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8/20/2019 The Fundamentals: Volume 7, Chapter 1: The Passing of Evolution
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VOLU ME
VII
CHA ,PTER I
THE PASSING OF EVOLUTION
•
BY PROfESSOR
GEORGE
FREDERICK WRIGHT~ D
1
•
D.,
LL.
D.,
OBERLIN
COLLE
1
GE, OBERLIN,
OHIO
•
The · wo1·d
evo lution
is in
itself innocent enough,
and
has
a large range of legitim,at~ use. The Bible, ind
1
eed, tea,ches a
sy,stem of evoluti ,on,. The
,worl ,d,
was
not
mad
1
e in an instant,
or even in
one day (
what,ever
period day may signify) but in
six
days.
Throughout ,
the
whole
proces
1
S1
there was
an
orderly
progress from lower to higher forms of matter aitd life. In
short there is an established or er in all the Creator s work.
Even tl1e King,dom of Heave ,11 s like ,a grain
0£
n1ustard
see,d
wl1ich being
planted
grew from
the
,smallest
b,eginn,in,gs to
be
a tree in ,which the fowls of
l1eaven
co,u]d t,ake refuge. Sro
everywhere there is first the blade, then the
,ear, then
the
£ull
corn
in
tl1e ea.r.
l
But recently the word has come into much deserved disre-
pute
by
the
inje ,ction into it
of erro ,neous an
1
d harmful
theo
lo,gi1al
and
phi1osopl1ical i1npticati,ons. The
widely
current
doc,trine
of ev,olution
whic]1 we
ar e
n
1
ow
,compelled
to combat
is one
which practical]y elin1inates GoE1from
the
who
1
le
1
cre
ative
process and
relegates mankind to the tender mercies of
a mechanical universe the
wheels
of whose
machinery
are left
to move on
withoL1t
any immediate Divine direction.
This
d,octrine
of evolution received
such
an impulse
from
· Darwinism and
has
been so
often
confounde ,d with
,t
that it is
•
important at the
OU t
et
to,
discriminate the two. Darwinism
was not, i,11
he
mind of
its ,author ,
a th
1
eory
o univers ,al evo1u-
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6
The Fundamentals
•
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tion, and
Dar ·win
rare]y · used
the
w,ord. The title of
Darwin's
great wor .k was,I 'The Origin of Species
by
Means of Natural
Selec·tion. The
probl
1
em
whi
1
ch
he set
o,ut to solve
touche ·d
but a small
part
of the
field
of e·volution. , His propositio11
w.a.s simply
that sp
1
ecies may reasonab 'ly
be
supposed to be
•
nothing more than enlarged 01§ accentuated varieties, which
all admit are descendant .s fro1n a cotnmon ancestry. Fo1
example, there ar ·e a great
tnany
varieties .
1
0£ o,ak trees .. But
it
is supposed
by
all botanists
that
these have
origi ·nated
from
la common
ancest
1
or. Sorile chestnut trees, however, ,
differ
less from some
1
oak tr ,ees than the extreme varieties of b,ot.h
do from each other. Nevertheless, the o·ak and the chestnut
are r
1
ecko ·ned not as v,arieties, but as different species. .But
the dividing
line
between
them
is
s·o,
uncertai ·n that jt is im
possible to define · it. in Janguage; hence, some botanists have
se,t up an in
1
de,pendent
specie.s
betwe
1
en the
tw
1
0,
which
th,e.y
ca·tt ''chestnut oak.
WHAT
IS
A ''SPECIES ,'?
1
This, l1owever, is but a single illustration of the great
clifficulty
which . scientjfic
men have ha,d
in
getting a.
satis i-
•
•
factor ,y definition of species. That most general]y accep
1
ted
is · ''a collection of individual plants and animals which re
semble each o·ther S
1
0 clo
1
se]y that
th,ey
can re asonably be sup-
posed to
have descended from a
comm,on
ancestor.'' It is
easy to
1
see, however, tl1.at, this definition begls the wh
1
ole ques
tion at issue. For we have no certain mea ·ns of knowing ho
1
w
wide]y the pr ,ogeny may in .some cases differ from the parent;
and we do n
1
o·t
know but
that
resen1bl.ance.s
may
result
fro
1
r.a ·
the action of other ·
1
causes than t'hat of p
1
arental connecti.on4E
The defi11ition is far .fro ·m
being
One
that
would
be acce .pted
in the exact sciences.
