“The Bible says: ‘In the beginning G-O-D, God!’ I don’t know when that
beginning was, but in the beginning God! whether it was 6,000 years ago
or a hundred of millions of years ago, as some cranks now claim, created
the heaven and the earth. I don’t believe the doctrine of evolution. Did
this tabernacle evolute? No: common sense will tell you that. Did flowers
evolute? If things have evoluted, why haven’t they been improved upon
during all these years? Flowers found today along the Nile grew there
in exactly the same form centuries ago. Have they evoluted? You can put
a gold belt around a hog, tie his sides up with ribbons and he’ll still
squeal for slop. He’s the same old hog. Has he evoluted? If you believe
human beings evoluted from the ape, all right. If you believe that your
great-great-great-great-grandfather was a monkey with a prehensile tail
around the limb of a cocoanut tree, all right; but don’t connect your
monkey ancestors with me. Listen here, I’m going to stick by that book—the
Bible if I die the very next instant.”