We cannot refrain from reverting, in this connection, to the essential

difference between the animal instincts and the intellect of man, and

would quote, on this subject, the forceful statement of the case by Paul

Haffner in his _"Materialismus"_ (Mainz, 1865). We translate: "If the

hypothesis of materialism were acceptable, if we were to believe that a

merely animal form of consciousness might develop into spiritual and

intellectual perceptions, we ought to be able to observe such capacities

of change and growth also in the animal world of to-day. Yet this is not

the case. For thousands of years we have observed the domestic animals,

and still we can see no trace of a dawn of intellect. We expend much

training upon them; we make them our confidants and treat them with

inexhaustible tenderness, and still we never see them rise out of their

narrow sphere and out of the bonds of their primitive desires and

instincts. We note external imitation of human activities, such as the

ludicrous virtuosity of the apes, and that superficial adaptation which

we call 'animal training' and which is nothing but a development of

sense stimuli; the animal does not know what it is doing, it is duped by

man who knows how to employ its instincts and make them serviceable to

his purposes. We cannot fail to note that never, not even under the most

favorable conditions, do the animals step out of their original sphere;

that neither by their own efforts nor through the aid of man are they

able to rise into ideas of a spiritual or suprasensual nature; that

they remain forever what they were in the beginning. Hence it cannot be

denied that also men would have remained what they once were according

to the notions of materialists. Only if from the beginning the light of

spiritual life was enkindled in them, could they become, what they are

to-day." (_"Materialismus,"_ p. 59 f.)

It will be noted that when we hear the specialists in anatomy and

biology, their expressions on the subject of man's ancestry are, as a

rule, characterized by a strong dissent from the development theory,

while the belief in a development of man from an ape-like ancestor,

uttered with a note of cocksureness, is found mainly among amateurs in

these sciences. Moreover, even among the believers in a rise of our race

from brute origins, many, and the most distinguished among them, assert

that the faculties of the human mind are indeed to be accounted for only

on the basis of a special creative act of God. They cling, however, to

the notion that the body of man is evolved from the lower animals--a

view which has been very ably met by Prof. Orr of Glasgow, one of the

foremost Biblical scholars of our time. He writes:

"It is well known that certain distinguished evolutionists, while

handing over man's body to be accounted for by the ordinary processes of

evolution, yet hold that man's mind cannot be wholly accounted for in a

similar manner. The rational mind of man, they urge--I agree with the

view, but am not called upon here to discuss it--has qualities and

powers which separate it, not only in degree, but in kind, from the

animal mind, and put an unbridgeable gulf, on the spiritual side,

between man and the highest of the creatures below him. In other words,

there is, in man's case, a rise on the spiritual side--the constitution

of a new order or kingdom of existence--which requires for its

explanation a distinct supernatural cause. Now the weakness of this

theory, I have always felt, lies in its assumption that, while man's

mind needs a supernatural cause to account for it, his body may be left

to the ordinary processes of development. The difficulty of such a view

is obvious. I have stated the point in this way. 'It is a corollary from

the known laws of the connection of mind and body that every mind needs

an organism fitted to it. If the mind of man is the product of a new

cause, the brain, which is the instrument of that mind, must share in

its peculiar origin. You cannot put a human mind into a Simian brain.'

In other words, if there is a sudden rise on the spiritual side, there

must be a rise on the physical--the organic--side to correspond."

(_"Virgin Birth of Christ,"_ p. 199.)

Can anything be more cogent, more conclusive?

The strongest _direct_ proof against the "ascent of man," however, has

so far only been touched upon. I refer to the evidences derived from the

history of Religion. To this I now invite the reader's close attention.

If man was developed from a lower order of creatures, or from any member

of the animal kingdom, religion must have been a late development. That

this "tailless, catarrhine, anthropoid ape" should have had anything

resembling a religion, is, of course, not to be thought of. To imagine

that he had a knowledge of the one, true God, his nature and his

attributes, would be preposterous. How then explain the origin and rise

of religion? The evolutionists do not agree on this subject. Herbert

Spencer maintains that _Animism_ was the most primitive form of faith.

Man reverenced spirits, the ghosts of the departed, then raised them to

the eminence of divinities and finally developed the idea of _one_

absolute being, God. Others suggest, that primitive man first adored the

terrible powers and awful phenomena of nature, was thus led to

Polytheism (a religion of many Gods) and finally evolved Monotheism (a

belief in one God). But all agree in this, that Religion in its earliest

form was of a very crude and elementary character, and only in the

course of many thousands of years, attained to the conception of one

Supreme Being. There was at first a faith in gods,--Polytheism, and much

later a faith in God--Monotheism.

Now, let is [tr. note: sic] be observed that this is the only _possible_

view from the standpoint of Evolution. Remember that this doctrine is

not only conceived as bearing on the development of the animal kingdom.

The principle is assumed to operate in the development of the earth, of

man, of society, of government, of manufactures, of language, of

literature, science, art, and religion. According to the theory, there

must have been progress from a crude form of spirit-worship to a

worship of gods, and thence to a worship of one God. But what are the

facts? Has religion so developed? It has not.

_Not only has history failed to show a single form of belief which has

advanced in the manner demonstrated, but every religion, no matter how

pure and exalted, has gone through a process of degeneration, of

devolution_.

The founders of the comparative study (or Science) of Religion, and the

greatest authorities in its various departments, are practically

unanimous in their opinion, that all pagan systems of mythology and

religion contain remnants of a more exalted form of belief, of a higher,

clearer knowledge of the Divinity, which gradually became dimmed and

corrupted.

From Max Mueller's Lecture on the _Vedas_ (the ancient hymns of India)

we quote the following: As a result "to which a comparative study of

religion is sure to lead, we shall learn that religions in their most

ancient form, or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from

many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times."

Le Page Renouf expresses his entire agreement with the "matured

judgment" of Emmanuel Rouge: "The first characteristic of the Egyptian

religion is the Unity of God most energetically expressed: God, One,

Sole and Only--no others with Him.... the Only Being .... The belief in

the Unity of the Supreme God and in His attributes as Creator and

Lawgiver of man, whom He has endowed with an immortal soul, .... _these

are the primitive notions,_ enchased in the midst of mythological

superfetations accumulated in the centuries." Franz Lenormant reached

the same conclusion. Elsewhere, Renouf says: "It is incontestably true,

that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religions are not the

comparatively late result of a process of development. The sublimer

portions are demonstrably ancient; and the last stage of the Egyptian

religion .... was by far the grossest and most corrupt." (_"Religion of

Ancient Egypt,"_ p. 95.) This opinion is supported by the testimony of

the Egyptian inscriptions. In the very oldest inscriptions reference is

had to a Supreme God and Lord of all, to whom no shrines were raised,

whose abode was unknown, who was not graven in stone, while the Egptian

[tr. note: sic] of a later day adored the crocodile, the ichneumon,

serpents, bulls, cats, and ibises.

The history of Hindu belief presents testimony of a still more startling

nature. In the Vedas we find statements and prayers which are clear

proof of an early Monotheism. Thus the IX book of the Rig Veda contains

the following prayer. "Who is the God to whom we shall offer our

sacrifice? The one-born Lord of all that is; he established the heaven

and sky; he is the one king of the breathing and awakening world; he

through whom the heaven was established; he who measured out the light

in the air--he who alone is God above all gods." Here the belief in one

Supreme Being is clearly set forth. And yet this faith in one God in the

course of time degenerated into a worship of 33,000 divinities--until

Gautama the Buddha evolved a system that denied the very existence of

God.

Turning to Greece we have the testimony of Prof. Max Mueller to this

effect: "When we ascend to the distant heights of Greek history the idea

of God, as the Supreme Being, stands before us as a simple fact."

(_"Essays,"_ II, p. 146.) Carl Boettcher, in his great work on the

Treeworship of the Greeks, maintains: "As far as the legends of the

Greeks can be traced into prehistoric ages, the entire nation worshipped

a single God, nameless, without statues, without a temple, invisible and

omnipresent." This he regards as a tradition of "irrefutable inner

truthfulness.... The beginning of Polytheism therefore represents the

_second_ phase of Greek religion, which was preceded by a Monotheism."