•
It
m·ay
be ''reasonably · supposed'' t'hat such small differ-
ences as se·parate species have res
1
ulted th ·rough vari .ations of
individua1s descended from a common ancestry, yet it is a long
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The
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l
1
eap to assert that, tl1erefore, it may be reaso ·nably supposed
· that all the differences bet,veen
animals
or
between pla.nts
may
l1ave ari ,sen in
a
s·imilar manner ..
•
A characteristic difference
between
the African elephant
and th,e In
1
dian elep,hant, ·for example, is th.at the Afri ,can ele,- ·
phant has
three
toes on his hinder feet and the Indian has
four .
While ·,
ther ,ef
ore, it may not be
a
g1·eat
stret
1
e·11of
imagination to suppose
that
this
difference
has arisen
by
a
natural process, without
any
1outside
interve ,ntion,
it.
is an.
indefinitely
large1· stretch of the imagination to
suppose
that
·all the me:mb·ers of the gener ,al famil:y· to which
they
belo,n,g
have originated
in
a like manner; for, this
family,
or order~
i.ncludes,
n.ot
only
the
el
1
ephant, but
the
·rhinoc
1
eros, h.ippopota
must tapir, wild boar and horse.
But many of Darwin's followers and expounder ,s, have
gone to ·extreme lengths in their assertions, and have an
·nounced far
more astonis 'hing ·co11clusions
than these . Not
only
do
t·hey
assert,
with
a
positiveness
of which
Darwin
was
never ,guilty,. that speci.es have had a common origin
through
natural causes, but that
all
1
organic 'beings had been
equally
independent . of s,upernatural forces. It is a s,mall thing
th.at
t·he
two
species of
elephant should have descended
f·rom a
common stock. Nothing will satisfy them but to assert that
the elephant,
the
lion, the bear, the
mouse,
the kanga~oo, the
whale,
the sh.ark, the
shad, birds of every
de,scription ·indeed,
all forms
of anin1a life, including
t·he ,oyste1· and
the
sn.ail~
have arisen
by
strictly natural processes
from so1ne
minute
speck of
1if
e,, which originate ,d in far distant ·time.
OR.IG.IN OF LIFE
•
It need not be said that su~h conclusions must rest upon
very attenu ,ate,d evid
1
ence,
su,ch as is ·not per.mitt ,ed to
have
weight in the ordinary affairs of life. But even this is
only
the be.cinnj·ng wi·th
thoroughgoing
ev;o]utionists. To be con·
sist~nt , must not only have all species of animals or plants,
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8
The
undanientals
•
I
..
but all animals and plants des
1
c
1
en
1
ding · from a common
origin,
which
they
a .ser t to be an almost form ·less protoplasm,
wl1ich
is supposed to
have appeared in
the
earliest geological
ages .
•
N1or does
tl1is
by any 1neans b
ring them to
thei ·1·
final
goal·, for
to carl"Y out
tl1eir
theory
t.hey must .le .p to the
concltt.sion
that life itself
l1as
originated,
sp·onta ·neously,
by a natural
· process,
f
·om
inorganic ma tt er .
•
But of this they have confesse ·dly no .sc.ientific pro ,of. For,
so -far
as
is
ye.t
known,
life
sprin .gs only from
antecedent
life .
The fir st
chapter
o,f Gen
esis,
to
wl1ich
referenc .e l1as a1rea,dy
been made, f'urnishes as perfect a
defini·tio
1
n of plant ' life as
has ev
1
er been given. P lant life,
'1vhich
is th,e earliest
f,or1n
of
living matter, is desc1·ihed ''as that whicl1 has Sr1ed ·in itself''
and ''yiel
1
ds
seed
aft ·er
his kind.'
1
' A half century ago the
theory of
sp,onta ·neous .
genera ,tion had many support .er·s.. It
was believed
that
minute fo ,rms
of
pla11t
life had sprung
up
from certai 11c
1
onditions .of
in
1
organic matter
witl1out
the
inter
vention of seeds or spores. Bottle s of water, which were
S
1
Up1o
1
sed to have be·en shut off from all access of· livi.ng germs,
were found,
after standing
a sufficient
length
of ti ·me, to sw·arm .
with 111inute iving organisms.
But experiments show·ed that g·e·rms must l1ave b,e
1
en in the
water befor
e
it
\\l?as
et .aside. For,
on
sub jec ting
it
to a hi .gher
de.gree of temperat ttre, so as app .arent ly to kill the germs ., n·0
Iife was ever
1
developed in
it.
