer Mathews follows the evolutionary philosophy to its logical
and necessary end when he says:
But for men who think of God as dynamically imminent in an
infinite universe, who think of man's relation to Him as
determined not by statutory but by cosmic law, who regard sin
and righteousness alike as the working out of the fundamental
forces of life itself, the conception of God as King and of
man as condemned or acquitted subject is but a figure of
speech.
Such a doctrine as this absolutely and forever destroys man's
responsibility for sin. For if sin is what Dr. Mathews suggests it
is,--"the working out of the fundamental forces of life itself,"--then it
is inherent in man's natural constitution as a process of his evolution.
And if this is so, man is in no way responsible for his sin.
This altogether removes man's accountability to God, for he cannot be
brought to account for that which is the working out of the fundamental
forces of life itself, and which is therefore inevitable in the very
workings of his nature. And even if sin is an unfortunate slip in the
process of evolution, man cannot be held accountable for an accident.
This doctrine also puts a high premium on the whole beastly, selfish,
lustful, murderous history of the race, for it makes sin a ladder up which
man is climbing to his high destiny.
Punishment for sin is therefore absolutely out of the question. For if man
is not responsible for his sin, and if God punishes him for it, as the
Bible says He will, even by the law of cause and effect, that would make
God an infinite tyrant and an unspeakable fiend. And so if God is not a
monster, and if evolution is true, there is no punishment for sin, and the
Bible lies.
Thinking men see that this is the inevitable logic of the doctrine of
evolution. Sir J. William Dawson, speaking of the evolutionary doctrines as
speculations, says:
They seek to revolutionize the religious beliefs of the
world, and if accepted would destroy much of the existing
theology and philosophy.... With one class of minds they
constitute a sort of religion.... With another and perhaps
larger class, they are accepted as affording a welcome
deliverance from all scruples of conscience and fears of a
hereafter.
The theory of evolution cannot be consistently held and the statements of
the Bible concerning sin and its consequences be accepted at the same time.
And so the evolutionist will come, sooner or later, to refuse any meaning
to Scripture statements concerning sin, as did Dr. W. N. Clarke, when he
said:
We have no historical narrative of the beginning of sin, and
theology receives from the Scriptures no record of that
beginning.
That is, the perfectly plain and easily understood statements of Scripture
concerning the beginning of sin are altogether unhistorical and utterly
unworthy of credence to the man who looks at the Bible from the
"scientific" or "historical" standpoint, which is the evolutionist's method
of handling the Word of God. To accept evolution, therefore, is to
discredit the Bible.
4. The logic of evolution destroys the doctrines of the =Deity= and the
=virgin birth= of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Bible makes Christ the Seed of the woman, not of the man, as all other
human beings are; it makes His conception to have been that of the Holy
Spirit; it declares His virgin birth in language that cannot be
misunderstood; it makes Him the Son of God, not the son of Joseph.
It also makes Him God tabernacling in the flesh; it makes Him the Second
Person of the Triune =God=; it declares in so many words that He =is= God.
But evolution cannot accept such a doctrine, and so the evolutionist
juggles the Scripture statements of His Deity and denies His virgin birth,
making Him a Jewish bastard, born out of wedlock, and stained forever with
the shame of His mother's immorality.
Dr. A. C. McGiffert says of Christ, that He is
no more divine than we are, or than nature is.
A magazine article on "The Cosmic Coming of the Christ" says:
First the little scum on the warm, stagnant water, then the
little colonies of cells, the organisms, the green moss and
lichen, the beauty of vegetation, the movement of shell fish,
sponges, jelly fish, worms, crabs, trilobites, centipedes,
insects, fish, frogs, lizards, dinosaurs, reptile birds,
birds, kangaroos, mastodons, deer, apes, primitive man, cave
man, man of the stone age, of earliest history, Abraham's
migration, the Exodus, the development of the Jewish
religious life and the climax in that purest of maidens, Mary
of Nazareth. The hour had come for the dawn of a new day, and
the light of that new day was the birth of Jesus. The eternal
purpose of the ages was now to be made clear, and the long,
long aeons of creation explained.
It is no wonder that after quoting these words the "Sunday School Times"
exclaims:
In other words, without moss we could not have had Mary;
without an ape we could not have had Abraham; and--shocking
blasphemy--without a centipede we could not have had Christ!
Praise God, we may turn from this to the words of God; "For
it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the
discernment of the discerning I will bring to naught."
And so here once more the consistent evolutionist is compelled to reject
the Bible by denying the doctrines of the Deity and the virgin birth of
Christ.
5. The logic of evolution destroys the doctrine of =atonement by
substitution=.
The Bible says:
Without the shedding of blood there is no remission [of sin].
Him who knew no sin He hath made to be sin for us.
The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
We "were redeemed ... with the precious blood of Christ."
We are "justified by His blood."
The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
These and many other statements make Christ's death one of atonement by
substitution for our sins.
But evolution cannot tolerate such a doctrine. To the evolutionist this is
a "doctrine of the shambles," a "slaughter house religion," a "gospel of
gore." Christ's death is rather a revelation of the evolutionist's
conception of divine love, and an example of sacrificial service set before
struggling man to help him climb. Let those who believe in the
evolutionist's "historical" method of interpreting Scripture speak for
themselves.
Dr. Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago, says:
To insist dogmatically, as an _à priori_ principle, that
"without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin,"
is both foolish and futile in an age that has abandoned the
conception of bloody sacrifice and which is loudly demanding
the abolition of capital punishment.
Dr. Walter Rauschenbusch said:
What the death of Jesus now does for us, the death of the
prophets did for him.
Dr. H. C. Vedder says:
Jesus never taught and never authorized anybody to teach in
his name that he suffered in our stead and bore the penalty
of our sins;
and also:
The "one crowning absurdity of theology" is "that the penalty
of an evil deed can be vicariously borne by another while he
goes scot free,"
which he describes in another place as
taking an immunity bath in the "fountain filled with blood."
And Dr. J. H. Coffin, of Earlham College, Earlham, Indiana, says:
The sacrificial life of Jesus is the essential factor in His
atonement. His principles and example are the way of the
individual and society to God.
Such statements make it perfectly evident that those who accept evolution
utterly reject God's provision for salvation through the shed blood of
Christ as an atonement by substitution for our sins.
6. The logic of evolution destroys the doctrine of =regeneration=.
The Bible describes man as dead to God and running away from Him; as having
a nature so full of corruption that "From the sole of the foot even unto
the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and
putrifying sores"; and as having a character in the grip of such enmity
against God that by nature he "loves darkness rather than light."
This indicates that man is =past improvement= in his natural state, for no
improvement is possible in the dead.
The Bible therefore speaks, not of the improvement, but of the burial, of
the old life, and of resurrection, by the power of a new nature, to newness
of life.
Hear what it says:
We were buried with Christ by baptism into death, that like
as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the
Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
There is a large section of the Church that understand this passage to
refer to immersion in water in confession of faith in Christ. Not that they
believe that immersion has anything to do with saving us, for they do not,
but that it is the divinely appointed symbol or picture of the salvation
that has already become a reality in the life.
To an immersionist, therefore, when a believer is buried with Christ in
symbol in his baptism, and raised again in symbol of resurrection, he
confesses, among other things, that by his first birth he is so completely
dead that there is nothing left to do with him but to bury him, and his
willingness to be buried in the grave of Christ has been met by God with
the gift of the risen and incorruptible life which is in His Son, and by
which he is now enabled to walk in newness of life.
And so an immersionist cannot be a consistent evolutionist. For when an
evolutionist is immersed, he is either perpetrating a meaningless travesty
on immersion, or else he is denying the whole doctrine of evolution. For
immersion certainly does not picture a step in the progress of the living,
but rather the burial of the totally dead. Immersing churches that have
gone over to the evolutionary position should therefore be consistent and
nail up their baptistries.
But another large portion of the Church believe that the above passage does
not refer to immersion in water, but rather to the statement:
For by one Spirit have we all been baptized into one body.
They regard it as referring to the inward, spiritual union with Christ
which takes place in the new birth, rather than to an outward act. For in
the moment of regeneration, every believer is baptized by the Holy Spirit
into the Body of Christ.
But even so, the word "buried" still stands in the first passage above, and
a burial has to do with the dead, not with the living. Being "buried,"
therefore, when the Holy Spirit baptizes us into Christ, it is "into
death," not into an enlarging life, because we are so completely dead that
the baptizing Spirit sets the "old man" forever aside as utterly
unimprovable, in order that He may make us "partakers of the divine nature"
by which we become a "new creation" in Christ.
All this, however, is utterly intolerable to the consistent evolutionist.
For if man is dead and therefore unimprovable, that makes progress upward
impossible, and, if that is impossible, the whole doctrine of evolution is
at an end.
And so the evolutionist assumes the presence of life, and conceives the
race to be progressing upward out of crude forms and unethical conceptions
toward God. It is perfectly consistent, therefore, that he should seek to
stir man's noble aspirations and should present high ideals for him to
strive after. For it is not life man needs, they say, it is simply
conversion to higher ideals and aspirations in life.
Hence Dr. E. D. Burton is in perfect harmony with this evolutionary
conception when he says:
Jesus was a teacher of great principles, which it is
incumbent upon us to apply to the multitudinous phases and
experiences of life, and the embodiment of an ideal, which it
is ours to endeavor, as best we can, to achieve.
Dr. Herbert L. Willett, of the University of Chicago, was also in harmony
with all this when he said in an address heard by the writer:
It is the task of the Church to interpret to the world the
ideals of Jesus for men to strive after.