Every student of Greek literature knows that this original belief at an

early age gave place to a worship of the gods on Olympus, a worship

which in turn gave way to openly avowed atheism. The Greeks were aware

of this decay. Plato, in his Phaidros (274 B) quotes Socrates as saying:

"I know of an old saying, that our ancestors knew what constituted the

true worship of God; if we could but discover what it was, would we then

have need of _human_ theories and opinions on the matter?" Certainly a

startling statement from the lips of a pagan. Undoubtedly Welcker was

right when he asserted, as the ultimate result of his researches: "This

(Greek) polytheism has settled before the eyes of men like a high and

continuous mountain range, beyond which it is the privilege only of

general historical study to recognize, as from a higher point of view,

the natural primitive monotheism." Concerning the monotheistic ideas of

later Greek thought, the same author says that they are to be regarded

not as a result of an ascending line of evolution ("aufsteigende Linie

der Entwickelung"), but as "a _return_ of the profound wisdom of old

age to the feeling of primitive simplicity."

Of the Phoenicians the greatest student of their history and religion,

F. K. Movers, says: "Nature worship gradually obscured the purer God-idea

of a more ancient stage of belief, but has never entirely obliterated

it." He refers to an evident "adulteration of a purer and more ancient

God-idea."

Regarding the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia, M. Haug, the famous Zend

scholar, asserts that "Monotheism was the leading idea of Zoroaster's

theology;" he called God Ahura-mazda, i. e., "the Living Creator."

Zoroaster did not teach a theological Dualism. He arrived "at the idea

of the unity and indivisibility of the Supreme Being," and only as "in

course of time this doctrine was changed and _corrupted_ ... the dualism

of God and the devil arose." "Monotheism was _superseded_ by Dualism."

Both Dr. F. Hommel and Friedrich Delitzsch agree on the question of an

early Arabian and Sumerian monotheism. Dr. Hommel demonstrates from the

personal surnames contained in the inscriptions the existence of a "very

exalted monotheism" in the most ancient times of the Arabian nation,

about 2500 B. C., and among the Semitic tribes of northern Babylonia.

This "monotheistic religion" degenerated under the influence of

Babylonian polytheism. The same opinion was held years ago by Julius

Oppert, the Assyriologist, who was led to a belief in "a universal

primitive monotheism as the basis of all religions."

Expressions similar to the above might be adduced from Rawlinson, Legge

(_"Religions of China"_), Doellinger, Victor v. Strauss-Torney (the

Egyptologist), Jacob Grimm, and others. In short, the majority of

independent and unprejudiced students of heathen beliefs, from the days

of A. W. v. Schlegel to our own, have reached the conclusion, that all

religions in their later stages exhibit a much lower conception of the

Divinity than in their earlier form. It is only the hopelessly

prejudiced who can say, as does John Fiske, that "to regard classic

paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to

sin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy." Sinning against

the consonant testimony of universal history is a venial offense, it

would seem, when the integrity of this "sound inductive philosophy"--that

is, of the Spencerian theory--is at stake. It needs but a glance at the

well-known facts of religious history to show the working of this _Law

of Decay_ as influencing the development of every system of ethnic belief

which has a recorded history or a literature.

The workings of this law can be traced even in the case of the savage

tribes of our own day. Of the African negroes, P. Bandin says that "their

traditions and religious doctrines ... show clearly that they are a

people in decadence.... They have an obscure and confused idea of the

only God, .... who no longer receives worship." (_"Fetichism,"_ p. 7-10.)

Winwood Reade testifies: "The negroes possess the remnants of a noble and

sublime religion, though they have forgotten its precepts and debased its

ceremonies." They still retain a recollection "of God, the Supreme, the

Creator." Concerning the Zulus, Bastian records that they informed him

that "their ancestors possessed the knowledge of .... that _source of

being_ which is above, which gives life to men." (_"Vorgeschichtliche

Schoepfungslieder."_) A missionary of the Lutheran General Synod, Rev. J.

C. Pedersen, wrote in _"Lutheran Observer,"_ August, 1910, concerning the

African natives that they still have a considerable display of religion,

but "ask him, who is the God in whom you trust? what do you mean by

trusting? how can he help you? and he will answer, 'I don't know, but the

old people used to say so, and taught us to say so.'" John Hanning

Speke, in his _"Journal of the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"_

records reminiscences among the degraded savages among whom he dwelt, of

a supreme God who dwells in heaven, but who no longer received worship.

Mungo Park, in the diary of his _"Travels in the Interior of Africa,"_

says that the Mandingoes, a degenerate race of fetish worshippers, still

possessed the knowledge of one God, but do not offer up prayers and

supplications to him.

In the record of his famous circumnavigation of the globe, Captain Cook

says that the cannibals of New Zealand still acknowledged a superior

being, although their religion was a crude system of spiritualistic

practices.

Concerning the Koreans Mrs. L. H. Underwood, medical missionary, says

that a thousand unworthy deities now crowd the temples, although the

great universal Ruler is still worshipped at times, and the "ancient

purity of faith and worship has become sadly darkened."

The foremost student of modern missions, Johann Warneck, in _"The Living

Christ and Dying Heathenism"_ (F. H. Revell Co.,) comes to the

conclusion that the Christian religion and its monotheism are not only

not a development from lower origins, but that the heathen religions,

historically considered, are a degeneracy from a higher knowledge of

God. In other words, the application of the doctrine of evolution to the

field of comparative religion is a mistake. "Any form of Animism known

to me has no lines leading to perfection, but only incontestable marks

of degeneration," says the author. "In heathenism the gold of the divine

thought becomes dross."

Says he, "I have been counselled to recognize that the idea of evolution

at present ruling the scientific world must also rule in the

investigation of religion. I am not unacquainted with the literature of

the subject, I have described animistic heathenism as concretely as I

could; I confined myself strictly to that. I began with the facts of

experience; then I drew inferences from them. If these do not agree with

the dominant hypothesis of evolution, that is due to the brutal facts,

and not to the prepossessions of the observer.

"I do not deny that something can be said for the idea of evolution in

the religions of mankind, but the study of Animism, with which I have

long been familiar as an eyewitness, did not lead me to that idea.

Rather the conviction which I arrived at is, that animistic heathenism

is not a transition stage to a higher religion. There are no facts to

prove that animistic heathenism somewhere and somehow evolved upwards

towards a purer knowledge of God. I have worked as a missionary for

many years in contact with thousands of the adherents of animistic

heathenism and I have been convinced that the force of that heathenism

is hostile to God."

In the same work Dr. Warneck says that among the Battaks of Sumatra

there are "remains of a pure idea of God." but there is also a host of

spirits, born of fear, which thrust themselves between God and man. "The

idea of God which is found in the religions of the Indian Archipelago,

and probably also of Africa, cannot have been distilled from the motley

jumble of gods and of nature, for it exists in direct opposition to the

latter. The idea of God is preserved, but His worship is lost." In

reviewing this book the late Dr. Schmauk said in 1910: "A dispassionate

study of heathen religions confirms the view of Paul that heathenism is

a fall from a better knowledge of God. The idols come between God and

man."

W. St. Clair Tisdale, concludes an exhaustive study of _"Christianity

and Other Faiths"_ with the statement: "It follows that Monotheism

historically preceded Polytheism, and that the latter is a corruption of

the former. It is impossible to explain the facts away. Taken together

they show that, as the Bible asserts, man at the very beginning of

history knew the One True God. This implies a Revelation of some sort

and traces of that Revelation are still found in many ancient faiths."

We conclude that the history of religion does not only fail to support

the evolutionistic postulate of a slow upward development of religions

from crude original beliefs, but quite the reverse. It is true that the

popular handbooks of comparative religion quite generally teach a

development of religious belief through animism, fetishism, and

polytheism to monotheism. But the consonant testimony of specialists in

the field of historical study and of those who have had first-hand

acquaintance with the aborigines of heathen lands, is a strong dissent

from this position. Here again we find confident assertion of an

evolutionistic process mainly among those who lack the qualifications

of original research. Even as it is not the specialist in biology that

still maintains the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, but the

non-professional and the amateur, even so the specialist acquainted

with the original sources, and the explorer, possessing first hand

knowledge, asserts a decline, through history, from purer to less

spiritual faiths, while the bias of the evolutionist, who has no first

hand knowledge of the sources constrains him to begin his scheme of

religion with animism and fetish-worship. The theory which holds him in

thrall demands such a construction. But the theory is contradicted by

the facts, which point unmistakably to a degeneration of the race, to a

Fall of Man.

CHAPTER TEN.

The Verdict of History.

