in Darwin himself by the unsupported hypothesis which he launched upon
the world, or which he endorsed with such earnestness and industry as
to impress his name upon it He was regarded as "_orthodox_" when he was
young; he was even laughed at for quoting the Bible "_as an unanswerable
authority on some point of morality_." In the beginning he regarded
himself as a Theist and felt compelled "to look to a First Cause, having
an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man."
This conclusion, he says, was strong in his mind when he wrote "The
Origin of Species," but he observes that since that time this conclusion
very gradually became _weaker_, and then he unconsciously brings a
telling indictment against his own hypothesis. He says, "_Can the mind
of man_ (which, according to his belief, has been _developed from a mind
as low as that possessed by the lowest animals) be trusted when it draws
such grand conclusions_?" He first links man with the animals, and then,
because of this _supposed_ connection, estimates man's mind by brute
standards. Agnosticism is the natural attitude of the evolutionist. How
can a brute mind comprehend spiritual things? It makes a tremendous
difference what a man thinks about his origin whether he looks up or
down. Who will say, after reading these words, that it is immaterial
what man thinks about his origin? Who will deny that the acceptance of
the Darwinian hypothesis shuts out the higher reasonings and the larger
conceptions of man?
On the very brink of the grave, after he had extracted from his
hypothesis all the good that there was in it and all the benefit that it
could confer, he is helplessly in the dark, and "cannot pretend to throw
the least light on such abstruse problems." When he believed in God, in
the Bible, in Christ and in a future life there were no mysteries that
disturbed him, but a _guess_ with nothing in the universe to support
it swept him away from his moorings and left him in his old age in the
midst of mysteries that he thought _insoluble_. He must content himself
with _Agnosticism_. What can Darwinism ever do to compensate any one for
the destruction of faith in God, in His Word, in His Son, and of hope of
immortality?
It would seem sufficient to quote Darwin against himself and to cite the
confessed effect of the doctrine as a sufficient reason for rejecting
it, but the situation is a very serious one and there is other evidence
that should be presented.
James H. Leuba, a professor of Psychology in Bryn Mawr College,
Pennsylvania, wrote a book five years ago, entitled "Belief in God and
Immortality." It was published by Sherman French & Co., of Boston, and
republished by The Open Court Publishing Company of Chicago. Every
Christian preacher should procure a copy of this book and it should be
in the hands of every Christian layman who is anxious to aid in the
defense of the Bible against its enemies. Leuba has discarded belief in
a personal God and in personal immortality. He asserts that belief in a
personal God and personal immortality is declining in the United States,
and he furnishes proof, which, as long as it is unchallenged, seems
conclusive. He takes a book containing the names of fifty-five hundred
scientists--the names of practically all American scientists of
prominence, he affirms--and sends them questions. Upon the answers
received he asserts that _more than one-half_ of the prominent
scientists of the United States, those teaching Biology, Psychology,
Geology and History especially, have discarded belief in a personal God
and in personal immortality.
This is what the doctrine of evolution is doing for those who teach our
children. They first discard the Mosaic account of man's creation, and
they do it on the ground that there are no miracles. This in itself
constitutes a practical repudiation of the Bible; the miracles of the
Old and New Testament cannot be cut out without a mutilation that is
equivalent to rejection. They reject the supernatural along with the
miracle, and with the supernatural the inspiration of the Bible and the
authority that rests upon inspiration. If these believers in evolution
are consistent and have the courage to carry their doctrine to its
logical conclusion, they reject the virgin birth of Christ and the
resurrection. They may still regard Christ as an unusual man, but they
will not make much headway in converting people to Christianity, if they
declare Jesus to be nothing more than a man and either a deliberate
impostor or a deluded enthusiast.