And Dr. J. H. Coffin also voiced the evolutionary position when, in
speaking of conversion, he said:
It is conversion =to= something, namely, the =principles= of
Jesus.
Now when the logic of this conception is followed out, it turns evangelism
into religious education. And so it is easy to see why the advocates of
evolution are stressing religious education with increasing insistence. For
it is through the methods of religious education, according to Dr. Burton,
that the lost are being
led to adopt the principles of Jesus and to accept his
leadership quietly and gradually.
This makes regeneration simply an added impulse in the direction in which
men are imagined already to be going. It also has the effect of altogether
reversing the emphasis in the work of the Church with the lost. According
to Dr. Burton, it transfers it
from the salvation of the individual, with emphasis upon
rescue from future woe, to the creation of a human society
dominated by the spirit of Jesus.
And Dr. Gerald Birney Smith, speaking of present-day missionary methods,
says:
Humanly determined programs are being substituted for
dogmatic decrees in the work of the churches. This is genuine
democracy. The missionary enterprise is rapidly being
conceived as a democratic social program rather than as the
rescue of a few individuals from the divine wrath....
Education is coming to be a primary means of accomplishing
the missionary task.
Such a mission to the lost would be altogether unthinkable if men were
believed to be spiritually dead. For dead men are helpless to adopt
principles and strive after ideals. Dead men do not need education, they
need life.
Any one of average intelligence can see at a glance that these two programs
of salvation are headed in opposite directions. By one we strive after an
ideal; by the other we quit all striving and surrender to a Person. One is
salvation by a human resolution to press toward the pattern set before us
by the "Flower of the Race"; the other is salvation by a divine rescue from
that natural hatred of purity and holiness which made possible the murder
of the Son of God. By one program we adopt the principles and follow the
spirit of the life of Christ; by the other we trust in the merits of the
shed blood and substitutionary death of Christ.
These two programs are mutually exclusive. Thus the evolutionary philosophy
utterly destroys the doctrine of the new birth.
7. The logic of evolution destroys the doctrine of the =holiness of God=,
for it makes God the =author of sin=.
Le Conte says:
If evolution be true, and especially if man be indeed a
product of evolution, then what we call evil is not a unique
phenomenon confined to man and the result of an accident [the
fall], but must be a great fact pervading all nature and a
part of its very constitution.
No thinking man can get away from that conclusion. For if evolution in any
form is a fact, then the thing the Bible calls sin was either somehow
embedded, by a competent and responsible Creator, in man's very
constitution as a necessary process of his evolution, or else it slipped
into the race through the bungling and unwatchful incompetence of an
impotent Creator. Thus in either case God becomes the author of sin!
This puts evolution almost, if not altogether, on the ground of blasphemy!
God responsible for the unspeakable woe and the unmeasured suffering of
man? God the author of that inherent force in man's nature which has filled
the earth with hatred, violence, bloodshed, and death? Let him think so who
can!
After these doctrines of the Word are set beside the evolutionary
philosophy, and after it begins to dawn on the thinking mind how utterly
irreconcilable they are, the absolute impossibility of a consistent
evolutionist believing in an inspired, inerrant, and infallible Bible
becomes well nigh an axiom. It is no wonder that Dr. W. B. Riley exclaims:
What thinking man fails to see the infinity of space between
Modernism and Orthodoxy, or to apprehend the fact that daily
they are drawing farther apart! Time holds no promise of even
a patched-up peace.
Lord Kelvin was astonished at the preachers and teachers who are trying to
apply the doctrine of evolution to the fundamentals of the faith. He said:
I marvel at the undue haste with which teachers in our
Universities and preachers in our pulpits are restating the
truth in the terms of evolution, while evolution itself
remains an unproven hypothesis in the laboratories of
science.
And well might he marvel. And well might the Church become aroused and
alarmed as the logical workings of these false doctrines produce more and
more fearful results within her ranks. The whole Church is being moved away
from the foundations of the faith, and this false philosophy is at the
bottom of it all.
The group announcements of the Sunday services of the Los Angeles liberal
churches show where all consistent evolutionists are headed. Standing at
the head of these announcements are these words, the capital letters being
theirs:
We found our faith on the thought of EVOLUTION rather than
Special Creation; on revelation through NORMAL HUMAN
EXPERIENCE rather than the supernatural; on salvation through
GROWTH rather than a miraculous rebirth.
And when it comes to the awful harvest that is being gathered from our
churches for the forces of spiritual destruction through our colleges and
universities, William Jennings Bryan has had some information given to him
that will give us a hint of what is going on. He says:
Having had opportunity to make a personal investigation, I
feel it my duty to warn the lovers of the Bible of the
insidious attacks which are being made upon every vital part
of the Word of God. A father tells me of a daughter educated
at Wellesley who calmly informs him that no one believes in
the Bible now; a teacher in Columbia University begins his
lessons in geology by asking students to lay aside all that
they have learned in Sunday-school; a professor of the
University of Wisconsin tells his class that the Bible is a
collection of myths; a professor of philosophy at Ann Arbor
occupies a Sunday evening explaining to an audience that
Christianity is a state of mind and that there are only two
books in the Bible with any literary merit; another professor
in the same institution informs students that he once taught
a Sunday-school class and was active in the Young Men's
Christian Association, but that no thinking man can believe
in God or the Bible; a woman teacher in a public school in
Indiana rebukes a boy for answering that Adam was the first
man, explaining to him and the class that the "tree man" was
the first man; a young man in South Carolina traces his
atheism back to two teachers in a Christian college; a senior
in an Illinois high school writes that he became skeptical
during his sophomore year but has been brought back by
influences outside of school while others of his class are
agnostics; a professor in Yale has the reputation of making
atheists of all who come under his influence--this
information was given by a boy whose brother has come under
the influence of this teacher; a professor in Bryn Mawr
combats Christianity for a session and then puts to his class
the question whether or not there is a God, and is happy to
find that a majority of the class vote that there is no God;
a professor in a Christian college writes a book in which the
virgin birth of Christ is disputed; one professor declares
that life is merely a by-product and will ultimately be
produced in the laboratory; another says that the ingredients
necessary to create life have already been brought together
and that life will be developed from these ingredients,
adding, however, that it will require a million years to do
it. These are a few of the illustrations furnished by
informants whom I have reason to believe.
These facts certainly furnish sufficient reason why the Church cannot
compromise with the evolutionary philosophy. To do so would be to head
herself toward destruction. She must stand uncompromised and unflinching
against that unproven and discredited theory, the acceptance of which
destroys faith in that infallible and inerrant Word on which she was
founded, and on whose "thus saith the Lord" she must rest her message to a
lost world. =There is no middle ground. To compromise would be to commit
suicide.= If the Church and the Schools are ever to come into harmony, it
cannot be because the Church gives up an infallible Book and accepts a
discredited theory in its place, and so it must be because the Schools give
up this unscientific, because unproven, theory and get back to faith in the
inerrant Word of God.
That this is the only basis on which the Church and the Schools can ever
come into harmony is strenuously denied by the evolutionists in both
Schools and Church. But their denial is meaningless when it is remembered
that they are working night and day to capture the Church, as they have
already almost done with the Schools, before we wake up to what is going
on. But it can never be done. The true Church will never surrender to those
who would remove her foundations and wreck her message.
CHAPTER II
The Present Controversy--the Cure
In the previous pages we went back to the cause of the present controversy
between the Church and the Schools. We found that the unproven and
discredited theory of evolution lies at the bottom of it. We also concluded
that no compromise that permits entrance to this theory in any form is
possible, for the truth which is at once both the life and the message of
the Church, and the theory of evolution, are mutually exclusive.
In this chapter we will seek to find the cure for this distressing
controversy. That there is a cure is beyond all possible question. And if
it is not found and applied, the controversy cannot fail to intensify until
it may force a re-alignment in the Church--a thing a great company of the
most earnest in the Church are fighting to prevent.
Now the only possible basis on which both the Church and the Schools can
take their stand, if this controversy is to be settled without final
disunion in the Church, was laid down by Christ in that scientific formula:
If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the
teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from
Myself.
To follow this formula in our search for common ground is to be utterly
scientific, for it is the laboratory method of experiment. The true Church
has always believed and received the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, not
because, in blind credulity, she has followed some irrational and
unscientific impulse, but precisely because she has been =scientific
enough= to work by this formula and carry the laboratory test to its =final
analysis=. And for the Schools to follow this same formula with scientific
accuracy would be for them to arrive at the same place at which the true
Church has arrived. For when the Church and the Schools start out in search
of truth and do not arrive together, it is either because they did not
start together, or because one or both of them did not proceed all the way
with scientific exactness. Truth is an eternal unity, and conclusions
regarding it that are mutually exclusive and therefore the cause of
controversy prove to a demonstration that somebody's methods of
investigation were unscientific.
If we really intend to be scientific, therefore, when we start out to
investigate truth of any sort and in any realm, the first thing we will do
will be to classify. We can neither start nor proceed together unless we
do. Indeed, if we are to be scientific enough to follow the formula laid
down by Christ, we will be compelled to classify before we can even begin
our investigation.
Therefore--
I. =Truth Must Be Classified Scientifically.=
1. The =Realms of Truth= Must Be Classified.
The first thing the true scientist does is to classify truth into realms.
This we have already done by classifying the realm in which God reveals His
moral character to the hearts of all moral beings as the =spiritual= realm,
and that in which He reveals His creative power to the minds of all
intelligent beings as the =natural= realm.
If we do not distinguish these realms to start with, we invite confusion;
and if we should reach right conclusions without this classification, it
would be due to accident, rather than to scientific accuracy.