John Fiske, who, in the seventies of the last century, popularized

Darwinism in the United States, asserts that the scope of evolution is

much wider than the organic field. "There is no subject great or small"

he wrote in _"A Century of Science,"_ "that has not come to be affected

by this doctrine." A development has been recognized in plants,

mountains, oysters, subjunctive moods, and the confederacies of savage

tribes (p. 35). Fiske is one of those defenders of the evolutionistic

philosophy who irritate by reason of their cocksureness. Hear him, in

_"Darwinism and Other Essays_:" "One could count on one's fingers the

number of eminent naturalists who still decline to adopt it"--the

Darwinian hypothesis. That was in 1876. To-day we know that one cannot

on one finger the eminent naturalists of the present century who still

accept it--Haeckel. It is possible that Fiske's extension of the

development theory, along lines laid down by Herbert Spencer, to all

human history, even to "tribal confederacies," is likewise subject to a

revision. Indeed, it would seem that even without special or detailed

knowledge, the failure of human history to conform with this universal

law would be apparent. Consider once more the basic concepts of

Evolution. They are two in number, 1. Everything that is, has been

evolved, having been involved (potentially, as a possibility) in that

which preceded it. Potentially, the feather of the blue-bird was in the

speck of original protoplasm, potentially the flights of Dante's and

Goethe's genius were in the primordial cell. All that has occurred in

history has _developed_ out of antecedents. Furthermore: 2. All that

exists has developed _according to natural laws_. Scientists have given

up the law which Darwin called "Natural Selection," and Spencer himself

cashiered the law which he had called "Survival of the Fittest." But

evolutionists continue to assert that somehow, by the action of certain

laws, that which exists has naturally--there is no need of divine

Providence, overruling the affairs of men,--has naturally been developed

out of its antecedents. And so history is read by the evolutionist. He

sees in all the institutions of civilization, in every department of

culture, in the rise and fall of nations, the progress and decay of

literatures, a result of natural laws, working out the evolution of

human society as it exists to-day.

What, then, is the verdict of history? Does it conform to this scheme?

Is there a demonstrable development, by inherent forces, of human

society, from lower to higher ranges of culture? Civilization [tr note:

sic] have risen, civilizations have perished: is there in this traceable

the working of natural law?

Dr. Emil Reich, in the _"Contemporary Review,"_ 1889. p. 45 ff. pointed

out the failure of the development theory as applied to human culture.

Hebrew religion as well as the Hebrew state were not derived from

Babylonian, Egyptian, Arabic or Hittite culture; Greek art is not a

derivative product of Egyptian, Assyrian, or Phoenician art; Greek

religion and mythology are not derived from other pagan systems; Roman

law has not been developed out of Greek, Aryan, or Egyptian law; the

English constitutional form of government has no antecedents in German

or Norman-French history; German music is not a result of development

out of Dutch, French, or Italian music. Dr. Reich sums up the matter:

"Institutions do not 'evolve,' nor are they 'derived,' they step into

existence by fulguration"--sudden flashes--, "by a process that is

technically identical with the theological idea of creation. The whole

concept of evolution does not at all apply to history."

In this argument there is considerable force. For, indeed, what natural

law can account for the rise of human institutions, so infinitely

diversified in their structure? Every age is divided into epochs, and at

the center of each epoch there is some personage of force and genius.

But how did Cromwell, Lincoln, Bismarck arise? What force produced them?

Whence did they evolve? Yet without these three names, three great

periods in the world's history would be meaningless.

By what combination of forces shall we say that the various geniuses

have developed which, in a manner almost spectacular, rise before us as

we study the literatures of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare

were spent under circumstances which might have produced in him one dull

and unaspiring British country lout, like, as one egg to another, to a

hundred thousand others who lived in his age. What made this one country

boy the most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? Study

the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, or Coleridge, and then

tell me why the first two should become the greatest lyric poets of

their time, and the third, one of England's deepest thinkers? Why did

they not develop, one into a satisfied Scottish farmer, the other into

a peddler of notions, and the third into a fat and comfortable English

banker?

We quote from an article which appeared in _"Theological Quarterly"_

some twenty years ago:

"What process of evolution resulted in the lives and deeds of such men

as Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, [tr. note: sic] Constantine the

Great, Luther, Napoleon I, and Bismarck? All these great makers of

history were what they were far less in consequence and by the

continuation of the course of previous events or developments, than

largely in spite of the past and in direct opposition to forces which

had worked together in shaping the condition of things with which they

had to deal. The Macedonian empire would never have sprung into being

but for an Alexander, in whose mind the chief facts for its realization

were united. The Rome which Julius Ceasar [tr. note: sic] left behind

him was not that which he had found, only carried forward to a new stage

of development, but the embodiment of ideas conceived in his mind, a

quantity which under God the greatest Roman had _made_ out of a quantity

which he had found. The distinctive features of the Constantinian empire

as compared with that of Diocletian, or of the tetrarchy of which he was

the head, were not evolved from earlier political principles, but stood

out in bold contrast and even in direct opposition to the very

fundamentals of antique statesmanship, and so new in politics that even

Constantine permitted them to slip away from his grasp long before the

sunset of his life had come. Luther was not a more fully developed Hus

or Savonarola, and the Reformation was not the more advanced stage or

completion of a movement inaugurated by the Humanists, but a work of God

the actuating spirit of which was as diametrically contrary to the

rationalistic spirit which animated Erasmus and, in a measure, Zwingli

and his abettors, as it was to anti-christian Rome,--which was in 1517

essentially what it had been in 1302, when Boniface VIII issued his bull

_Unam sanctum_ as a definition of the rights and powers of Popery.

Napoleon did not carry onward but broke away from the tumult of French

politics when he laid the greater part of western Europe at his feet,

and the battle of Austerlitz and the rule of the Hundred Days were no

more evolved from the French Revolution as by intrinsic necessity than

the burning of Moscow and the Russian snows which turned to naught the

campaign of 1812." (A. L. Graebner.)

According to the theory we would expect that in the various departments

of _art,_ perfection would be a late blossom, burgeoning forth only after

ages of feeble experiment and attempt. But what are the facts? As we

study the history of any art,--be it literature or any department of

literature; be it architecture, sculpture, the domestic arts, or even

the art of war,--we find the highest culmination either at points which

specifically exclude the idea of a development or, indeed, perfection

shines forth in the very beginning, all subsequent art being decay and

apostasy from that primal perfection.

In epic poetry, the greatest work does not stand at the end of a long

period of development, but the first and oldest is the greatest. Nothing

has ever been produced to equal the Iliad and Odyssey, written 900 B. C.

We have epics that will always hold a prominent place in literature,

Virgil's Aeneid, Milton's Paradise Lost, but neither these nor the many

flights attempted into epic poetry before or since will be seriously

considered as rivalling the rhapsodies of Homer.

The first novel ever written, Cervantes' Don Quijote, [tr. note: sic]

remains one of the greatest.

The oldest dramatists, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, have never been

surpassed.

And so in every department of art, the earliest stage of development

seems to be the very most perfect. Pyramid building was a pastime of the

earliest Pharaos; [tr. note: sic] the later did not attempt to rival

these structures with any of their own. No finer jewelry can be produced

to-day than the gold ornaments found in the oldest tombs of Egypt. The

finest examples of East Indian architecture are the oldest. Gothic art

was not a slow development but came to utter perfection in its earliest

examples,--as in the Cathedral of Amiens.

Evolution represents the history of our race as a constant climb, from

brute or near-brute beginnings, to ever higher forms of civilization,

until the heights which our race has reached in the present century were

attained. In reality, the reverse process, a constant and invariable

process of degeneration characterizes the history of nations and peoples.