The evil influence of these Materialistic, Atheistic or Agnostic
professors is disclosed by further investigation made by Leuba. He
questioned the students of nine representative colleges, and upon their
answers declares that, while only fifteen per cent. of the freshmen have
discarded the Christian religion, thirty per cent. of the juniors and
that forty to forty-five per cent, of the men _graduates_ have abandoned
the cardinal principles of the Christian faith. Can Christians be
indifferent to such statistics? Is it an immaterial thing that so
large a percentage of the young men who go from Christian homes into
institutions of learning should go out from these institutions with the
spiritual element eliminated from their lives? What shall it profit a
man if he shall gain all the learning of the schools and lose his faith
in God?
To show how these evolutionists undermine the faith of students let me
give you an illustration that recently came to my attention: A student
in one of the largest State universities of the nation recently gave me
a printed speech delivered by the president of the university, a year
ago this month, to 3,500 students, and printed and circulated by the
Student Christian Association of the institution. The student who gave
me the speech marked the following paragraph: "And, again, religion must
not be thought of as something that is inconsistent with reasonable,
scientific thinking in regard to the nature of the universe. I go so far
as to say that, if you cannot reconcile religion with the things taught
in biology, in psychology, or in the other fields of study in this
university, then you should throw your religion away. Scientific truth
is here to stay." What about the Bible, is it not here to stay? If he
had stopped with the first sentence, his language might not have
been construed to the injury of religion, because religion is not
"inconsistent with reasonable, scientific thinking in regard to
the nature of the universe." There is nothing _unreasonable_ about
Christianity, and there is nothing _unscientific_ about Christianity.
No scientific _fact_--no _fact_ of any other kind can disturb religion,
because _facts are not in conflict with each other_. It is _guessing_ by
scientists and so-called scientists that is doing the harm. And it is
_guessing_ that is endorsed by this distinguished college president (a
D.D., too, as well as an LL.D. and a Ph.D.) when he says, "I go so far
as to say that, if you cannot reconcile religion with the things taught
in biology, in psychology, or in the other fields of study in this
university, then you should throw your religion away." What does this
mean, except that the books on biology and on other scientific subjects
used in that university are to be preferred to the Bible in case of
conflict? The student is told, "throw your religion away," if he cannot
reconcile it (the Bible, of course,) with the things taught in biology,
psychology, etc. Books on biology change constantly, likewise books
on psychology, and yet they are held before the students as better
authority than the unchanging Word of God.
Is any other proof needed to show the irreligious influence exerted by
Darwinism applied to man? At the University of Wisconsin (so a Methodist
preacher told me) a teacher told his class that the Bible was a
collection of myths. When I brought the matter to the attention of the
President of the University, he criticized me but avoided all reference
to the professor. At Ann Arbor a professor argued with students against
religion and asserted that no thinking man could believe in God or the
Bible. At Columbia (I learned this from a Baptist preacher) a professor
began his course in geology by telling his class to throw away all that
they had learned in the Sunday school. There is a professor in Yale of
whom it is said that no one leaves his class a believer in God. (This
came from a young man who told me that his brother was being led away
from the Christian faith by this professor.) A father (a Congressman)
tells me that a daughter on her return from Wellesley told him that
nobody believed in the Bible stories now. Another father (a Congressman)
tells me of a son whose faith was undermined by this doctrine in a
Divinity School. Three preachers told me of having their interest in the
subject aroused by the return of their children from college with their
faith shaken. The Northern Baptists have recently, after a spirited
contest, secured the adoption of a Confession of Faith; it was opposed
by the evolutionists.
In Kentucky the fight is on among the Disciples, and it is becoming
more and more acute in the Northern branches of the Methodist and
Presbyterian Churches. A young preacher, just out of a theological
seminary, who did not believe in the virgin birth of Christ, was
recently ordained in Western New York. Last April I met a young man who
was made an atheist by two teachers in a Christian college.