But that this classification is universally recognized is proved by the
fact that the moment science reaches the line where the natural ends and
the spiritual begins, it pursues its investigations no farther, on the
ground that it has neither the implements nor the capacities with which to
investigate in that realm. This proves as conclusively as anything could
that the distinction between these two realms is so sharp, as well as so
self-evident, that science is compelled to accept it and act accordingly.
2. The =Faculties of Investigation= Must be Distinguished.
The scientific man will next distinguish the faculties with which the
investigating is to be done, according to the respective realms. That this
classification is required by the fundamental difference in the nature of
the truths in these two realms is so self-evident that it ought to be
axiomatic to all who think with any degree of scientific accuracy. For in
the nature of things, =natural= truth requires investigation by
=intellectual= faculties, and =spiritual= truth by =spiritual= faculties.
Indeed, this distinction is fully recognized when science halts its pursuit
of truth at the boundary line of the spiritual realm.
Yet, although this classification is theoretically recognized by science,
and although it is absolutely demanded if we are to proceed scientifically
in our researches in the spiritual realm, it is little less than amazing
how many there are who utterly fail to distinguish these faculties when
they start out to investigate spiritual truth. Indeed, this is the first
place where the Church and the Schools part company. For the whole attitude
of our Schools today, including most of the institutions founded and
fostered by the Church, seems to be one that entirely misses the scientific
necessity of distinguishing between these essentially different faculties
when working in these two utterly divergent realms of truth. And so it
comes to pass that while the Church is using one sort of faculties, the
Schools are using another kind on the same class of truth.
It needs scarcely to be argued that the =intellect=, with its capacity to
=reason=, is the proper faculty of apprehension in the scientific realm.
But it is equally true that the =heart=, with its capacity to =believe=, is
the one faculty of apprehension in the spiritual realm. That is, the
inquirer reasons his way to knowledge in the natural realm, and believes
his way to knowledge in the spiritual realm. He uses his mind in order to
understand what God has done in His creation, and he exercises faith in
order to come into the knowledge of what He is in His character. In natural
things he believes because he understands, and in spiritual things he
understands because he believes.
In drawing this contrast between mind and heart, however, it is fully
recognized that the term "heart," in much if not all of Scripture, stands
for the whole personality, including intellect, emotion and will. But it is
also a fact that this term stands for that certain =attitude= of the whole
personality toward God through His Word in which one believes and receives
His Word without question, even though it may not be understood, rather
than insisting on understanding it in order to believe it.
Paul says by inspiration in First Corinthians 1:17 to 2:16 that =mental=
capacity, even of the highest excellence, when exercised by itself, is
utterly incapable of apprehending spiritual truth in any degree whatever.
And Christ says that it is with the =heart= that man believes unto
righteousness. This defines that attitude of the whole personality which
accepts the Word of God on faith without necessarily understanding it, and
which gives evidence of acceptance by such a whole-hearted surrender to it
as will eventuate in a life of righteousness.
Then in other Scriptures we find that a life of righteousness, according to
the divine standard, is based on right relations with God in Christ through
faith in His shed blood, through whose incoming and indwelling life, in
response to such a faith, the one who receives it will normally live in
right relations with his fellow men. That is, it is a righteousness that is
obtained by =believing=, not attained by =working=. It is received, not
achieved.
The use of the term "heart," therefore, in Scripture, means that certain
attitude of the whole personality toward God through His Word which the
exercise of the intellect apart from, and unfounded on, faith makes
impossible.
It is precisely this distinction in faculties that Christ's formula
requires. For it was =spiritual= truth, not natural, of which He spoke when
He said, "=If= any man wills to do, he shall =know=." To work by this
formula requires the exercise of faith. For faith is that attitude of the
heart toward the doing of God's will which is evidenced in =willing to do=
that will, no matter what it costs nor where it leads. This is the first
step of faith. For faith is both an attitude and an act, the genuineness of
which is proven by an activity. That is, it is an attitude of willingness
toward the will of God, an act of surrender to the will of God, eventuating
in an activity in continuing in the will of God. Therefore complete
surrender of the heart and life to God's will as revealed in the Word,
trusting the outcome to Him, is where faith begins.
And so let no man imagine that he has any real faith either in God or His
Word who has not begun by willing to do, that he may enter upon the doing
of, the will of God. Indeed, this is not simply the place where faith
begins, it is also the only place where the presence of faith can be
demonstrated. For this is the only possible way of distinguishing that
intellectual attitude which simply assents to the truthfulness of the Word,
from that genuine heart faith which actively reckons the Word to be true by
surrendering the life to its requirements. This formula of Christ's,
therefore, not only requires that the spiritual and natural faculties be
distinguished, but it is the one scientific test by which they =can= be
distinguished.
Then there is Paul's classification of these faculties just referred to. It
is passing strange that so many even in our denominational schools have
missed it. He devotes a whole section of First Corinthians, from 1:17 to
2:16, as noted above, to a scientific statement of the natural and total
incapacity of the intellect to discern spiritual truth. Consider it a
little more in detail. He says that natural human wisdom, "_sophia_," which
Aristotle defines as "mental excellence in its highest and fullest sense,"
is utterly incapable of operating in the realm of spiritual investigation.
For after "the world by mental excellence knew not God, it pleased God by
the foolishness (to the natural mental capacities) of the thing preached to
save those that =believe=." Not those that =understand=, for "the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (that is, spiritual
things), for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know (or
understand) them, for they are =spiritually= discerned (or understood)."
The essential difference between natural and spiritual faculties, as well
as the utter incapacity of the natural faculties in the spiritual realm,
are so clearly brought out in this passage that it is impossible to miss
it.
By this it is not at all meant, however, that mental training and
intellectual capacity have no place in certain branches of Bible study.
Every believer in the Book welcomes the keenest minds and the most expert
scholarship in that branch of Bible study, for example, which seeks, by the
investigation of the manuscripts and the variant readings, to arrive at the
very words that were written by the inspired writers; or, for example, in
that other branch of study which seeks to discover the history and origins
of the various books of the Bible. But it =is= meant that when men seek to
know the =spiritual truths= of the Bible, they are utterly unscientific if
they fail to use that faculty in their investigation which the Textbook
itself prescribes.
To sum it up, faith opens the way for God to quicken into activity a
spiritual capacity through which =He= educates a man in spiritual things
entirely independently of the schools.
The man who really intends to be scientific, then, will approach the Bible
in that attitude of =faith= which will lead him to =will to do God's will=
as the Bible reveals it. He will then be where he can =believe= his way to
an understanding of spiritual truth.
3. The =Different Kinds of Truth= Must Be Separated.
Another classification which the scientific man makes is to distinguish
between the two kinds of truth in each respective realm, and to separate
that kind which may be demonstrated to the =experience= from that which
must be taken on =hearsay=. That is, in the natural realm, in the
department of chemistry, for example, the laws of chemical action can be
put to the laboratory test of experiment, while the history of the science
of chemistry must always be taken on hearsay. And, in the spiritual realm,
those truths stated in the spiritual Textbook which have to do with our
spiritual relations with God can be put to the laboratory test of the
experiment of faith, while all the rest must be taken on hearsay.
4. The =Primacy of Primary Truth= Must Be Maintained.
One thing more which the scientific man does is to accord primacy to that
realm of truth which is primary in importance. In order to do this, the
scientific spirit compels the one possessed by it to meet two requirements.
Recognizing that truth is an eternal unity, he will first determine to deal
with the facts in any given realm in such a way as to preserve harmony at
all times between them and all the known facts of all the other realms. For
only thus can he avoid destroying the unity of truth and heading himself
toward error and confusion.
He will then determine to maintain the primacy of primary truth by
=interpreting in its light the facts of all other realms=. That is, he will
make that realm whose truths are of transcendent importance the norm, or
standard, by which to interpret the facts of other realms, withholding
interpretations until the facts of any other given realm can be interpreted
in harmony with those primary truths which have been made forever secure by
being scientifically verified.
These requirements would seem so axiomatic as to need no emphasis, and yet,
strange as it may seem, right here is another place where the Church and
the Schools part company. For the Church is according primacy to one realm
of truth, and the Schools to another, making unity of final conclusions out
of the question.
If we are to be possessed by the scientific spirit and proceed with
scientific accuracy, however, we will be compelled, in the terms of our
present study, to accord that primacy to the =spiritual= realm over the
=natural= which its transcendent importance demands. For by as much as
truth about =God= is of more eternal value to sinful man than truth about
His =creation=, and by as much as truth by which we are =saved= is of more
transcendent importance than truth by which we are =informed=, by just that
much will the scientific spirit compel us to interpret every bit of
information that comes to us from the natural realm in harmony with, and in
the light of, the truths of the spiritual realm, for by this method alone
can we maintain the primacy of the spiritual realm over the natural.
This means that the man who is truly scientific will never interpret
discoveries in the natural realm in such a way as to deny or even throw
doubt upon those fundamental truths in the spiritual realm which have been
forever secured by scientific demonstration. In other words, he will not
seek to bring the Bible into harmony with man's interpretation of
scientific facts, but he will seek to bring every scientific discovery into
harmony with the Bible, withholding final conclusions from all discoveries
that will not so harmonize until he has light enough so they will.
We have now reached the point where we can sum up all the requirements
which the really scientific man will meet in order that he may be able to
proceed with scientific accuracy in his researches in the realms of truth.