Where Christianity entered as a factor, as in the history of Western

Europe and in the results of Christian missions in heathen lands, we can

indeed observe a rise out of barbaric or savage conditions to refinement

and culture. But only where the Christian gospel is preached, was the

natural process of decay, of degeneration, interfered with. Elsewhere,

that is to say, where purely natural forces were given free play,

mankind has declined physically, mentally, spiritually. All

civilizations illustrate this law of decay. Wilhelm F. Griewe, in his

_"Primitives Suedamerika"_ (Cincinnati, 1893), summarizes his

observations on the South American continent as follows: "The Malaysian

aborigines of South America, in a period of 3,000 years, failed to

advance in development. The Japanese discoverers of Peru testify that

they found the natives in a condition of extreme decay; within a period

of 1,500 years they had made no progress but had retrogressed. When the

Spaniards came, they described the natives of Chile and Argentina in

such a manner that it is quite evident how little these tribes had

progressed in 3,000 years. The Araucanians of Chile have, even in

historic times, greatly degenerated; they have lost the very meaning of

many words; retaining the shell, they have lost the kernel. In Peru,

the age of heroic deeds and wonderful architecture was followed by decay,

--religious, moral, intellectual decay. The population was all but

destroyed by vices and cruelty. Their neighbors, the Chibchas, likewise

described an arc which ended in devil-worship. Similarly, the history of

the Botokudes is degeneration, vice, atrocities. The negro tribes in the

north and east of South America record no progress, but, on the other

hand, sank into abominations, slavery, cannibalism. Where, then, is

there support for the evolutionary theory, with its assumption of an

upward trend from a brute condition to civilized and cultured life?

Everywhere in primitive South America we see before our very eyes the

process of decline and decay. Also the religious idea became obscured.

Some of these tribes had an original monotheism. They recognized a

supreme creator of all things and gave him various names. But the

spiritual character of their knowledge of God was gradually obscured,

God was dragged into the sphere of sense and lower divinities were

associated with Him,--a downward development which absolutely contradicts

the Darwinian hypothesis. From an original, pure, spiritual worship to

gross idolatry,--that is the religious decay which in the world outside

the Bible meets us everywhere, also among the original races of South

America."

Thus in the history of human society, we observe, unless the divine power

of the gospel supplies the sole preserving and regenerating element, a

universal law of decay in human affairs. Innumerable times, and at the

most crucial moments of human history, not the fittest but the unfittest

survived. Dr. A. L. Graebner said: "The principle of the 'survival of the

fittest' is so far from accounting for the phenomena of history, that the

principle itself is flatly contradicted and utterly exploded by a sober

investigation of historical facts. That there are in nature numerous

instances of a survival of the _un_fittest, is not only conceded by our

evolutionists, but has been deliberately forged into an argument against

teleology (divine purpose) and divine providence! And, we ask, was it by

the survival of the fittest that Julius Ceasar, [tr. note: sic] one of the

grandest rulers of all ages, should succumb under the daggers of Brutus

and Cassius: that Paul and Seneca should die by authority of their

inferior, Nero; that Popery, rotten to the core and represented by men

who would have brought on the ignominous [tr. note: sic] collapse or

extinction of every other dynasty in the days of the Roman pornocracy,

should survive, while the illustrious house of Henry I. sank away to

ruin in the third and fourth generation; that John Hus should die at the

stake and Jean Charlier de Gerson in timid monastic retirement, while

Balthasar Cossa, by far their inferior in talents and learning, and

every inch an infamous scoundrel, having for a time disgraced even the

Roman see as John XXIII, ended his days as a Cardinal and Bishop of

Tusculum and Dean of the Sacred College; that Girolamo Savonarola, one

of the most remarkable and pure-minded leaders of his day and of all

times, should be fought down and crushed in a struggle with men not one

of whom was worthy of unloosing his shoe's latchet, among them Alexander

VI, one of the most scandalous wretches of all history? Survival of the

fittest!"

The article from which we have quoted points out the relevancy, to the

question at issue, of the principle of degeneration and gradual decay in

historical organisms or institutions. "Our scientists who bother

themselves and others about the descent of man have favored with a keen

interest the Bushmen of Australia and other types of savage humanity,

with receding skulls, flat noses, thin legs, little or no clothing, and

not much of morals or religion. The lower in the scale and the farther

remote from the civilized Caucasian a newly discovered or investigated

tribe or specimen, living or dead, would appear to be, the greater was

the value set on the discovery, because the nearer science was supposed

to have come to the missing link, the transition from brute to man. Of

course, the missing link will never be discovered, because it never

existed. There is no transition from brute to man, and never was. But if

there were a species of beings which might be classed either with man or

with brutes, a transitional species, even that would not necessarily

represent a transition in the direction from brute to man. We do not say

that a transition from man to brute is possible; for it is not; but we

do say that the evolutionist who sees in Bushmen and other savages

specimens of humanity representing the earlier stages of development,

through which the more highly developed species had long since passed on

the way from the primitive state of man to their present state, makes a

great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in

supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a

country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which

the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been

evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark

Twain and his friend, who, having slept all day, rushed from the hotel

in scanty clothing, climbed the observatory and to the amusement of the

guests loudly admired what they took to be the famous Rigi sunrise,

while in fact they were vociferating and gesticulating at the setting

sun. But while our tourists had soon found out their mistake, our

evolutionists have not; which does not make it any less a mistake. St.

Paul has drawn a vivid picture of the degenerating influence of sin upon

the nations under the righteous wrath of God,* [[* Rom. 1, 18-32.]] and

the course which the Greek nation and the Roman would have run from

their pristine vigor exhibited in the days of Thermopylae and Cannae

down to the state of _marasmus senilis_ pictured by Juvenal, a state of

rottenness which even the transfusion of German blood into the putrid

veins of that degenerate and decaying race could not remedy, is a

fearful corroboration of the apostle's testimony."

We cannot leave this subject without briefly adverting to a great

historic fact, indeed, the most massive and significant fact in all

history, which, in its remoter bearings, not only strikes at the very

heart of the evolutionistic philosophy, but at the same time wounds it

mortally in all its parts. I refer to the Resurrection of our Lord. The

resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central fact of our Christian belief

and it is, rightly understood, the all-sufficient answer to the theory

of evolution. Christ's resurrection is an historical fact fully as much

as the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis in 480 B. C., the discovery of

America by Columbus in 1492, and the peace of Versailles of 1919 are

historical facts, proven by the word and record of contemporary

witnesses. But if Christ was raised then we have proof for the following

tenets, all contradicting evolutionary speculation at so many vital

points: 1) The existence of a personal God who is concerned with human

affairs; 2) The reality of miraculous interference with natural forces;

3) The truth of atonement and the redemption, and 4) The inspiration of

the Old Testament Scriptures (hence also of the creation account in

Genesis). The details of the argument are beyond the scope of this paper,

but a little patient study will bring to light the fact that each of

these four basic ideas is dove-tailed, mortised and anchored so firmly

in the fact of Christ's resurrection, that you can get rid of them all

only by denying that fact. Hence it is, aside from any investigation of

proofs of evolutionism, clear to the Christian student that there must

be some fault either in reason or in observation that vitiates the whole

theory. The resurrection of Christ is a fact, a fact to which the entire

history of Christianity testifies, the most tremendous fact in the

history of the world. And it stands fore-square against a theory which

says that there is no personal God, that there is no sin, no redemption;

that there are no miracles, no revelation, no inspiration; that there is

no absolute religion nor an absolute standard of right and wrong.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Evidence of Design.

Compare all that has been said by scientists themselves about the

evolutionary theory, and what remains? This, only, that some how, we do

not know when, life arose, and some how, we do not know by what laws,

one form evolved from another, until we and the world about us have

become what we are now. Now, the fact that no _laws_ have so far been

discovered by scientists to account for this presumed development of all

things by inherent forces, is very significant and the conclusions which

logically follow from it deserve our attention. Since Darwin's solution,

Natural Selection, was discarded, twenty or thirty years ago, many other

solutions have been propounded, but none has received the assent of even

a respectable group of scientists, let alone by all. These solutions,

--such as the theories of de Vries and Mendel, are frankly no more than

guesses based on certain observation in plant life and insect life and

their originators by no means assert that they have found a law by which

the universe can be accounted for. But if there is no universal law,

there is only _chance_. Hence it is clear that what we are asked to

believe is that ancient Greek speculation was after all not far from the

truth, that through a fortuitous (accidental) concourse of atoms the

world came into being, and that by chance combinations of elements the

great variety of living things arose.