A ll positive bas ·is for bridging
t·he chasm between .living matter and lifele .ss matter has tht1s
been removed from the realm of sci.ence .
•
THE MY,STERY
1
0F
FIRST
BEG.INNINGS
This brings
us to th-e
i1nportant
conclusion that the origin
of .life, and we may add of variatio ·ns, is t,o finite minds an
inso .]uble proble1n ; and
so Darwin regarded it.
At
tl1e very
outset of hisl
spec·ulation,
he rested · on. th
1
e supposition that
the
Creator
in the
'beginning
breathed the ·forces of life into
I
several forms
o·f
p
1ant.s and animals,
and
at
the
same time
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T he Passing of
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endowe·d them wit'h
the marv ,e1ot1s
cap.a
1
city
:for
v,ariation
which
we
kno,v they
poss,esse
This mys,te·rious capacity for variati
1
on lies at
the
basis
of his theory. If anytl1ing is to be
evolved in
an orderly
1nanner from the 1·e~iden·t forces ·of primor
1
dia1 matter
it
must
first have been involved through the creative act of the Divine
•
Bein,g. But n
1
0 on,e know,s wl,at
causes :vari,a.tio,n
in p,]ants
1
or
animals. Like the wind it comes,, but we know not whence it
,comet,h
or
wl1itl1er
it
go,,etl1.
B,ree
1
ders
,and garde ,ners do not
attempt
to
produce
varieti es
directly. Tl1·ey simply observe
th,e vari ,atio,ns
whic)J occur, and s,el
1
ect
for propagati ,on those
whicl1 will best serve their purposes. They are well aware
'tha't v,ariations , wh,.,cl1 tl1ey pe:rpetuate
are
not o:nly
mysterio ,us1
in their
origin, but
superficial in their ,character.
In Darwinis ,m the
chan,ging
co,nditions of life , to which
every individual is subjected,
are
n1ade to
t ake the
place of
the br'e,ecler an.d seicure what is call .ed natural ,selection~ In
this case, however, the pecttliari ties s,elected and preserved must
al1vvays be positively advantageous to the
life
of
the
indi-
. vidttals preserved .. But to be of advantage a variation
m1;1st
both
be consider ,abl,e
in amount , and
1
corr ,elated
t
1
0 other
varia
tions so
that
th ,ey
shall not be antagonistic to one another. For
,exampl .i,,
if a
deer were born with
the
capability of
gr,owing
antlers so large t'hat the y ,voul
1
d be a
decide,d
advantage to him
in his .stn1,ggle for existence, he must at the s,ame tim
1
e have a
neck
strong enough
to support its ,veight, and otl1er portions
of his frame capable
1
of bearing the
increa ,,ed
strain. Other-
wise his antl ,ers would be the ruin of all his hopes instead ,of
an advantage. It isl irnpossible to co1;1ceive of this ciombina,-
tion of adv ,antageous variations without bringing ·in the hand
and th ,e designing mind of the
Ori .ginal
Creator.
Of this, as of every ot 'her variety of evolution, it can be
truly said in the words 0
1
f
0
1
ne of the most distinguished physi-
- '
cistst Clerk
Maxwell:
''I ha,,·e
examined
all
th.at
have
cotne
,,rithin
tny
reach,
an ,d
have found
that
every
one must
have
a
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ll
ventured the opinion that these were the same as Spencer s
vitalized molecules in which dwelt an intrinsic aptitude to
aggregate into the £orms of the species, Spencer .came out at
once a11dsaid that it was no such thing. They were not at ail
alike. Darwin, in reply,, said he w,as sorry for the mistake.
But
he ha
1
d
£·eared
that
as he
di,d not know exactly what
Spencer meant by his vitalized molecules, a charge of pla·
giarism might be brought against him if he did not give
Spen·
cer due credit. But
otl1ers
seemed
to
find
it
as ·hard to
1
under
stand what Darwin meant by his gem ,mules with their
mar
velous mutual affinity for each other,
as
he did what
Spencer
meant b y vitalized molecules. Bates wrote him that after
reading the chapte:r twice
he
failed to understand it ; and Sir
H.
Holland set
it
down as
very
tough, while Hooker
and
Huxley
thought the language was mere
tautology,
and both
fai]ed to gain a distinct
idea
from
it. (
Letters
of Darwin,
V
1
0Iw
i., p. 262.)