He will separate the natural and the spiritual realms of truth from each
other. He will investigate natural truth with the intellect and spiritual
truth with faith. He will distinguish truth that can be demonstrated to the
experience from that which must be accepted on testimony alone. And he will
accord primacy to the spiritual realm over the natural.
It only remains to be said that the man who will not meet these
requirements is a total stranger to the scientific spirit. "The Standard
Dictionary" says that science is "knowledge gained and verified by exact
observation and correct thinking," and the man who will not meet
requirements that are absolutely necessary for exact observation and
correct thinking in the gaining and verifying of knowledge does not have
the first qualification of the scientific investigator. For he is really
not open to truth at all, and is therefore in no position to maintain
either the unity between the realms of truth or the primacy of primary
truth, and exact observation and correct thinking are out of the question
under such conditions. He cannot verify anything with scientific accuracy
when he will not even classify the different realms of truth and the
faculties of investigation, or give the realms their respective places in
the sphere of truth. And so it is futile for one who refuses to do this to
talk about being in harmony with the scientific spirit.
When an investigator meets these requirements, on the other hand, he is
then ready to meet the next demand made upon the scientific inquirer, which
is--
II. =Truth Must Be Investigated Scientifically.=
Accepting the self-evident accuracy of the classification we have just
outlined, we will now give attention to what the scientific spirit will
require of us at those two places where the Church and the Schools have
parted company. For if we can get together here, we can both proceed and
arrive together in our investigation of truth, and that will end the
controversy.
1. =Faith= Must Be Given Precedence over =Reason=.
Let us see what it will mean to give precedence to faith over reason when
we are working in the realm of spiritual truth.
It will mean that =believing= will precede =reasoning= in our approach to
the Word of God, and this defines the vital distinction between the true
Christian and the rationalist.
=a.= The Method of the Rationalist.
Faith and rationalism are mutually exclusive in the spiritual realm.
Rationalizing and doubting are first cousins when the Word of God is
involved.
Satan was the first rationalist on earth, and Eve fell when she accepted
his reasonings about the Word of God in the place of simple faith in that
Word. For Satan raised a question about the Word,--"Yea, hath God
said?"--and thereby opened the way for incipient doubt, and then he
reasoned Eve into accepting a "common sense" interpretation of what God had
said, which proved to be an outright denial of His Word. And look at the
consequences--indescribably terrible--of rationalizing about God's Word
instead of believing it!
But rationalism did not stop there, for ever since that day all men without
exception have been natural-born rationalists. For it is perfectly natural
to all men to =rationalize= about God's Word, but it takes a miracle of
Divine power to make any one willing to =believe= it.
These two attitudes toward Scripture are forever irreconcilable. In the
nature of things, they can never be harmonized. The believer in the Word
and the rationalist take two utterly divergent paths that cannot possibly
reach the same goal.
The program of the rationalist is to arrive at an understanding of
spiritual truth over the pathway of reasoning that is apart from faith.
That of the believer is to arrive at it over the pathway of reasoning that
is founded on faith.
The program of the rationalist is to harmonize the Word of God with his
conclusions. That of the believer is to harmonize his conclusions with the
Word. The program of the rationalist is to become a critic of the Word and
sit in judgment on it. That of the believer is to let the Word become his
critic and sit in judgment on him.
These are certainly reasons enough why the believer and the rationalist can
never travel together. For the believer is walking by God's estimate of
him, while the rationalist is walking by his estimate of God, and these
paths go in opposite directions.
If you sit in judgment on some portion of God's Word and determine that it
is reasonable, and that since it commends itself to your judgment it is
therefore acceptable and you will believe it, =that= is not faith in the
=Word= but in =your own reason=. You have surrendered your =intellect= to
your own conclusions but your =heart= is far from God. Faith in the Word is
surrender to it without passing judgment on it.
And yet surrendering one's mind to one's own conclusions about God is
precisely the thing that passes for faith in God on the part of those who
have lost their old-fashioned, evangelical faith while they were in the
Schools, and yet come out with what they describe as a more intelligent and
rational faith in God and the Bible. In their desperate attempt to survive
the wreck of their orthodox faith, they have =reasoned= their way to
conclusions about God that harmonized with what they were taught in the
Schools; but the God they arrived at was the god of rationalism and not the
God of Revelation.
They will say to the orthodox man, "You and I go by different pathways, but
we both arrive at the same God." But this is eternally impossible! For
there is only one pathway leading to the true God, and that is not followed
by =reasoning= one's way out of a shattered faith, but first by =believing=
one's way out of darkness into light, and then by believing steadily on in
that divinely imparted faith which always shatters the reasonings and
conclusions of the rationalists.
To be a believer in the Word puts rationalism out of business, for no one
can reason himself into the acceptance of truth he already believes. And on
the other hand, to be a rationalist regarding the Word puts faith out of
business, for faith is the acceptance of the bare Word of God without
further evidence, and the rationalizer is compelled to reject that attitude
toward the Word so that he may have the way left open to reason his way to
what he is willing to accept as evidence. This is why so many of those
students who sit in the classes of the rationalists in our colleges and
seminaries lose their faith. Rationalism makes Scriptural faith impossible.
Rationalizing and believing, when the Bible is in question, are mutually
exclusive.
The reason for this is not that the facts of Scripture contradict each
other, and certainly not that these facts are one thing to faith and
another thing to reason. The antagonism does not arise over the =facts= of
the Word but over the =interpretation= of them. The rationalist, accepting
no interpretation except that furnished by his own puny and incompetent
reason unillumined by faith, reaches conclusions absolutely contradicted by
those arrived at by the man of faith. The fact is, he could not hope to
arrive anywhere else. For how can finite man relate and interpret the few
and scattered facts he discovers in the realm of infinite truth? How can a
man by searching find out God?
"By whose interpretation, yours or mine?" is a favorite question which the
rationalist asks the believer when the meaning of some Scripture passage is
in question. By =no one's= interpretation except the =Holy Spirit's=! He
alone can interpret the Bible, for He alone knows what He meant by what He
wrote. And even the Holy Spirit is able to interpret the Bible to =no one=
but the =believer=. For the rationalist, the unbeliever, rejects faith, and
thereby completely closes "the eyes of the heart" to the illumination of
the Spirit; while the faith of the believer is the very thing that opens
the heart to an understanding of the Word. Spiritual apprehension begins
only at the point where faith begins.
This is why it is that when the rationalist tries his hand at
interpretation he is sure, sooner or later, to bring perfectly harmonious
facts into confusion and contradiction.
Take, for example, the facts regarding the development of the human embryo.
The rationalist notes that as it develops it bears a striking resemblance,
successively, to the more mature forms of some of the lower animals, in an
imagined orderly progress from lower to higher. That this resemblance is a
fact no one disputes. There is no controversy over the fact. But when the
rationalist attempts to explain this fact, he interprets it to mean that
man is the product of evolution, rather than a special creation, as the
Bible says he is, and thus he thrusts such confusion and contradiction
before us that we are compelled to make a choice between his interpretation
and the statements of the Bible. The controversy that results is caused
altogether by the rationalist thrusting himself into that place that
belongs to the Holy Spirit alone. "=He= shall lead you into all the truth,"
said Christ, and it is presumptuous in the extreme to seek to do the Holy
Spirit's work for Him.
We are forewarned of the methods of the modern rationalist in his approach
to the Bible by what Christ said to the Jews who were finding fault with
what He taught:
"For had ye believed Moses," He said, "ye would have believed
Me; for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings,
how shall ye believe My words?"
This is precisely the pathway modern rationalism has followed. It began by
discrediting what Moses wrote, and it has now gone to the length of denying
final authority to what Christ said.
Rationalism is both irreverent and destructive when it seeks to do anything
with the Word of God. For that Book is to be handled as =no= other book is.
Behind the historical, and the literary, and the textual, and the
philosophical criticism must be a spiritual discernment, born of faith
alone, which both dominates and regulates all the rest. For just as a blind
man may turn the eyes of his head to the sun and see no physical light, so
the rationalist may turn the eyes of his mind to the Bible and see no
spiritual truth. It takes the eyes of the heart to see spiritual truth, and
they can function only through faith.
=b.= The Method of the Believer.
In order clearly to understand the method of faith, we need right here to
guard against another extreme. By the contrasts we have drawn in the last
few pages, it is not at all meant that there is no place in the exercise of
faith for the exercise also of the intellect at the same time and toward
the same object. For, in the nature of things, the intellect =must= be
exercised in a mental apprehension of that which is to be believed before
the way is even open for faith to begin.
Neither is it meant that reasoning is so out of harmony with and
destructive of faith that its exercise in connection with faith is
impossible. For faith is not blind credulity; it is not jumping in the
dark; it is not an irrational impulse; it is not swallowing something with
the eyes shut. It is rather an open-eyed stepping out on to the spiritual
foundations of the universe. But notice--it is stepping out on to
=spiritual= foundations.
It =is= meant, however, by the contrasts above, that the moment an
intellectual apprehension of what is to be believed, followed by a
conclusion to accept or reject it according to whether it is reasonable or
not--the moment such an attitude is =substituted= for the heart acceptance
of the bare Word of God, even though it may be beyond understanding and
reason, that moment the normal exercise of mind and reason has degenerated
into a rationalism that makes faith impossible.
Notice an emphasis above. Faith is stepping out upon =spiritual=
foundations. Then recall that to all except the man of presumption,
foundations must be seen before they will be stepped upon. The normal man
demands to see where he is going.
Now spiritual foundations can be seen only by spiritual eyes. The natural
vision cannot see past the natural realm. And spiritual realities will
never be stepped out upon until they are seen. For faith is not an abstract
and aimless emotion. It requires an object that can be seen, and one that
can be trusted.