Such is the condition of evolutionistic thought to-day. That there is no

_direct_ evidence for organic evolution is generally admitted. That

geology cannot be quoted for it is also quite generally conceded, since

the sudden rise of perfect (not half-developed) insects, of perfect

fish, of perfect mammals, is clear even to the man who merely turns the

leaves of Geikie's, Le Conte's, and Dana's text books, or visits Field's

Museum. Yet _some-how_ things must have gotten to be what they are by

development from earlier forms,--this about sums up what is really

contained in the concept of evolution as it appears in most recent

scientific literature, so far as scientists at all touch upon the

subject. However, they by no means urge the evolutionary principle as

they used to do. Bacteriologists especially, so I am informed by a

chemist of international repute, Dr. P. A. Kober, of New York, as a

class are inclined to give up the theory as a "bad guess." Why, they

find in fossil fish diseased portions which bear unmistakable traces of

the action of bacteria which live to-day, in other words, which in

"countless millions of years" have not progressed enough to show any

change recognizable under the most powerful miscroscope! [tr. note: sic]

Anthropologists shake their head when they are told by evolutionists

that the animal which shows clearest "resemblance" in a structural way,

to certain points in human anatomy, is a small fossil ape, about the

size of a house cat, with a skull one inch in diameter! There remains no

proof, direct or indirect, of any _principle_ working the changes which

are believed to have occurred. All things have evolved, if they have

evolved at all, _by chance_.

Now, over against this doctrine of chance there stands the monumental

fact that throughout nature, living and non-living, there runs a

principle of _design_. The minerals, the plants, the animals, all

exhibit, as even the superficial observer knows or might know, a plan.

There is design in the crystals in which elements exist when they pass

from a liquid into a solid state; there is design in the leaf and flower

of every plant; there is plan, design, in the structure and physiology

of animals. We would add, there is an evident plan in the history of the

Chosen Race, the Jews, as we possess it in the Old and New Testaments;

there is a plan in the moral sphere, laws producing unvaried results;

there is an ordered scheme even in the life of the individual. But let

us limit our investigation to the domain of nature. Let us note how

little necessity there is for assuming that by mere chance things have

come to be what they are.

As a rule each chemical substance has an individual crystal by which it

can be distinguished. It is possible to classify the thousands of

different crystals, since all belong to one of six classes, according as

their surfaces are grouped symmetrically around the axes of the crystal.

The salt crystal has one form, the topaz another, quartz and beryl

another, borax another, and these forms are absolutely unvaried wherever

these substances are found in nature or in the chemist's retort. It is

not here our intention to point out how impossible it is to assume that

there has been an evoluton [tr. note: sic] of one of these forms out of

another. The point is that there is not chance, but orderly arrangement,

symmetrical shape, in a word, most evident design.

Turning to plant life, even the amateur student cannot fail to observe

that the entire world of plants is built on a beautiful system which

argues most powerfully not for accidental arrangement but for plan. The

place of every leaf on every plant is fixed beforehand by unerring

mathematical rule. As the stems grow on, leaf after leaf appears exactly

in its predestined place, producing a perfect symmetry;--a symnetry [tr.

note: sic] which manifests itself not in one single monotonous pattern

for all plants, but in a definite number of forms exhibited by different

species, and arithmetically expressed by the series of fractions, 1/2,

1/3, 2/5, 3/8, 5/13, 8/21, etc., according as the formative energy in

its spiral course up the developing stem lays down at corresponding

intervals 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, or 21 ranks of alternative leaves.

The position of each blossom is determined beforehand by that of the

leaves; so that the shape of every flower-cluster in a boquet [tr. note:

sic] is given by the same simple mathematical law which arranges the

foliage. Every flower has a "Numerical Plan." Although not easy to make

out in all cases, yet generally it is plain to see that each blossom is

based upon a particular number, which runs through all or most of its

parts. And a principal thing which a botanist notices when examining a

flower is its numerical plan. It is upon this that the symmetry of the

blossom depends. Thus the stonecrop and the flax are based upon the

number five, which is exhibited in all their parts. Some flowers of this

same stonecrop have their parts in fours, and then that number runs

throughout; namely, there are four sepals, four petals, eight stamens

(two sets), and four pistils.

Next let us touch upon the plan which connects the plant with the animal

world. The wonderful adaptations of many flowers and insects to each

other, as to the fertilization of the former, and as to the life of the

individual insect and the propagation of its kind, are evidence of

design. For example, there are certain species of plants that are

dependent for their fertilization on certain species of moths which

live in the flowers, and the moths, in turn, are dependent on the

plants. They deposit their eggs in the ovaries of the flowers where the

young are hatched and nourished. The moths in some cases carry the

pollen and place it on the stigmas of the flowers, as if guided by

intelligence. So marvellous are the provisions which are made to ensure

the fertilization of plants that the dean of Amercan [tr. note: sic]

botanists, Professor Asa Gray, exclaims: "If these structures and their

operations do not argue intention, what stronger evidence of intention

in nature can there possibly be? If they do, such evidences are

countless, and almost every blossom brings distinct testimony to the

existence and providence of a Designer and Ordainer, without whom, we

may well believe, not merely a sparrow, not even a grain of pollen, may

fall." (On this entire subject read Selina Gaye's _"The Great World's

Farm,"_ published by the MacMillan Co., New York.)

We can only lightly touch on the wonders of design in the structure and

functions of animals. Here is a feather, any feather, say, the feather

of an eagle. We quote the following on "One of Nature's Wonders--the

Feather'' from an article in a popular magazine:

"To most people a feather is just a feather, either pretty or plain

according to how the coloring strikes their individual fancy. Yet when

a feather is examined critically, it becomes a wonder and yet more

wonderful--it is amazing when its details are understood. Never was

there a thing better planned and builded for the uses intended.

"Take, for instance, a plain feather--say the tail feather of an eagle.

The long quill is made of feather-bone, that wonderfully light, yet

strong material that forms the rigid part of all feathers, so tough that

it is almost impossible to break it, yet so flexible it will bend into a

circle and then spring back like a bit of whalebone! Nothing that man

has ever been able to make can equal it.

"There is no blood, no nerves, no circulation and apparently no life in

a full grown feather, yet it does not decompose; indeed, it is one of

the hardest things in the world to destroy by any process of

decomposition. It retains its resiliency and all its flexibility for

years--all that is necessary is to keep it dry. It is finished all along

the rib (or quill) with a hard, glossy enamel on the outside and this

enamel keeps its polish as long as the feather lasts.

"From [tr. note: sic on punctuation] an engineering standpoint, or the

standpoint of the mechanic or artisan, there is absolutely no suggestion

of betterment to be made, for the feather is an exact, perfectly

finished product. Its long central quill tapers from base to point with

geometric precision, thereby giving perfect resistance to bending force,

and this is one of the combination of secrets that enables the bird to

fly as easily as man can walk. Also this long quill is hollow, thereby

all extra weight is done away with and added strength gained because of

the tube contraction; and to make it perfect from a mechanical

standpoint, the under side of the quill is reinforced by a doublerolled

thickening of the shell of the quill itself so that strains are

equalized.

"This long quill is also curved slightly, to meet air resistance again

and overcome it when the whole tail is spread, fan-like, to suddenly

alter a direction or check speed in flight.

"The long, soft side masses are formed of a multitude of tiny feathers,

each one perfectly equipped, perfectly made, mechanically and

geometrically without fault. Each of these tiny side feathers has its

own midrib that tapers from base to tip, and each of these midribs

carries its own equipment of side 'hairs' so beautifully constructed

that it locks automatically into the one on each side of it in such a

way that it makes a solid yet flexible mass of the whole surface,

against which the air flows as the bird flies.

"If these side feathers be split apart they will come back into place

so exactly that the split cannot be detected. Nothing else in nature

repairs itself with such precision. Many things, for instance the claw

leg of the crawfish, will replace itself exactly when destroyed, but

the feather alone _repairs_ its own breaks precisely and automatically.

"Taken as a whole, the feather is one of the most perfect products of

nature because the material used is the one best thing throughout, the

engineering principles involved are without fault, the mathematical

plan is precise, the construction is perfect, the coloring and artistry

are flawless, and there is not one single point about it that can be

constructively criticized.

"This short article can only hint at the wonderful things one may find

in a single feather, and it is something well worth not an hour, but

weeks or months of the most painstaking and careful study, for it covers

an amazing field."