Indeed, thoroughgoing evolution
has
no such universal ac-
ceptance as is frequently represented to be the case. Few
naturalists are willing to project the theory beyond the narrow
limits of their own province. Sttch naturalists as Asa Gray
and Alfred Rus ,sel
Wa11ace,
who
in
a
general
way
accepted
the main propositions of Darwini sm, both insisted that natural
selection
could. attain its ends only as giving effect
t o
the
designs . of
the
Creator.
Agassiz,
Owen, Mivart, Sir William
Dawson, a11d Weissmann either rej ected the hypotl1esis alt
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(
12
•
The Futtdamenta ls
- ing link between man and the apes, calling it Pithecanthropus. ·
. -·•.
e,
a few years after, Du
Bois
,discov,ered in recent
volcanic,
(leposits in Java a small incomplete skull in one place,
and near .
by a. diseased femur ( thigh bone),
and
not far away two
molar teeth. These were hailed as remains of the missing
link , and it was forthwith dubbed
Pitliecanthropus
Erectus.
The skull was indeed small, being only two-thirds the size of
that
of the average
man. But
Professor
Cope,
one
of
our
most , c.ompete .nt co.mpara tive anatomists, concluded that as the
''femur is that of a man, it is in no sense a connecting link.
'The erect for1n carries with
it
al1 the anatomical character-
•
istics of a perfect man. (''Primary Factors,'' 1896, pt. l,
chap. vi,) #
But the Darwinians themselves have made their full share
of erroneous assumptions
of
facts, and of
illogical co,nclusions .
It will suffice fo,r o,ur present purpose to refer to a few of
t.hes,e.
Darwin himself made two great mistakes which in tl1e eyes
of discerning studen ts vitiate his whole theory.
1. As to Geological Time. The
establishment of Dar-
•
•
win' 's
theory
as
he origina .11y
proposed
it
i,nv
1
olved the
.existen .ce
of the ear ·th ·in substantial ly its present con ,dition f,or an i11defi
nite, not to say infini te, period of time. In one of hi ·s calcula-
•
tions in the first edition of ''Origin of Species,'' he arrived at
the startling conclusion that 306,662,400 years is ''a mere
trifle•' of geological time. It was not long, however, before
his son, Sir George H. Darwin, den1onstrated to the
general
satisfaction
of physicists and
astro
1
nom ,e1~s
l1at life could
not
have begun . on earth m.ore than 100 million years ago, and
probabl .Y ·not
more , than .50 million ;
w·11ile
L·ord
Kelvin would
reduce the period to less than
30
million year s, which Alfred
Russel
WalJace
affirms is
sufficient
time for the deposition
of all the geological strata. Evolutionists are now fighting hard
and against great odds to be
allowed
l
00 million
years for the
deve.lopment of the present drama of life upon the earth .
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13
•
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The
difference
between 306,662,400 years, regarded as ''a
m
1
ere trifle ,''
an ,d
24,1000,000,
or even 100,000,000
years,
as
constituting the
wliole sum,
is trem~ndous. For,
it
neces-
s,ita,tes, la
r,apidity
in the de.v
1
lop
1
ment of species which must
he regarded as by leaps and bounds,
an,d
so would well accord
with
the
the ,ory
of
creat .io
1
n by special Divine
interventio ,n.
If a critic of Darwinism had made so egregious an error as
this which Darwin introduced into . the very foundation of his
theory,.
he '\\'ould
have been the subject of
an
in1,mense
amount
of ridicule. The only excuse
whi.ch
Darwin could make
was
t·hat at the time no one knew
any
·better. But that excu,se
sho ,ws the folly of
building such
an
enormous theory
upon an
Unknow ·n fou11dation,
2.
As to tlie
Minuteness
of Beneficial l(ariations.
The
unlimited geological
time required
by
Darwin's original theory
is closely bound up with his
view
of the
n1inuteness
of the
steps through whicl1 progress has been mad.e. The words
which
he
constantly uses when speaking of variations
are
''slight,'' ''small,''
''ex .tremely gr1dttal~'' ''insensible
grada-
tions.
But
early in
the
discussion it was
shown by
Mivart
that ''minute incipient variatio11s in any special direction''
,vou]d be
valueless; since,
to
be
of
advantage in any cas
1
e,
they must be considerable in
am.ount. And furthermore, in
1
orde ,r to be of permanent adyanta ,ge, a variation of one organ
, must
be
accompanied with
numerous other variations in other
p,arts of tl1,e org ,anism ..