It is therefore the one main purpose of the Bible to set before men the one
saving Object of faith. This purpose lies behind the multiplied revelations
of God all through the Old Testament, and the gathering together of all
those revelations into Christ in the New Testament in such fullness and
finality that He could say: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
But God and Christ must be seen before they can be trusted. Not
intellectually or historically, but spiritually seen. And they can be seen
only by spiritual eyes. And spiritual vision is possible only through the
divine touch. And the divine touch is given only to those who consent; it
is not forced on any one. And the attitude of consent is precisely the
attitude set forth in Christ's formula: "If any man wills to do, he shall
know."
Only by coming into this attitude can any man see God. "The pure in
=heart=," said Christ, "shall see God." It is a heart attitude. And the
meaning of the purity of heart that opens the vision to God is brought out
when Christ is asked the question, "How is it that Thou wilt manifest
Thyself unto us and not unto the world?" His answer is of the utmost
significance. He says, "If a man love Me, he will =keep My words=." Keeping
His words, willing to do His will--this is the attitude that opens the
vision to Him. He and the Father can manifest themselves to and be seen by
those only who are in the attitude of consent toward the keeping of His
words. This is the only attitude that can bring the anointing of the eyes
with that eye-salve which opens them to spiritual vision.
But when the eyes, in response to this attitude of willingness toward the
will of God, are once opened to spiritual things, then God, in all the
perfections of His divine character, is seen both in the Bible, the written
Word, and in Christ, the living Word, and this two-fold revelation of Him
is seen to be as perfect and flawless as the God who is thus revealed.
Those who think they see imperfections either in the Bible or in Christ are
spiritually blind. For when one thinks he sees flaws where there are only
infinite perfections, he advertises to all that he is attempting the
impossible task of examining spiritual realities with his natural vision,
and is therefore passing judgment on what he has never seen.
But when the spiritual vision has once been opened, and God is really seen,
in the Bible and in Christ, in all the perfections of His infinitely holy
and loving character, the =reason= at once leads to the conclusion from the
facts seen that such a Being is to be trusted, and active faith thereby
becomes the outgrowth of =that= kind of reasoning. That is, the faith that
begins as an attitude of willingness toward the will of God, through which
attitude the eyes are touched into a vision of the character of God, such a
faith comes into and continues in an active submission to that will through
the normal functioning of reason.
This shows the vital difference between reasoning and rationalizing, and
the relation of each to faith. The effect of reasoning on faith is
constructive, while that of rationalizing is destructive. And the heart of
the difference between the two traces back, in the last analysis, to those
two kinds of vision. The rationalist, unyielding to the touch of God on his
vision, sees only natural facts, and even then he sees them only partially
and wholly out of relation to the spiritual revelation of God in the Bible
and in Christ; and thinking that he sees discrepancies between the facts in
the natural realm and the statements of Scripture, his =reason= leads him
to reject the Bible as infallible and inerrant, thereby making faith in the
God of the Bible utterly impossible. His reasoning powers are simply
functioning normally when he concludes to reject the statements about the
facts that to him are entirely unseen which do not seem to agree with what
he sees. His trouble is not with his reasoning powers but with his vision.
Refusing to see what he is passing judgment on, his method of inquiry is
rationalizing.
But the believer, utterly yielded to God and therefore seeing Him through
anointed eyes in both the written and the living Word, thus seeing the
infinite perfections of His character, is led by the normal functioning of
the =same reason= to accept and act on the bare Word of God without further
evidence, because the evidence he sees is all the evidence he needs. It is
perfectly reasonable, therefore, for Him to accept all that such an One
says in His Word, waiting for the partial and apparently contradictory
knowledge in the natural realm to be corrected into harmony with the Bible.
And his reasoning powers are simply functioning normally when he accepts
the Bible as infallible and inerrant, for this attitude is based on what he
sees. The entire difference between the rationalist and the believer is a
matter of vision. The reasoning powers of each simply act in view of what
each sees.
This is why reasoning is never out of harmony with faith, while
rationalizing always is. For true reasoning in spiritual things is =based=
on an attitude of faith, while rationalizing rejects that attitude as an
essential preliminary to correct conclusions, and therefore reasons either
entirely apart from or in order to faith. Such an attitude as opens the
vision does not precede the action of reason, and the conclusions cannot
help being destructive of faith, for they are pronouncements on things
utterly unseen and unknown, and which the Bible says are "foolishness" to
the man who sees only through his natural vision. But the attitude of
willingness toward the will of God so opens the vision to the whole
spiritual realm that the real foolishness is seen to be even the least
attempt to pronounce upon or repudiate that which is utterly unseen and
unknown.
This is the fundamental reason why there is such divergence, even to the
point of mutual exclusion, between the different "interpretations" of
Scripture given forth by the believer and the rationalist. The rationalist,
with heart and vision closed to spiritual truth, can give no interpretation
except that which seems reasonable in view of what he sees; while the
believer, in the attitude of faith toward God, =sees= the interpretation of
Scripture through the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
The interpretation of the Word is the very work for which the Holy Spirit
has come into the world. That is not all of His work, but a very essential
part of it. He is God's official Interpreter of His truth to the believer.
Not to the rationalizer, but to the believer. And His work is so divinely
perfect and absolutely final that all human attempts at interpretation,
which are devoid of faith, are an insult to Him. He is the One who wrote
the Word, and so He knows the meaning, not only of what He said, but even
of what He left unsaid, and therefore none but He can interpret either the
words or the silences of Scripture.
For example, when Melchizedek flashes, meteor-like, across the page of Old
Testament history, and then disappears without a word as to beginning of
life or end of days, who but the Holy Spirit could interpret those silences
into spiritual meanings of unfathomable richness? Who but He who was
responsible for those omissions could interpret them into some of the
richest revelations of all Scripture concerning the eternal Priesthood of
the slain and risen Son of God? And if the Holy Spirit can thus seize upon
the very silences of Scripture in showing us the things of Christ, who will
deny Him the power to interpret to those who will receive it what He meant
by what He wrote? And who but the rationalist and the unbeliever can ever
refuse to let Him reveal the perfect harmony between the facts of nature
and the scientific references of Scripture?
It is the divine prerogative to =cause= us to understand the Book. When the
risen Christ appeared suddenly among the disciples, first frightened and
then scarcely believing for joy, He first convinced them that it was really
He to whom they had already given their hearts, thus quickening their
=faith= into renewed activity, "Then opened =He= their =mind= that they
might =understand= the Scriptures." First faith and then knowledge of the
truth; this is the scientific order.
Luther saw this when he wrote to Spalatin:
Above all things it is quite true that one cannot search into
the Holy Scriptures by means of study, nor by means of the
intellect. Therefore begin with prayer that the Lord grant
unto you the true understanding of His Word.
Even Spencer had a glimpse of this scientific principle toward the end of
his life. In his essay on "Feeling Versus Intellect" he showed that he had
lost faith in his former estimate of the place of the intellect in the
moral realm when he said:
Everywhere the cry is educate--educate--educate! Everywhere
the belief is that by such culture as schools furnish,
children, and therefore adults, can be molded into the
desired shapes. It is assumed that when men are taught what
is right, they will do what is right--that a proposition
intellectually accepted becomes morally operative. And this
conviction, contradicted by everyday experience, is at
variance with an everyday axiom--the axiom that each faculty
is strengthened by the exercise of it--intellectual power by
intellectual action, and moral power by moral action.
What can this mean but that Spencer saw, at least dimly, the radical
difference between the intellectual and the spiritual faculties?
The logic of all these facts and principles makes only one conclusion
possible. When the man of scientific spirit approaches the Book which can
reveal its truths to =faith alone=, he will not be unscientific enough to
refuse faith to its statements and use his =intellect= alone. For he will
see that the one who refuses the attitude of faith toward the Scriptures
will be "ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth,"
while the one who accepts the Word in humble dependence on the Holy
Spirit's interpretation of its meaning is on the one solitary highway by
which a knowledge of the truth can be reached. When the Church and the
Schools, therefore, agree on using this method of approach to the Word of
God, they will at least have started toward the same goal.
2. The =Spiritual= Realm Must Be Given Primacy over the =Natural=.
Let us now see what it will mean to accord primacy to the spiritual realm
over the natural.
There is only one possible method of doing this, and that is to interpret
in the light of spiritual truth all the facts of the natural realm.
The man of scientific mind will therefore see clearly that he will be
utterly incapable of giving such an interpretation to natural facts until
he first =knows what spiritual truth is=, and this will mean the laboratory
method of the experiment of faith.
But right here you may say that science has nothing to do with the
spiritual realm; that scientific investigation stops the moment it reaches
that realm; and that therefore to demand the use of these scientific
methods in that realm is not only foolish but impossible.
But stop and think a minute. It is both foolish and futile to demand that
either the =implements= or the =faculties= used in the scientific realm
shall be brought over and used in the pursuit of spiritual truth. This is
precisely the thing we are seeking to show. But that does not mean for a
moment that the inquirer must therefore give up the =scientific attitude of
mind= and cease to work according to the demands of the =scientific spirit=
the moment he begins inquiry in the spiritual realm. For that spirit is
simply an honest and accurate method of investigation, and because science
is compelled to stop at the border of the spiritual realm is no reason why
we should cease being honest and accurate when we investigate in that
realm. It is perfectly true that the scientist, as such, has absolutely no
pronouncement to make concerning spiritual truth; but it is equally true
that the inquirer in the spiritual realm, if he does not pursue his
inquiries by scientific methods and according to the demands of the
scientific spirit, will have no pronouncement to make either. The man who
intends, therefore, to be scientific enough in his spirit to give primary
truth its place of primacy by interpreting in its light the truths of other
realms, and who, with the instincts of the true scientist, recognizes
spiritual truth as primary in its relation to the natural, will be actuated
sufficiently by his scientific attitude to determine to know what spiritual
truth is, in order that he may be able to interpret natural truth in its
light.