The electric battery in certain fishes is so palpable a case of design

that Charles Darwin admitted his inability to account for it by Natural

Selection. The electric ray, or torpedo, for instance, has been provided

with a battery which, while it closely resembles, yet in the beauty and

compactness of its structure, it greatly exceeds the batteries by which

man has now learned to make the laws of electricity subservient to his

will. In this battery there are no less than 940 hexagonal columns, like

those of a bee's comb, and each of these is subdivided by a series of

horizontal plates, which appear to be analogous to the plates of the

batteries used in automobiles. The whole is supplied with an enormous

amount of nervous matter, four great branches of which are as large as

the animal's spinal cord, and these spread out in a multitude of

thread-like filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pass into

all the cells. "A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have

been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of Faraday,

and of many others which are still inscrutable to us, is exhibited in

this structure." Well may Mr. Darwin say, "It is impossible to conceive

by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced. We see the

purpose--that a special apparatus should be prepared; but we have not

the remotest notion of the means employed. Yet we can see so much as

this, that here again, other laws, belonging altogether to another

department of nature--laws of organic growth--are made subservient to a

very definite and very peculiar purpose.' [tr. note: sic on punctuation]

"The new-born kangaroo," says Professor Owen, "is an inch in length,

naked, blind, with very rudimental limbs and tail; in one which I

examined the morning after the birth, I could discern no act of sucking;

it hung, like a germ, from the end of the long nipple, and seemed unable

to draw sustenance therefrom by its own efforts. The mother accordingly

is provided with a peculiar adaptation of a muscle (_cremaster_) to the

mammary gland, by which she can inject the milk from the nipple into the

mouth of the pendulous embryo. Were the larynx of the creature like that

of the parent, the milk might, probably would, enter the windpipe and

cause suffocation: but the larynx is cone-shaped, with the opening at

the apex, which projects, as in the whaletribe, into the back aperture

of the nostrils, where it is closely embraced by the muscles of the

'soft palate.' The air-passage is thus completely separated from the

fauces (mouth), and the injected milk passes in a divided stream, on

either side the base of the larynx, into the oesophagus. These

correlated modifications of maternal and foetal structures, _designed_

with especial reference to the peculiar conditions of both mother and

off-spring, afford, as it seems to me, irrefragable evidence of

_creative forsight_. The parts of this apparatus cannot have produced

one another; one part is in the mother, another part in the young one;

without their harmony they could not be effective; but nothing except

design can operate to make them harmonious. They are intended to work

together; and we cannot resist the conviction of this intention when

the facts first come before us."

We cannot stop to pass in review the structural marvels of the human eye

and ear, of the digestive organs, and circulatory system of animals, of

adaptations of fishes to the watery element. But we must mention an

outstanding feature of all animal life, the evident likeness of plan

upon which the _entire kingdom_ of sentient life is constructed. From

amoeba and other infusorial animals of simplest structure, through coral

and oyster, bird, reptile, to mammals, there is an evident gradation,

many structures being represented in entire great groups of living

beings, such as the air-breathing lung. Here is a grand plan of animal

life, which permits us to classify all living things into a system.

There are classes and subclasses, orders or families, suborders, tribes,

sub-tribes, genera, species, and varieties, just as in the world of

plants and even, according to their atomic weight, among the elements.

We see in all this, Creative Design. The evolutionist believes that he

can percive [tr. note: sic] stages of progress. Similarity of plan is

interpreted as proof that there is a common origin. Are we to admit, in

the face of all that has been said about the fixity of species (to

mention only this), the reasonableness of such an assumption? Does

orderliness and plan argue for development? The steam-engine is a

machine of remarkable structure. It has had, in one sense of the term,

a wonderful "evolution." It is based on certain principles, the

foundation one of which is the expansibility of steam, and its ability,

when confined in a cylinder, to give motion to a piston. The

steam-engine was first used for pumping, then for turning machinery,

then for propelling boats, and now its crowning department is seen in

the locomotive. There is a plan, a likeness, a similarity, which runs

through all steam-engines, whether they be found in the mine, in the

mill, beneath the deck of the steamship, or on the railroad track. But

the locomotive is not formed from the mine engine; it is made new, and

is a distinct type. And yet, the same principles are seen in both. Even

so it is with the genera of animals. The whale and the elephant both

have backbones, jointed limbs, warm blood, and a hundred homologous

organs. They are both mammals, both are sagacious, and are gifted with

acute senses. But otherwise they are unlike as the monster locomotive

that pulls the heavy train over the Sierras, and the compound engines of

the _Vaterland_. Similarity of structures argues powerfully for unity of

plan, but by no means proves identity of origin.

The evidence of design in nature conflicts with the idea that all things

in the organic domain have come to be what they are by chance. But it

agrees perfectly with the Christian view of animal nature. What is that?

It is that God created the different classes of existences in the strict

sense; that is, that he created them separate classes and species, each

with its own peculiarities and habits, while, at the same time, they

rise one above the other in general and steady order, with certain

general organs and functions, which run through nearly all except the

lowest classes, each higher class having also some distinct and

additional peculiarities not found in those below it. In other words, to

the Christian the steadily ascending scale in the work of creation is

only the unfolding or development of the great plan of creation that was

in the mind of God. He believes that God did not create one or more

simple cells or germs, and cause all higher forms to be evolved from

them, interfering only once or twice (when the backbone appeared, the

nourishing breast, the mind of man, etc.), but that he, in the execution

of his plan, created successively as distinct orders and species those

things and beings which now exist as distinct orders and species, and

many of which have become extinct. This is the Story of Creation as

given in Genesis: Each plant, each animal, created in its own place in

the scale of living thing, but each created as a species,--"after their

kind," the phrase repeated after each creative act of the third, fifth,

and sixth day, except with reference to man, who was not created as a

"species" but after the image of God.

But the evidences of design are yet of a higher nature than we have so

far considered. There is not only Creative Intelligence at work in the

pollen of flowers, the breathing of sponges, and the eagle's orb of

vision; Mind dominates _the universe as a whole_. Everywhere there is

law and periodic, rhythmical motion. The Lord, speaking to Job, refers

to the "measures" of the earth, the "lines" which He has stretched upon

it. He asks, concerning the heavenly bodies: "Canst thou bind the sweet

influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring

forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his

sons?" And Job answers: "I know that Thou canst do everything."

And so there is a Reign of Law in the dew on the grass (Job 38, 28), and

in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. The Universe is ruled by Mind.

Professor Koelliker (Leipsic) says in his work _"Ueber die Darwinsche

Schoepfungstheorie"_ (1904): "The development theory of Darwin is not

needed to enable us to understand the regular harmonious progress of the

complete series of organic forms from the simpler to the more perfect.

The existence of general laws of nature explains this harmony, even if

we assume that all beings have arisen separately and independent of one

another. Darwin forgets that inorganic nature, in which there can be no

thought of a genetic connection of forms," that one form of crystal, for

instance, arose out of another, "exhibits the same regular plan, as the

organic world (of plants and animals), and that, to cite only one

example, there is as much a natural system of minerals as of plants and

animals." We can go a step farther and say that there is system and

orderly design even in the position and movements of the stars,--which

certainly have not been evolved one from the other.

More marvellous still, we are permitted to believe that there is an

identity of plan connecting the arrangement of atoms in a molecule and

the position of the stars and planets. Dr. Charles Young, Professor of

Astronomy in Princeton College, says in his larger text-book upon his

special theme that "our planetary system (the sun and planets) is not a

mere accidental aggregation of bodies," that "there are a multitude of

relations actually observed which are wholly independent of gravitation."

In other words, in the position and motions of the planets there are

evidences of design which cannot be accounted for by natural law. We

shall point out an instance of such arrangement,--the progressive

distance of the planets from the sun, as first discovered by Titius of

Wittenberg, and later (in 1772) brought to the attention of the

scientific world, by Johann Bode, the celebrated German astronomer. It

is exhibited by writing a line of nine 4's and then placing regularly

increasing numbers under the several 4's, beginning with the second.

Thus 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, and 384, each increased by 4, will give

the resultant series, 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 52, 100, 196, 388. These numbers

divided by 10 are approximately the true distance of the planets from

the sun in terms of the radius of the earth's orbit, with the exception

of Neptune. Hence there is, in the arrangmeent of the planets, as

orderly a system as we have noted with reference to the leaves on a

plant. Any rational man on earth, finding an orderly system of materials

arranged in such relation by such means, would instantly conclude that

it must be due to intelligence and not to mere chance.

Now, it is a remarkable fact that in the so-called Periodic Law of the

elements constituting matter the same relation is observed. Of the

eighty elements, no two now known have exactly the same capacity to

resist heat, and no two atoms of the same elements have the same weight

as compared with an atom of hydrogen. But these differences in

resistance to heat and in weight, are not haphazard, but are so

regularly progressive that they can be arranged in a series of regularly

progressive increasing intervals. Most marvellous of all, however, when

these differences in specific gravity are examined, we find that they

bear a close resemblance to the arrangement of the planets in

progressive distances from the sun. "There appears to be one law for

atoms and for worlds."