These are only a few illustrations that have come under my own
observation--nearly all of them within a year. What is to be done? Are
the members of the various Christian churches willing to have the power
of the pulpit paralyzed by a false, absurd and ridiculous doctrine which
is without support in the written Word of God and without support also
in nature? Is "thus saith the Lord" to be supplanted by guesses and
speculations and assumptions? I submit three propositions for the
consideration of the Christians of the nation:
First, the preachers who are to break the bread of life to the lay
members should believe that man has in him the breath of the Almighty,
as the Bible declares, and not the blood of the brute, as the
evolutionists affirm. He should also believe in the virgin birth of the
Saviour.
Second, none but Christians in good standing and with a spiritual
conception of life should be allowed to teach in Christian schools.
Church schools are worse than useless if they bring students under the
influence of those who do not believe in the religion upon which the
Church and church schools are built. Atheism and Agnosticism are more
dangerous when hidden under the cloak of religion than when they are
exposed to view.
Third, in schools supported by taxation we should have a real neutrality
wherever neutrality in religion is desired. If the Bible cannot be
defended in these schools it should not be attacked, either directly or
under the guise of philosophy or science. The neutrality which we now
have is often but a sham; it carefully excludes the Christian religion
but permits the use of the schoolrooms for the destruction of faith and
for the teaching of materialistic doctrines.
It is not sufficient to say that _some_ believers in Darwinism retain
their belief in Christianity; some survive smallpox. As we avoid
smallpox because _many_ die of it, so we should avoid Darwinism because
it _leads many astray_.
If it is contended that an instructor has a right to teach anything
he likes, I reply that the parents who pay the salary have a right to
decide what shall be taught. To continue the illustration used above, a
person can expose himself to the smallpox if he desires to do so, but he
has no right to communicate it to others. So a man can believe anything
he pleases but he has no right to teach it against the protest of his
employers.
Acceptance of Darwin's doctrine tends to destroy one's belief in
immortality as taught by the Bible. If there has been no break in the
line between man and the beasts--no time when by the act of the Heavenly
Father man became "a living Soul," at what period in man's development
was he endowed with the hope of a future life? And, if the brute theory
leads to the abandonment of belief in a future life with its rewards and
punishments, what stimulus to righteous living is offered in its place?
Darwinism leads to a denial of God. Nietzsche carried Darwinism to its
logical conclusion and it made him the most extreme of anti-Christians.
I had read extracts from his writings--enough to acquaint me with his
sweeping denial of God and of the Saviour--but not enough to make me
familiar with his philosophy.
As the war progressed I became more and more impressed with the
conviction that the German propaganda rested upon a materialistic
foundation. I secured the writings of Nietzsche and found in them a
defense, made in advance, of all the cruelties and atrocities practiced
by the militarists of Germany. Nietzsche tried to substitute the worship
of the "Superman" for the worship of God. He not only rejected the
Creator, but he rejected all moral standards. He praised war and
eulogized hatred because it led to war. He denounced sympathy and pity
as attributes unworthy of man. He believed that the teachings of Christ
made degenerates and, logical to the end, he regarded Democracy as the
refuge of weaklings. He saw in man nothing but an animal and in that
animal the highest virtue he recognized was "The Will to Power"--a will
which should know no let or hindrance, no restraint or limitation.
Nietzsche's philosophy would convert the world into a ferocious conflict
between beasts, each brute trampling ruthlessly on everything in his
way. In his book entitled "Joyful Wisdom," Nietzsche ascribes to
Napoleon the very same dream of power--Europe under one sovereign and
that sovereign the master of the world--that lured the Kaiser into a sea
of blood from which he emerged an exile seeking security under a foreign
flag. Nietzsche names Darwin as one of the three great men of his
century, but tries to deprive him of credit (?) for the doctrine that
bears his name by saying that Hegel made an earlier announcement of it.
Nietzsche died hopelessly insane, but his philosophy has wrought the
moral ruin of a multitude, if it is not actually responsible for
bringing upon the world its greatest war.
His philosophy, if it is worthy the name of philosophy, is the ripened
fruit of Darwinism--and a tree is known by its fruit.