This will bring him face to face with Christ's formula for entering upon
the knowledge of spiritual truth. Being honestly desirous of knowing what
spiritual truth is, he will determine to do God's will in order that he may
find out.
=a.= This Will Mean Surrendering the Heart to God.
This is the only thing it can mean. For spiritual truth is primarily heart
truth, not intellectual truth, and the only way to know heart truth is to
surrender the heart to that Holy Spirit of truth who "searcheth the deep
things of God," and who was sent into the world to "lead us into all the
truth."
The grammarian, the philologist, the historian, the naturalist, the
philosopher, therefore, have no service they can perform here. They cannot
carry their apparatus over into the spiritual realm and weigh and measure,
estimate and judge, illumine and interpret spiritual truth for us. When we
stand here we are on that holy ground where we must lay off our sandals of
scientific paraphernalia and stand before God with open heart ready to hear
what He has to say. The moment we get to this realm, the whole apparatus by
which truth is received changes from reason to faith.
But do you see where this brings us? Straight back to Christ's formula!
This is precisely what His formula involves, for when a man wills to do
God's will, he takes the first step in faith.
Then when a man comes into this attitude toward God's will, he will next
inquire where he is to commence in the doing of that will, what the first
step is in the will of God.
The Textbook tells us that the first step is to "repent and believe the
Gospel." That this is the first step is self-evident, because the heart
must be opened to Him who alone can give the knowledge of spiritual truth
before that knowledge is possible, and repentance and faith are the opening
of the heart to Him. For repentance is a coming into that attitude of heart
toward God in which the whole life is laid bare before Him exactly as it
is, thereby opening the way for faith; and believing the Gospel is an
entering upon that faith which accepts the Gospel--the Good News--of
Christ's finished work of atonement for sin through His shed blood on the
cross, and reckons pardon for sin and new life in Christ to be now ours
according to the Word of God. For faith, you remember, is both an attitude
and an act; an attitude of surrender to God, and an act of receiving what
God has for us; and this is precisely what it means to repent and believe
the Gospel.
This means that the man of genuine scientific spirit will begin his pursuit
of spiritual truth by sincere "repentance toward God" and "faith toward our
Lord Jesus Christ" for salvation through His shed blood, which, according
to the Textbook, are the first steps in willing to do the will of God,
followed by a moment-by-moment dependence on Christ, Who is now his life,
to reveal truth to him as he continues, by faith, in the attitude of an
open heart. This is the only possible way of ever knowing that truth which
alone can make us free.
It is true that it is quite the fashion these days for every unbeliever,
agnostic, modernist, and unitarian to quote those words of Christ "Ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" in justification of the
claim that something which he is pleased to call truth has given him what
he fancies is freedom. But Scripture could not be more grossly perverted
than by such a wresting of its plain meaning. The whole statement reads:
Then said Jesus unto =those= Jews that =believed= on =Him=,
if =ye continue= in =My Word=, =then= are ye My disciples
indeed; and =ye= shall =know= the truth, and the truth shall
make you free.
Only the spiritually blind can fail to see the meaning of such a statement.
It plainly means that the first step toward freedom is =faith in Christ=,
the genuineness of which is evidenced by =continuance in His Word=; and
that it is only in this attitude of =faith= that it is possible to =know=
the truth that makes us free.
The truth is, therefore, that to be free one must believe on Christ. This
does not mean to give intellectual assent to this or that fact about Him,
but utterly to commit the life to Him, sin and all, past, present, and
future. For the Gospel tells us not so much what to believe as Whom to
believe, and Paul tells us what faith in Christ means when he exclaims: "I
know =Whom= I have believed," and then further unfolds what this involves
by adding, "and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have
=committed unto Him= against that day."
Faith is not simply giving mental assent to facts, it is primarily
surrendering to a Person. This is what it means to believe on Christ, and
anything short of this will neither give us knowledge of the truth nor make
us free.
Then following this attitude toward Christ, the believer evidences his
faith by continuing in His Word, by which he comes into experiential
knowledge of its truth and its meaning.
Then coming to know the truth by experiencing it through faith, he is where
the Son of God Himself becomes his freedom. And there is no other freedom.
It is in the experience of =Himself=, not in an intellectual assent to
facts about Him, that He makes us free by becoming the =way= to God for us,
the =truth= about God to us, and the =life= of God in us.
It is therefore only he whom the Son sets free who is free indeed, for
freedom from the curse of sin by the experience of Christ as Saviour, and
freedom from the blindness of error by the experience of Christ as Truth
incarnate, is the only freedom there is.
When the Word says, therefore, "Whatsoever is not of =faith= is =sin=," it
contemplates both the object of faith and the cause of forfeited freedom.
For the Holy Spirit came to convict men of =sin= because they =believe not
on Christ=. Unfaith in Christ is therefore the essence of sin. And sin is
bondage, not freedom. Scripture describes the unbeliever in Christ as the
bondslave of sin, held in chains of darkness and error. This is why it is
impossible either to know even natural truth in any adequate way, or to be
able to untangle it from error, without becoming a believer on Christ as
the first step. So let no one who has not surrendered his heart to Christ
in faith boast that he either knows the truth or is free.
But suppose a man should seek to know spiritual truth and yet refuse to
surrender his heart to Christ in faith, then what? It could only be because
he was so devoid of the scientific spirit that he did not want to =know the
truth= at =any cost=. And no man who is in this frame of mind can ever come
to know the truth. Haeckel defines the scientific attitude of mind when he
says of the scientific inquirer that his
sole and only task is to seek to know the truth, and to teach
what he has discovered to be the truth, indifferent as
to ... consequences.
This means, in the terms of our present discussion, that in order to know
spiritual truth, the man of scientific mind will be willing to work by
Christ's formula no matter what it costs him, for that alone will give him
the knowledge of eternal things which will make it possible adequately to
interpret natural truth.
But suppose the inquirer doubts the possibility of entering into a
scientific knowledge of spiritual truth by following this formula, what
then? It can only be because he is so unscholarly as to make the blunder in
logic of assuming as untrue or impossible that which =remains to be
proved=.
No matter on which ground he refuses to surrender to Christ, therefore, no
inquirer after spiritual truth can be either scientific or scholarly who
makes this refusal; for he thereby renders himself not only utterly
incompetent to know spiritual truth, but also entirely unable to accord
primacy to the spiritual realm by interpreting natural truth in its light.
Suppose a man should take this attitude of indifference or unbelief toward
natural truth. Suppose that after refusing to make the first experiment in
the study of chemistry he should attempt researches in a realm whose facts
required interpretation in the light of the chemical laws he had refused to
learn in the laboratory. Then suppose he should dogmatically announce such
interpretations of his discoveries in that realm as were altogether out of
harmony with the most fundamental laws in the chemical realm. And then
suppose that in order to maintain his unfounded and arbitrary
interpretations he should so twist the statements of the textbook on
chemistry into harmony with his theories as to destroy their essential
integrity. He would win nothing but contempt from experienced chemists. He
would certainly find no place in the ranks of scientists.
This is precisely why evolutionists and rationalists, using this method
exactly, can win no response from experienced Christians, and why they
ought to be outside the membership of our churches as long as they pursue
this method. Believers can not listen for one moment to such
interpretations of scientific facts by unbelievers as destroy the essential
doctrines of the Christian faith and deny the inerrancy and final authority
of the Word of God. For unbelievers have not only not secured a scientific
knowledge of what they are talking about, but they have not even acquired
the right to =pass an opinion= on the fundamental doctrines of the Bible.
How can they announce dogmatically so-called scientific interpretations of
the facts of nature which give the lie to the unmistakable doctrines of the
spiritual Textbook whose truthfulness they have refused to put to the
laboratory test of experience, and yet at the same time claim to be
actuated by the scientific spirit? Those who do such things know nothing
about the scientific spirit! Canon Dyson Hague was scientifically correct
when he said that the rationalists are being opposed, not on the ground of
their scholarship, but
because the biblical criticism of rationalists and
unbelievers can be neither expert nor scientific.
There is but one conclusion possible. The man who intends to accord primacy
to the spiritual realm will first acquire a verified knowledge of spiritual
truth by the laboratory method of experience, according to the formula of
the Textbook. For when he does this he will then be qualified to take the
next step and make the primacy of spiritual truth an actual reality.
=b.= This will Mean Interpreting Natural Truth in the Light of the Bible.
We have now arrived at that point where we can sum up the logic of the
scientific method of the laboratory as it applies to the investigation of
the theory of evolution.
The man who is honest enough to want to know the truth at all cost, and
accurate enough to insist on coming into a knowledge of the truth both by
scientific methods and in the scientific order of primacy, will first
acquire an adequate knowledge by experience, as we have already decided, of
those statements of the Bible that can be verified to the experience, and
then he will for the first time be qualified to arrive at an adequate
estimate of the statements that cannot be so verified.
Then recognizing that all the scientific references of the Bible, including
those relating to origins, are in that class that can not be verified to
the experience, he will decide to come to no conclusions concerning them
except such as will maintain both the primacy of primary truth and the
unity of all the realms of truth. He will do this because it is the only
thing he can do and still maintain a truly scientific attitude of mind.