The
ab ,surdity
in supposing the .acquisition of advantageous
qualities by chan ice vari ,ations is shown in th ,e pertinent illus-
tration a
1
dduced
by
Herbert Spencer from the
anatomy
of the
cat. To ,give tl1e cat power of leaping to a,ny
advan ,tageou .s,
height,
the ·re
must be a
simu 'ltaneous
variation
in
all
tl1e bones,
sinews, and muscles of the hinder e
1
xtr ·e,mities; and,.
at the
same time, to save the cat
from
disaster
when
it descends
from
an elevation, there mus,t be, v~riati .on of a totall ,y·
different
c'ha1·acter in
,all the bon
1
es a,nd
tendons
and ·musc·les,
1of
t·he f
1
r ,e
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Iimb.s. To learn the character of these changes, one has but
to ''co ·ntrast the markedly bent hind limbs
of
a cat
with
its
al-
most straigl1t :fore limbs, or contrast the silence of the upward
spring on to the table with the thud which the fore paws make
· as it jum .ps off the tab1e.'' S
1
numerous are the sin1ttltane,ous
changes necessary to secure any advantage here, that the prob
abilities against their arising fortuitously run up into billions,
if not into infinity ; so that they are outside of any rational
•
•
•
recogn1
t1on.
THE , ORIGIN OF MAN
I
The
failure of
evolution to account for man is conspicuous.
Early in the Darwinian dis.cussian ,, Alfred Russel Wallace,
Darwin's most d·istinguisl1ed co-worker, instanc
1
ed various
phy sical peculiarities in man which could not have originated
thr ough natural selection alone, but which necessitated the
interference of a superior directing power .
Among these are. (a) the a
1
bsence in 1nan of
any
natural
protecti ve cov
1
ering.
The nakedness of man which exposes
him to
1
the inclemency of the ,veathe ,r could never in itself
have been an advantage whi,ch natural selection could take
hold of. It could have
been
of use only when his
intelligence
was so developed
that
he could construct tools f
ot skinning
anima]s and for weaving and sewing garments. And that
practica .11y nvolves all
es.sential
hum.an attributes. ·
. (b ,) The size o f the human b1 tJtn. Man's brain is out of
all proportion to the rnental 11eedsof the highe ,st of
the
anitnal
creation below him . . Without man's intelligenc
1
e
such
a brain
would be an incuinbrance rather than an advantage. The
weight of
tl1e
largest brain of a goril]a
is
considerably less
than half that of the average man, and only one third that
of the best
d,eveloped
of the human race.
( c) This increase in the size of 'the brain is connected al o
with a
number of other special
adaptstions
of the
bodily
franie
to
the
wa1its
of
.the
hu~man
mind ,, For example, the
thumb
of
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the
hind
limb of
the ape beJc,om,es
a
big toe in
man,
which
is
•
a most
important
member for a being
whicl1
,vould walk in
an uprigl1t position, but a disadvaatage to one
who walks
on
all
four .
Tl1e fore limbs of tl1e ape are sho,rtened into the
arms of a man, tl1us adapting
them
to
his u.pright positi ,on and
to the various uses which
are
advantageous in that position.
Furthermore, to make it
possible
to maintain the erect
posi,
tion of man there has to be a special
construction
of the ball
and socket joint in the hip
bones
and in t·he
adjus ,tment of
,all the vertebr ,a of the back and neck. All these would be di.s
a:dvantageous to an .ape-like creature devoid of man's in-
telligence. ·
( d)
Man s intellectital capacity
belongs to a different
order from that of tl1e lower animals.
Natt1ralists
,do in
1
deed
classify men and apes together in the ame g nus anatom
ically,. But . to
cd1note
the human sp
1
ecies they atl,d the word
''sapiens.'' Tl1at
i
they 1nust regard
his
in_elligence as a
specific
characteri stic..
The lower
animals do
indeed hav.e
many
co
1
mmon instinct s with man,. and in
inany
cas
1
es their
instincts are far uperior to those of man. ut in his reason
ing
powers
man is apparently separated from the
lower
ani-
1nals,
one and all, by an impassable gulf.
Romanes, aft r collecting the
manifestations
of
intelligent
reasoning from every known specie of the lower animal ,
found
that they
only equalled,
altogether,
the
intelligence of a;
child 15 month . old. He could
find no
such
boundles
out
look
of
intelligence
in the
lower animals
as th re i in man.