In 1900--over twenty years ago--while an International Peace Congress
was in session in Paris the following editorial appeared in _L'Univers_:
"The spirit of peace has fled the earth because evolution has taken
possession of it. The plea for peace in past years has been inspired by
faith in the divine nature and the divine origin of man; men were
then looked upon as children of one Father and war, therefore, was
fratricide. But now that men are looked upon as children of apes, what
matters it whether they are slaughtered or not?"
I have given you above the words of a French writer published twenty
years ago. I have just found in a book recently published by a prominent
English writer words along the same line, only more comprehensive. The
corroding influence of Darwinism has spread as the doctrine has been
increasingly accepted. In the American preface to "The Glass of
Fashion" these words are to be found: "Darwinism not only justifies
the sensualist at the trough and Fashion at her glass; it justifies
Prussianism at the cannon's mouth and Bolshevism at the prison-door.
If Darwinism be true, if Mind is to be driven out of the universe and
accident accepted as a sufficient cause for all the majesty and glory of
physical nature, then there is no crime or violence, however abominable
in its circumstances and however cruel in its execution, which cannot be
justified by success, and no triviality, no absurdity of Fashion which
deserves a censure: more--there is no act of disinterested love and
tenderness, no deed of self-sacrifice and mercy, no aspiration after
beauty and excellence, for which a single reason can be adduced in
logic."
To destroy the faith of Christians and lay the foundation for the
bloodiest war in history would seem enough to condemn Darwinism, but
there are still two other indictments to bring against it. First, that
it is the basis of the gigantic class struggle that is now shaking
society throughout the world. Both the capitalist and the labourer
are increasingly class conscious. Why? Because the doctrine of the
"Individual efficient for himself"--the brute doctrine of the "survival
of the fittest"--is driving men into a life-and-death struggle from
which sympathy and the spirit of brotherhood are eliminated. It is
transforming the industrial world into a slaughter-house.
Benjamin Kidd, in a masterful work, entitled, "The Science of Power,"
points out how Darwinism furnished Nietzsche with a scientific basis for
his godless system of philosophy and is demoralizing industry.
He also quotes eminent English scientists to support the last charge in
the indictment, namely, that Darwinism robs the reformer of hope. Its
plan of operation is to improve the race by "scientific breeding" on a
purely physical basis. A few hundred years may be required--possibly a
few thousand--but what is time to one who carries eons in his quiver and
envelopes his opponents in the "Mist of Ages"?
Kidd would substitute the "Emotion of the Ideal" for scientific breeding
and thus shorten the time necessary for the triumph of a social reform.
He counts one or two generations as sufficient. This is an enormous
advance over Darwin's doctrine, but Christ's plan is still more
encouraging. A man can be born again; the springs of life can be
cleansed instantly so that the heart loves the things that it formerly
hated and hates the things that it once loved. If this is true of _one_,
it can be true of _any number_. Thus, a nation can be born in a day if
the ideals of the people can be changed.
Many have tried to harmonize Darwinism with the Bible, but these
efforts, while honest and sometimes even agonizing, have not been
successful. How could they be when the natural and inevitable tendency
of Darwinism is to exalt the mind at the expense of the heart, to
overestimate the reliability of the reason as compared with faith and to
impair confidence in the Bible. The mind is a machine; it has no morals.
It obeys its owner as willingly when he plots to kill as when he plans
for service.
The Theistic evolutionist who tries to occupy a middle ground between
those who accept the Bible account of creation and those who reject God
entirely reminds one of a traveller in the mountains, who, having fallen
half-way down a steep slope, catches hold of a frail bush. It takes so
much of his strength to keep from going lower that he is useless as an
aid to others. Those who have accepted evolution in the belief that it
was not anti-Christian may well revise their conclusions in view of the
accumulating evidence of its baneful influence.
Darwinism discredits the things that are supernatural and encourages the
worship of the intellect--an idolatry as deadly to spiritual progress as
the worship of images made by human hands. The injury that it does would
be even greater than it is but for the moral momentum acquired by the
student before he comes under the blighting influence of the doctrine.