This will mean that he will interpret all the non-experimental statements
of the Bible, including the scientific references, in harmony with and in
the light of those spiritual and experiential truths which he has already
had verified to him through his own personal relations with God through
faith in Christ. In other words, he will maintain the primacy of spiritual
truth by allowing no interpretation of scientific facts that will cast
either denial or doubt on those fundamental doctrines which he now =knows=
are true, because they have been =supernaturally verified= to him through
the laboratory test of faith.
Take an illustration. Suppose an author on chemistry, who was also a
historian, should include in his textbook a history of the science of
chemistry. Now if a man puts his statements of chemical laws to an accurate
laboratory test and finds them true, he has the presumption established
that the history, which cannot be so tested, is also true.
Yes, that illustration breaks down, but only at the point of =human
fallibility= and =imperfection=. If that author were omniscient and
infallible the illustration would be perfect.
Now apply it to the Word. When a man, through the unfailing laboratory test
of honest faith, finds that the statements that can be put to the test of
experience are infallible truth, he has not simply the presumption but also
the =absolute certainty= established that all its other statements are
true, because the infallible and omniscient Author has given it to us as
His Word. It comes to us with a "Thus saith the Lord" ringing in our ears
from beginning to end, and not with the multiplied repetitions of "We may
well suppose" of the scientific guessers.
The man of scientific mind, therefore, will accept all the non-experiential
statements of the Bible as infallible truth, including scientific and
historical references and prophetic utterances. He will then accord the
place of primacy to all understood scientific references of the Bible over
all discoveries in the natural realm. He will do this by interpreting the
few and fragmentary discoveries of finite and fallible man in the light of
the statements that come to us as the Word of an infallible God, concluding
that if there is any apparent inharmony, it lies in the partial discoveries
or premature conclusions of scientists, rather than in any error of
statement in the Bible. In other words, he will interpret science in the
light of the Bible, and not the Bible in the light of science. And if at
any time a harmonizing of scientific discoveries with the Bible seems
impossible, he will withhold final conclusions until he has further
scientific light, realizing that when he knows enough science he will then
be able to understand the scientific references of the Bible, and the
apparent inharmony will vanish. Multiplied illustrations of this are so
familiar that it is scarcely necessary to elaborate on it, as many will
occur to the reader who is at all familiar with the essential harmony
between the Bible and all real scientific knowledge, and with the fact that
a multitude of scientific discoveries have been made, only to find that the
Bible made reference to them in the most accurate scientific terms many
centuries before their discovery.
A conclusion is now possible as to what attitude a man who has faith in an
inerrant Bible will be compelled to take toward the theory of evolution.
When he sees that the logic of evolution destroys every fundamental
Scripture doctrine which he has already had verified to him by the Holy
Spirit; when he learns that evolution is not only entirely unproven but
even discredited by many competent men of science; and when he turns to the
Bible and reads the statement repeated over and again that each species was
created to reproduce only "after his kind"; he will be compelled to make a
choice between evolution and an inerrant Bible, and, believing the Bible,
he will reject evolution.
Then when he recalls that to Eve, Satan advanced an unproven theory which
assumed to interpret, but had the effect of denying, the Word of God, and
then reflects that the theory of evolution does precisely the same thing,
he will become suspicious that the "father of lies" is behind the whole
evolutionary propaganda. Other theories that are unproven and discredited
fall by their own weight. The persistence of this theory must be accounted
for on the ground that it can be used to destroy faith in the infallibility
of the Bible.
It is quite true that there are many who say they believe the Bible and
accept evolution also. But how those who are mentally sound and capable of
logical consistency can accept two mutually exclusive propositions at the
same time, it is impossible to understand. We will be compelled to let
those who say they accept both the Bible and evolution explain how they do
it--if they can! But meantime, if we take pains to make careful inquiry of
such people, we shall find that in =every case= where logical and
consistent thinking has any meaning whatever, a =choice= has been made
between the Bible as an inerrant and infallible Book and the theory of
evolution. It is quite possible for a man to hold the "scientific" or
"historical" attitude toward the Bible, which makes it a human book marred
by many errors, and believe in evolution at the same time; but the man who
holds that attitude toward the Bible =does not believe it at all=! No one
can accept the theory of evolution and the doctrine of an inerrant Bible at
the same time.
And yet the attempt is being very skilfully made by many leaders in the
Schools today to camouflage this impossibility. A very recent article by
Dr. Shailer Mathews on "Christ and Education" is a typical illustration.
In the midst of the article Dr. Mathews frankly indicates his acceptance of
evolution, because of which, he says, "the meaning of religion was
enlarged" for him. Then he leaves the impression with the reader that the
conclusions of modern science are to be taken without question, and also
that our faith in Christ and the Bible are to be brought into harmony with
these conclusions. That is, our faith must combine an acceptance of
evolution with whatever attitude toward Christ and the Scriptures the
evolutionary philosophy makes possible. This puts reason above Revelation
and makes the scientific realm primary in its relation to the spiritual.
The reader can judge, in the light of our previous thinking, whether this
procedure is scientific or not.
Then in speaking of the fact that the educated man as truly as the ignorant
man needs the saving power of Christ, he says:
But he must be saved as an educated man and not as an
ignorant man. He cannot be forced to give up what he knows to
be real. If he be told that Christian loyalty involves the
abandonment of the assured results and methods of scientific
investigation, he will refuse such loyalty.
This implied charge is later on in the article made specific when he says
that some schools
"are refusing to let their students know the results of
scientific investigation for fear lest such knowledge will
ruin certain theological beliefs for which the schools
stand"--a method he describes as putting a premium upon
ignorance as a prerequisite for faith.
The reader knows as well as the writer that the whole attitude of the
Christian Church, and therefore of true Christian education, challenges
those words and hurls them back at their author for proof. Both the implied
and the direct accusations are utterly without foundation. Indeed, the
thing Dr. Mathews charges is the one thing true Christian education does
=not= do.
When did the Church ever try to force a man, educated or ignorant, to give
up what he knows to be facts in order to become a Christian? When was a man
ever asked by Christian schools to choose between the assured results and
methods of scientific investigation and loyalty to Christ? When has that
institution which, above all others, has fought ignorance and fostered true
scientific investigation used a method that put a premium on ignorance as a
prerequisite for faith?
It is not =facts= that the Church either fears or refuses to accept, but
such an =interpretation= of them by evolutionists and rationalists as to
deny the scientific accuracy and therefore the inerrancy of the Word of
God. It is altogether beside the truth to intimate that the Church is
fostering an education that has to withhold assured scientific facts for
fear their knowledge would ruin faith in any theological beliefs whatever
"for which the schools stand." It is not the =knowledge= of scientific
facts that true Christian schools ever withhold, but such =theories= and
=speculations= concerning their meaning as would destroy the schools as
Christian institutions if the logic of them were followed to the end. And
as for the Church ever abandoning the assured results and methods of
scientific investigation, this is precisely the thing the Church is
=fighting to maintain= against the efforts of evolutionists and
rationalists. It is rather the =Schools= that have been abandoning
scientific methods of investigation, thereby reaching "assured results"
that invalidate not only the doctrine of an inerrant Bible, but every other
fundamental doctrine of the Scriptures. Indeed, this is the very reason why
the controversy between the Church and the Schools is now on, and Dr.
Mathews' article is typical of the attempts that are being made to make it
appear that faith in evolution and the Bible can be combined--an attempt
toward which all believers in an infallible Book will always be
irreconcilable.
And this irreconcilable attitude is not without reason, but for the
perfectly valid reason that the one who accepts evolution as a fact is
utterly unscientific. For in the first place he accepts unproven
assumptions and rationalistic speculations as demonstrated facts. And, in
the next place, he thereby forces human interpretations of scientific facts
to contradict the divinely verified doctrines of the Bible, thus thrusting
confusion and contradiction between realms of truth which are in perfect
harmony. And, still further, he interprets the Bible in the light(?) not
simply of science but even of a false science, and thus compels unproven
hypotheses to deny the truthfulness of the scientific and historical
references of the Bible, thereby forcing into primacy a realm of truth that
is not primary. And all of this because he refuses to follow the formula of
the spiritual Textbook and put faith above reason and the Bible above
science in his approach to truth. How can a man follow such methods and yet
imagine that he is scientific?
One more thing remains to be said before this argument is completed. We
started out with an unproven, though self-evident premise. Turn back to the
very first paragraph in the book and you will find that the falsity of the
pantheistic theory was assumed but not proved. Its falsity was assumed on
grounds that have come to light as the argument has proceeded, and that
might easily be turned to account now as conclusive proofs. For example, to
refer to one of them, the self-evident distinction between the realm which
contains the Creator and that which contains His creation science proves to
be a real divergence in kind by being compelled to cease investigation with
scientific apparatus the moment the boundary line of the spiritual realm is
reached. And if there is as real a distinction between God and His
creation as this indicates, the doctrines of pantheism are impossible.
But the theory of evolution fosters a doctrine of the "immanence of God"
which is nothing but a modern form of pantheism. For example, Prof. Josiah
Royce, of Harvard, has said:
God is the spirit animating nature, the universal force which
takes the myriad forms, heat, light, gravitation,
electricity, and the like.
And Prof. George B. Foster said:
God is a symbol to designate the universe in its ideal
achieving capacity.
This is pantheism, pure and simple, for God and His created universe are
not distinguished from each other. And this blots out the distinction
between the natural and the spiritual realms.
Realizing, therefore, that no matter how perfect a course of reasoning may
be or how inevitable the conclusions resulting it all falls like a house of
cards if the premise is false, it becomes necessary to determine whether
pantheism is false or true, in order that we may know whether we started
with a valid premise.