Again we ask, when there is such orderly arrangement and plan throughout

nature, should the orderly plan of plant and animal life be regarded as

a proof of evolution? Certainly, atoms have not evolved from atoms, nor

planets from planets.

And again, since omnipotence alone can account for the "sweet influences

of the Pleiades," the "bringing forth of Mazzaroth"--the constellations

of the heavens in their nightly revolutions,--why resist the conviction

that omnipotence, voiced forth in the beginning, accounts for the life

on earth that now exists?

One more consideration, and we have done. Life on earth exists only

through a combination of very complex physical conditions. These

conditions are such as cannot, in their combination, be referred to

chance, Fairhurst says, in his _"Organic Evolution Considered:"_ "The

simple substances which constitute the earth are of such kinds and are

found in such relative quantities as not only to render life possible,

but also to contribute to the well-being of man as an intelligent and

moral agent. I look upon the concurrence of all these things, according

to any theory of _chance,_ as being entirely impossible. The conditions

that must be fulfilled before living beings are possible are so complex

that _nothing short of the wisdom of a Supreme Intelligence could have

produced them."_ (cf. Rom. 1, 20.)

This view has found support in a most unexpected quarter. No less a

person than Alfred Russel Wallace, famed as the discoverer, independently

of Darwin, of the principle of Natural Selection, in his last book,

_"Man's Place in the Universe,"_ (1903) defended a position so subversive

of every cherished belief (or unbelief) of scientists that it easily

ranks as the greatest literary sensation, in the domain of natural

science, of the century. Wallace assembled all the latest astronomcial

[tr. note: sic] and other scientific discoveries and all knowledge

bearing on the subject announced in his title. He deduces therefrom the

theory:--First, that the earth or solar system is the physical center of

the stellar universe. Second, _that the supreme end and purpose of this

vast universe was the production and development of a living soul in the

perishable body of man._

"Modern skeptics," says Wallace, "in the light of accepted astronomical

theories (which regard our earth as uttterly insignificant compared with

the rest of the universe) have pointed out the irrationality and

absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all this unimaginable

vastness of suns and systems should have any special interest in so

pitiful a creature as man, an imperfectly developed inhabitant of one of

the smaller planets attached to a second or third rate sun, while that

He should have selected this little world for a scene so tremendous and

so necessarily unique as to sacrifice His own son in order to save a

portion of these miserable sinners from the natural consequences of sins,

is in their view a crowning absurdity, not to be believed by any rational

being."

We cannot follow Mr. Wallace's argument in detail. Suffice to say, that

he adduces a vast amount of data showing, first, that the universe is not

infinite, but has certain bounds, and that our earth and its system are

in the center of it, and, secondly, that the entire purpose of the

production of the universe is the human race. The earth, says Wallace, is

the only body capable of sustaining life. Life is not possible on any of

the planets, because they are either too close or too far distant from

the sun; some are probably composed of gas. He proves, on the basis of

accepted calculations, that of all the stars in the heavens there is not

even a remote probability that any are attended by bodies which can

provide the elements of life. Now, he says, this very peculiar position

of the earth cannot have been due to accident. He refuses to believe that

the earth should occupy this favored position "as the result of one out

of a thousand million chances."

"On the other hand," he says, "those thinkers may be right who, holding

that the universe is a manifestation of mind, and that the orderly

development of living souls supplies an adequate reason why such a

universe should have been called into existence, believe that we

ourselves are its sole and sufficient result and that nowhere else than

near the central position in the universe which we occupy could that

result have been attained."

This conclusion of Mr. Wallace has, indeed, not found acceptance among

scientists. Naturally not. If a materialistic conception of the universe

is to prevail, if evolution in some form is to be accepted, we must have

a universe of chance, not of a plan which spans the remotest star and

the soul of the new-born infant in one tremendous arc. But it is highly

instructive to observe how the scientists in 1903 met Wallace's argument.

One very distinguished reviewer said:

_"Too little is known,_ the most essential astronomical theories are too

much _a matter of conjecture,_ to give much strength to a theory built

up entirely of _such conjectural materials_. The argument from

_probabilities_ can easily be turned against the author, for when a

chain of reasoning depends upon _a long series of problematic premises,_

the doubt of these premises increases in a mathematical ratio. Weakness

in an argument is as cumulative as strength and while such of Dr.

Wallace's conclusions taken separately may receive the support of eminent

scientists, hardly any of them has received such demonstration as to

entitle it to unreserved credence."

This, at last, is a frank admission. Wallace quoted the generally

accepted results of scientific calculation and research. On the basis of

these results he demonstrates that the entire object of Evolution (to

demonstrate the development of all things by natural causes, without a

directing intelligence), is negatived by a proper consideration of

"ascertained data,"--since these data, taken all together, prove a

stupendous plan behind all natural phenomena, and the end of this plan,

the human soul. In rebuttal we are now told that "the most essential

astronomical theories"--as e.g. the Copernican System, Herschel's laws,

the Newtonian theory of gravitation,--"are matter of conjecture" (in

plain English, are blind guesses), are "problematic," and "hardly any

entitled to unreserved credence."

Thus do we find, that the greatest of Darwinians, on a mature

consideration of the subject, reached a conclusion which makes evolution

as a theory quite unnecessary; he found that the world is ruled not by

blind forces inherent in matter but by Supreme Intelligence. And in

their effort to keep themselves from being engulfed in the apostacy of a

great leader, the scientists, as by a unanimous chorus, announce that

the scientific dogmas which enter more or less essentially into their

atheistic conception of the universe, are nothing but surmises!

What reason has a Christian to surrender his faith on account of the

contradiction of scientists? He has the oracles of God, the sure Word of

Him Who created all things in six natural days. And if he but escape the

fascination of scientific speculations, and study the works of God

without bias, he will find in Nature nothing that does not agree with

the Book.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

The Fatal Bias.

If the theory of evolution is contradicted as we believe by the data of

experimental science, by the history of civilization, by the facts

especially of religion, more especially of Christianity, then the

question is justifiable: Why do scientists uphold the evolutionary

theory in some form or other, in spite of such absence of proof and such

insufficiency of the hypothesis?

In answering this question let us first observe that scientists do not

stand opposed to Christian belief _as representatives of science_. It is

not science, but the scientists, not geology, but the geologists, not

physics, but the physicists that oppose Christian theology. In other

words, there is no conflict between the _facts_ of science and the facts

of revelation. Why should one not be able to maintain Christian faith

though one accept the fact that the volume of expired air is one-fifth

less than inspired air; that plant substance is composed of cells; that

Halley's comet returns to our system every seventy five years; that

Sicily was part of the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus? These

physiological, botanical, astronomical, and historical facts are not in

conflict with the religious beliefs based on Scripture. The same holds

good with reference to the so-called laws of nature. These "laws" are

but group-names for certain phenomena. Thus we speak of the law of

gravity, of the conservation of energy, the Laws of Charles and Mariotte

regarding gaseous bodies, zoological laws, physiological, and

psychological laws. A book which merely records and classifies these

laws and describes the phenomena underlying them, is a truly scientific

book, yet the acceptance of all that it contained would not force the

surrender of any point of Christian doctrine. Hence we say that there is

no contradiction between science and theology, between nature and

religion.

It is otherwise with the _constructions and the interpretations_ which

the scientists place upon the facts of science. For instance, there is

an evident similarity of structure in many animals; they are built on a

similar plan; their organs have similar or even identical functions.

These are simply facts ascertained by observation. Their acceptance does

not place any burden on Christian faith. But scientists interpret these

facts to mean that there is progressive development in animal and plant

life. They have found certain laws (Natural Selection and others) by

means of which they require only forces resident in matter to explain

the universe. On their hypothesis there is no necessity of miracles nor

need we believe in God. Observe, this is the result of speculation, not

observation; interpretation of facts, but not a conclusion drawn from

facts themselves. It is not science but scientists that are opposed to

the Christian religion.