Many instances could be cited to show how the theory that man descended
from the brute has, when deliberately adopted, driven reverence from
the heart and made young Christians agnostics and sometimes
atheists--depriving them of the joy, and society of the service, that
come from altruistic effort inspired by religion.
I have recently read of a pathetic case in point. In the Encyclopaedia
Americana you will find a sketch of the life of George John Romanes,
from which the following extract is taken: "Romanes, George John,
English scientist. In 1879 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society
and in 1878 published, under the pseudonym 'Physicus,' a work entitled,
'A Candid Examination of Theism,' in which he took up a somewhat defiant
atheistic position. Subsequently his views underwent considerable
change; he revised the 'Candid Examination,' and, toward the close of
his life, was engaged on 'A Candid Examination of Religion,' in which
he returned to theistic beliefs. His notes for this work were published
after his death, under the title 'Thoughts on Religion,' edited by Canon
Gore. Romanes was an ardent supporter of Darwin and the evolutionists
and in various works sought to extend evolutionary principles to mind,
both in the lower animals and in the man. He wrote very extensively on
modern biological theories."
Let me use Romanes' own language to describe the disappointing
experiences of this intellectual "prodigal son." On page 180 of
"Thoughts on Religion" (written, as above stated, just before his death
but not published until after his demise) he says, "The views that I
entertained on this subject (Plan in Revelation) when an undergraduate
(_i.e._, the ordinary orthodox views) were abandoned in the presence of
the theory of Evolution."
It was the doctrine of Evolution that led him astray. He attempted to
employ reason to the exclusion of faith--with the usual result. He
abandoned prayer, as he explains on pages 142 and 143: "Even the
simplest act of will in regard to religion--that of prayer--has not been
performed by me for at least a quarter of a century, simply because it
has seemed impossible to pray, as it were, hypothetically, that, much as
I have always desired to be able to pray, I cannot will the attempt.
To justify myself for what my better judgment has often seemed to be
essentially irrational, I have ever made sundry excuses." "Others have
doubtless other difficulties, but mine is chiefly, I think, that of an
undue regard to reason as against heart and will--undue, I mean, if so
it be that Christianity is true, and the conditions to faith in it have
been of divine ordination."
In time he tired of the husks of materialism and started back to his
Father's house. It was a weary journey but as he plodded along, his
appreciation of the heart's part increased until, on pages 152 and 153,
he says, "It is a fact that we all feel the intellectual part of man to
be 'higher' than the animal, whatever our theory of his origin. It is
a fact that we all feel the moral part of man to be 'higher' than the
intellectual, whatever our theory of either may be. It is also a fact
that we all similarly feel the spiritual to be 'higher' than the moral,
whatever our theory of religion may be. It is what we understand
by man's moral, and still more his spiritual, qualities that go to
constitute character. And it is astonishing how in all walks of life it
is character that tells in the long run."
On page 150 he answered Huxley's attack on faith. He says, "Huxley,
in 'Lay Sermons,' says that faith has been proved a 'cardinal sin' by
science. Now this is true enough of credulity, superstition, etc., and
science has done no end of good in developing our ideas of method,
evidence, etc. But this is all on the side of intellect. 'Faith' is
not touched by such facts or considerations. And what a terrible hell
science would have made of the world, if she had abolished the 'spirit
of faith,' even in human relations."
In the days of his apostasy he "took it for granted," he says on page
164, "that Christianity was played out." When once his eyes were
reopened he vied with Paul himself in recognizing the superior quality
of love. On page 163 he quoted the eloquent lines of Bourdillon:
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of a whole world dies
With the setting sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
Having quoted this noble sentiment he adds: "Love is known to be all
this. How great then, is Christianity, as being the religion of love,
and causing men to believe both in the cause of love's supremacy and the
infinity of God's love to man."