Is pantheism true?
One thing we know is true. The Bible clearly and sharply distinguishes
between God and His creation. No one who reads the Bible can dissent from
that statement. And pantheism absolutely denies that Bible distinction.
It therefore immediately resolves itself into a question as to whether the
Bible is true.
This brings us straight back to Christ's formula--"If any man wills to do,
he shall know." He who accepts the challenge of this formula will come to
know, beyond all possibility of disproof, that neither pantheism,
evolution, nor any other doctrine that denies or casts doubt on the
infallibility of the Bible is true. He will know it because it is
supernaturally verified to him in answer to his faith.
This formula is the divine challenge to every form of unbelief in an
inerrant Bible. There never has been an hour since Pentecost when the
aggressive hurling of this challenge at defiant and destructive unbelief
was more needed. And the whole Christian Church, backed by the Word of God,
is hurling this challenge back into the teeth of the whole evolutionary
camp today.
Either be fair enough, be scientific enough, be honest enough, challenges
the Church, to act upon Christ's formula and gain for yourselves that
supernaturally verified knowledge which will make further faith in the
evolutionary theory impossible, or else do not assume to pronounce any
further on those truths of which you know nothing because you have been
unwilling to take the means to find out what they are. Go and join the
ranks of the other unbelievers and Bible-rejectors, taking your doubt-born
theories with you as a reinforcement to their warfare against the Bible,
and then the Church can fight you in the open and drive you to defeat with
the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. If you are determined
to destroy faith in the inerrancy of the Bible, at least be fair enough to
come out from under the cover of "Christian education," and stop assuming
to interpret in the light of evolution--a light that is darkness--those
sublime doctrines which are at once the foundation and the message of the
Church. Get out of the Christian schools, which were founded to strengthen,
not to destroy, the faith of young people from Christian homes, and give
place to those who believe the Book. Increasing hosts of Christian parents
are too heart-broken over the invasion of their own homes by this
destroying wolf in sheep's clothing to tolerate this situation much longer.
They are asking, in the words of a Chicago newspaper editorial concerning
the destructive teachings of Prof. George B. Foster, in the Chicago
University Divinity School:
Is there no place to assail Christianity but a divinity
school? Is there no one to write infidel books except the
professors of Christian theology? Is a theological seminary
an appropriate place for a general massacre of Christian
doctrine?
And then the sentiment that follows in the next sentence is shared
increasingly by multitudes in the Church in proportion as these destroyers
become increasingly aggressive in their work of destruction. The editor
continues:
Mr. Mangasarian delivers infidel lectures every Sunday in
Orchestra Hall and no one is shocked, but when the professed
defenders of Christianity jump on it and assassinate it, the
public--even the agnostic public, cannot but despise them.
Either be scientific enough, cry believers to the evolutionists, to accept
the challenge of Christ's formula with all its implications, or be honest
enough to cease destroying the faith in an inerrant Bible you have sworn to
defend but refuse to accept!
The Church is also hurling the challenge of Christ's formula at every other
form of aggressive unbelief. No unbeliever, from destructive Higher Critic
to agnostic and infidel, has the shadow of a right to make contrary
pronouncement on the inerrancy and infallible authority of the Bible, for
he has refused to put Christ's word to the test,--his unbelief proves
it,--and he is therefore utterly incapacitated for passing any judgment
whatever on that Book which unfolds its meaning to faith alone.
And as to the controversy between the Church and the Schools, the
evolutionists must quit either evolution or the Christian schools, or the
controversy can in no way be cured. For how can faith in an inerrant Bible
and unbelief in its inerrancy abide in harmony in the same house? In the
very nature of things, two groups who hold such absolutely antagonistic
positions must either part company or continue the controversy born of the
antagonism. The true Church always has believed, and always will believe,
in an inerrant Word of God, and she cannot harbor within her ranks any
group of people, no matter by what name they go, who do not take their
stand without equivocation on that same ground.
If reason for this intolerance is asked, it will appear in the light of
some questions asked by Dr. Joseph Parker. These questions are:
If the Bible is wrong in history, what guarantee is there
that it is right in morals?
If the Bible is not a reliable guide in facts, how do we know
that it is a trustworthy guide in doctrine?
However he may have arrived at his conclusions, it is extremely
significant, in the light of these questions, that Dr. E. D. Burton, being
willing to admit that the Bible is
not infallible in history or in matters of science,
has also concluded that it is
not wholly consistent and therefore not ultimately and as a
whole inerrant in the field of morals and religion.
What reason more can the Church want to justify her for intolerance of a
theory that will do this to a man's faith? Is it not correct reasoning to
conclude that if one man suffers such a collapse of faith after accepting
evolution, others are likely to suffer the same thing? And when the Church
observes this collapse taking place in every quarter, and then discovers
that back of it lies the theory of evolution, is she not justified for
being intolerant of that thing which is gnawing at the vitals of her faith?
What can she say else than that the teachers of evolution, at least in the
Christian schools, must either give up evolution and come back to faith in
an infallible Bible, or part company with the Church?
It may be that one reason why the evolutionists are so loth to get out of
company they do not belong in is because they fear that thereby they may
lose their coveted reputation for scholarship. Prof. Howard W. Kellogg,
formerly of Occidental College, hints as much when he says:
Science has again and again set aside as untrustworthy the
so-called discoveries of evolution, has compelled the great
German evolutionist, Haeckel, to confess that his drawings of
missing links were from imagination rather than from objects
found, has driven him from his university chair, and has
compelled him to admit that "Most modern investigators of
science have come to the conclusion that the doctrine of
evolution, and particularly of Darwinism, is in error and
cannot be maintained,"--and yet in spite of such admissions
from men recognized as authorities in their respective lines,
the doctrine of evolution appears to rule as absolutely in
the educational world as if it were not a moribund
hypothesis, already discarded by many, and to be discarded by
others when scientific evidence rather than reputation for
scholarship is allowed the deciding voice.
But whatever the actuating motive may be that has kept the evolutionists
from giving up their unscholarly and unscientific theory, true believers in
the Word long to see them do what Henry Drummond, that brilliant scientist,
did before he died. On his deathbed he said to Sir William Dawson, as
reported in this country in the writer's hearing by Dr. John Robertson
directly from the lips of Dawson:
I am going away back to the Book to believe it and receive it
as I did at the first. I can live no longer on uncertainties.
I am going back to the faith of the Word of God.
When both the Church and the Schools consistently and sincerely take this
attitude toward the Bible, the controversy will be ended in the one way in
which the Church longs to see it end.
_Printed in the United States of America_
=DIVINE DYNAMITE=
=By J. E. CONANT, D.D.=
A stirring address to the Church, pleading the need, the source, and the
operation of power from on High, which she needs above the power of
eloquence, of music, of sociability, of organization, and of money.
=A REPRESENTATIVE TESTIMONIAL=
"This order confirms my wire of even date, 'Please mail to-day fifty
_Divine Dynamite_,' and best expresses what I think of the book since
reading it."
F.D.S., _Davenport, Iowa_
_Art Stock Covers, 20 cents, postpaid_
------
"I have been sending this book around to people who, I thought, ought to
read it."--_William Jennings Bryan_.
The Other Side of Evolution
_Its Effects and Fallacy_
=By Alexander Patterson, D.D.=
With an introduction by the late George Frederick Wright, the eminent
geologist of Oberlin.
=CONTENTS= page
Preface. Claims and Influence of Evolution vii
Introduction. The Meaning of Evolution xix
Chapter I Evolution Is an Unproved Theory 5
Chapter II Evolution of the Universe and Earth 17
Chapter III Evolution of Species 26
Chapter IV Evolution of Man 60
Chapter V Evolution Unscientific and Unphilosophical 112
Chapter VI Evolution and the Bible 120
Chapter VII Spiritual Effect of Evolution 137
_12mo, cloth binding, $1.06, postpaid_
"There is more happiness in bringing souls back to God than in three
presidential nominations."--_William Jennings Bryan_
=THE BIBLE AND ITS ENEMIES=
By WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
Written that the people shall not be robbed of their faith in God.
"_For he that cometh to God must believe that He IS._"--_Heb. 11:6._
There is a great stir in the camp of the =Atheist=, the =Agnostic=, the
=Higher Critic= and particularly the =Evolutionist=, because of this modern
David--America's Gladstone--William Jennings Bryan!
The heart of every true Christian rejoices because the enemies of our
country and of our God and Saviour are so plainly pointed out by this bold
and mighty champion of the Book.
=Read--Distribute--Recommend= this attractive and compelling booklet.
=Pastors, Educators, Students, Parents=--you cannot ignore this great
message!
_Art Stock Covers, 12mo, 25 cents, postpaid._
=WHAT ABOUT EVOLUTION?=
By W. H. GRIFFITH THOMAS, D.D.
Some thoughts on the relation of Evolution to the Bible and Christianity,
by a former fellow of Oxford and Principal of Wycliffe College, Toronto.
_A neatly printed pamphlet, 10 cents, postpaid_
=THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORTAGE ASS'N=
826 North La Salle Street, Chicago
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Page 11 The word "none" has been changed to "no" in "none effect by
a non-belligerent".
Page 32 Duplicate "of" removed from "the doctrines of of the Deity".
Page 88 Added a period to the end of the quote finishing with
"... morals and religion".
Page 91 The printer's name and adress were removed. They appear
at the end of the advertisments.
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHURCH, THE SCHOOLS AND
EVOLUTION***
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