This view is supported also by the reflection that the history of

speculative thought has ever revealed an anti-Christian intent and

purpose, a fatal bias of scientists and philosophers against the

teachings of Christianity. The modern anatomist and physiologist may

declare that his science precludes the necessity of faith in God and of

prayer; that through his research he has become a materialist, an

atheist. But even in the Middle Ages, when practically all of anatomy

and physiology was yet unexplored, the physicians of that day were as

materialistic as those of our own. The medieval saying was: "Tres

physici, duo athei," "of every three physicians, two are atheists." The

science of the Middle Ages differed very materially from the science of

our own day. Is it not clear that the same result cannot be produced by

causes so dissimilar? That materialism and atheism which scientists

announce as a result, is really the starting point of their speculations.

Otherwise, how account for the fact that physicists are, as a rule,

gross materialists now as they were forty years ago, although all

theories regarding the composition of matter have been radically altered

since that day? Evidently, the modern scientist is not on account of his

research and speculation induced to proclaim himself as agnostic; quite

the reverse, the fact that on _any_ system of physics, zoology,

psychology, the conclusions remain the same, proves that these

conclusions were in the mind before the facts were investigated.

Unbelief is not a product of scientific and philosophic speculation, it

is rather their origin and source. There is a settled purpose in

relation to which the facts are classified and interpreted. Not all

scientists are as honest as Huxley who announces this purpose in the

introduction of his _"Science and Hebrew Tradition:"_ "These essays are

for the most part intended to contribute to the process of destroying

the infallibility of Scripture."

Additional light is received from the observation that scientists adhere

to their agnostic conclusions even after the premises have been found at

fault, on which they based their conclusions. It is the end and aim of

evolution to demonstrate that all processes of life and the history of

living organisms may be accounted for without the assumption of a

personal Creator. Thus the very beginning of our universe is accounted

for (in the nebular hypothesis) by the origin of force and motion in

matter. However, President Lowell, of Harvard, twenty years ago said

that the nebular hyopthesis was "founded on a fundamental mistake."

(_"The Solar System,"_ p. 119.) Do we find that scientists, though

forced to surrender this prop, have given up atheistic evolution? By no

means. Evidently, their atheism is older than their evolution.

Fifty years ago it was thought that in the heavenly bodies called

nebulae the material of which the world was made had been discovered. It

was assumed that these nebulae were worlds in the process of formation.

In 1914 the scientists at Lick Observatory concluded, from the great

speed at which the nebulae traveled, that they are the _remains_ of

worlds which _have been_ or are passing, and are not the constituents

of worlds to be. This destroyed another supposition favoring the theory,

but we do not notice that scientists have become more friendly to

Christianity. Or consider the latest speculations on the composition of

matter as contained in the works of Lodge, Crookes, and Lord Kelvin. It

is now believed that matter is composed of electrical particles smaller

than atoms, called electrons. An atom of gold is said to consist of

137,200 electrons. Now, if one considers how closely physical theories

are bound up with the principle of evolution, should we not expect

scientists to renounce this principle when another stone in its

foundation has been destroyed? And since there is no such renunciation,

is it not plain that this class of scientists insists upon an atheistic

interpretation of the universe, no matter on what hypothesis? For the

slow increase of variations in plants and animals, by which Darwin

accounts for the origin of species, the evolutionists demanded more

than 400,000,000 years. But it is asserted on the strength of certain

calculations by physicists that the earth cannot possibly have existed

more than 40,000,000 years. This latter figure, based especially on the

calculations of Lord Kelvin, caused doubts to be raised regarding

evolution which prompted many scientists to renounce it as a working

theory. Rudimentary structures received attention, and as a result, St.

John Mivart says: "It is an absolute fad that there is no instance of

transmutation of species." Dr. Nathaniel S. Shaler, Professor of Geology

in Harvard, wrote: "It is not proved that a single species of the two or

three millions now on earth has been established by natural selection."

Thus the evolutionary philosopher is compelled to relinquish one theory

after another; the biologist knocks out the under-pinning, the

geologists and physicists demolish most of the residue; yet the

advocates of evolutionism adhere to their purpose to banish God from the

universe. In this we have conclusive proof that what evolutionists

pretend to find as the conclusion of their research, in reality was a

settled conviction in their minds before they commenced their

investigation, and to which, in their bias, they propose to hold fast,

no matter what happens to the evidence once announced as final.

The warfare of philosophy against Christian faith is readily explained.

Man is corrupt. He loves sin. He is conscious of his guilt and fears the

penalty. Hence every avenue of escape is welcome, if only he can

persuade himself that there is no God, that there is no judgment. Man is

proud, he desires no Savior. Hence the tendency to prove that no Savior

is necessary; that there is no guilt attaching to sin, that there is no

absolute right and wrong. Hence, too, the doctrine of the agnostic, that

we can ascribe no attribute to God. When we read the _"Synthetic

Philosophy"_ of Spencer, we are apt to belive [tr. note: sic] that the

agnosticism there set forth is the result of deep philosophic

speculation. Nothing further from the truth. Man, even cultured,

philosophic man, wants no restrictions placed upon pride and selfishness;

hence it is necessary to rid the mind of the fear of divine justice;

hence we have an interest in demonstrating that God "has no attributes"

--such as "just," for instance. The Psalmist describes this attitude:

"Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us."

No man who has grasped the inner motive of all scientific effort to

demolish faith can fail to understand why the rabble greets with such

jubilant acclaim every new attack upon the Biblical narrative. No man

who has pondered this motive can be ensnared in the net of science

falsely so called. He has seen its inwardness, its fatal bias.

Thus a Christian may preserve an attitude of mental balance over against

science. The Christian believer may admire the achievements of science

without being carried away by the speculations of scientists. Great is

the progress of modern medicine, so great, that even the past ten years

have witnessed great advances in treating disease. Chemistry has

developed greater marvels than was ever ascribed to the wizard's wand

by Oriental poets. What astounding performances in applied science--the

Panama Canal, the Hudson Tunnels, the development of the automobile and

of the airplane, and the perfection of the telephone and the moving

picture! We may exult in all these victories of mind over matter, and

yet stoutly oppose those theories which would make of the mind which

created all these marvels merely a development of the instincts of the

ape.

It is possible, even, to be a scientist and in no wise compromise one's

Christian faith and honesty of Christtian [tr. note: sic] profession.

Wherever men have contented themselves with purely scientific research,

with investigating and tabulating the phenomena of nature and

establishing the laws of life and motion in the universe, they have

found no difficulty in retaining a child-like faith. Among those

scientists of the first rank who, far from being forced to the

atheistic conclusion, recognized a wonderful harmony between science

and revelation, was a Kepler, who was led by meditations on the harmony

of theology with mathematics to follow those laborious calculations by

which he first established the orbit of Mars and then of other planets;

among them was a Newton, called by Justus Liebig "the most sublime

genius in a thousand years," who asserted that his entire system of

mechanics was untenable without the supposition of divine Power; a

Davy, prince of chemists, who "saw in all the forces of matter the

tools of Divinity;" a Linne, called by Prof. Fraas the "greatest

naturalist of all times," who commences his "System of Nature" thus:

"Awakening I saw God, the Eternal, the Infinite, the Omniscient, the

Omnipotent, and I was amazed. I read some of His traces in creation.

What unspeakable perfection!" We find in the roster of scientists who

believed in an inspired Bible and a divine Savior, such men as Hans

Christian Oerstedt, the great discoverer of electro-magnetism and the

father of all modern electrical science, who declared that he "had but

a desire to lead men to God by his books;" Lavoisier, father of modern

chemistry, a Christian; Maedler, who reached the front rank of modern

astronomers without relinquishing his childhood faith and who said: "A

real scientist cannot be an infidel;" Ritter, greatest of geographers,

who said: "All the world is replete with the glory of the Creator;"

Virchow, the surgeon of worldwide fame, who all his life was an

outspoken opponent of the evolutionary theory and whose last prayer,

uttered in the presence of his fellow-scientists, was: _"Christi Blut

und Gerechtigkeit . . . ."_

Speaking of the triumphant Redeemer the Lord says Isa. 53: "I will

divide Him a portion with the great and He shall divide the spoil with

the strong. The kings of the earth shall serve Him." The prophecy was

fulfilled when kings not only on material thrones but kings in the world

of intellect and giants of learning have paid homage to the God-man

Jesus Christ. Throughout the record of modern science and erudition

there are shining examples of the truth that great mental power and

profound research are not incompatible with humble acceptance of Bible

teachings. The spiritual blindness of natural man, his intellectual

pride, and the depravity of his will account for the attitude of many

scientists over against the facts of revelation. From the shifting

quicksand of their speculation we may rise unharmed on the pinions of a

faith guided by the principle: "It is written."