As any one can s~e, it would
be
absurd to
try
to teach an ele
phant
geology,
an agle
astronomy, or
a
dog theology. Yet
there is no race of
/1,uman
beings
b1tt l1as capacity
to com-
p1~ehend
these
s,cie1ices. .
· Again, man is
ometin1e ,
and
not
improperly,
defined
as a
''t I . · k
· oo using a111n1al.
No ani1nal ever uses,
1nuc/1
ess ma ·
es
a tool.
But
the
lowest
races of
men show
great ingenuity
in making tools, while even the rudest flint implement bears
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· indubitable evidence of a
power
to adapt
·means t.o
en
1
ds
whi
1
ch
IJlaces it'. maker in a category
by himself.
Again, n1an is somet :imes, and properly, d,efined .as a ''fire
using animal.''
No animal ever 1nakes a
fire. Monkeys do
indeed gather rot1nd a fire
whe11
·it is 1nade. But the 1nak
ing of ,one is utte .r1y b~>ro,nd tl1eir capacity. 1'.~an, however,
,e,ven in his lo~r,est stages } knows how
t
1
0 make fire a.t. his
will. So great is this accomplishment, that it. is no wonder the
Greeks Iooke ,d upon it as a direct gift
from
he·aven. ,
Again, man may properly be described as a ''speaking
,ar1in1a1. No othe 'r animal uses ·artic·itlate
la1igitage .
.
But 1nan
not 011ly use .s
it i11
6peech
h
1
ttt
i11 ,rvriti11g.
How · absurd
it
· woi1ld
be. to try to teac h
a learne ,d pig
·to translate and under ·
stan ·d tl1e cun.eiform inscrip
1
tions unearthed from the de
se1·ted moun
1
ds of Babylonia.
Finally,
man may p,rope1·ly be
1
described as
a
''religious ajii
r n·ial} but who
\t\
ou ld e·ver think of improving the
nature
of
the lo\ver
a11imals by
de]ivering se ·rmons in their presence
or
1
distributing Bibles a1nong them? Yet, the Bible a Boal,
co
1
mpo .sed of every species .
of
literature, con,taining the high
es1
flights
1
f poet .ry and eloquence
ever
wri 'tte11,
and p.re
se11ting·
the
sublimest conceptions
of
Go,d
.and
of .
tl1e
future
_1if
e eve1..e11tertai11ed
has been
ti·anslated . into
every l.an
g11age u.11der heaven, and has found in tho .se Janguages the
app
1
ropria ,te
figu·res
of speech for ·
effectually
pr
1
esenting
its
ideas.
THE CUMULATIVE
ARGUMENT
•
Now,
all these
pecul .iarities
both
in
the body
a11d
the
n1i·nd
of man, to h.av
1
e been adv ,ant .ageous, mttst hav ,e taken place
simult
1
aneously and at the same t.i1ne have been c,onsiderable
in
1
a1nount. To supp
1
ose al,] tl1is to occur without the inter
vention of
the
S·up1·eme Pesigning
Mind
i,s to commit
logical
''hara-kiri.'' Such chance combinations are .beyon,d. all po s-
sibility of rational belief . · .
It
is fai .r to add, h
1
owever,
that
Darwin
never
st1pposed
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that n1an was descended from any species of existing apes;
but he always spo
1
ke of
1
ot1r
supposed an
1
cestor as ap
1
c-lik·e,
a
form, from which ~he apes were supposed to have varied in
one
direction
a .s
f
a1·
as.
m.a.n
had in
artoither.
All
eff orts .,
however, to find traces of sucl1 connecting links as this theory
supposes hlave. failed.
The
N eandc ·rthaI
s.l
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The , Fundamental s,
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lowi,ng are blind guides
leading
on to an
end
which it is
11ot
pleasant
to
contemplate, and from which
we
can
be
delivered ~
only by the coming ,of . the So·n of M,a11.
•
..
CONCLUSION
Tl1e title ·of thi s pap.e,r is perhaps a misnome ·r. For, dou.bt- ..
less,
the
passing of
the present phas ·e o,f ·evoluti ,on is not
final .
Theor :ies of
1
evolution have · chas
1
ed
1
a,ch othe ·r off
tl11
field
in ·.
ra . id succession for thou sands , of years. Evolution is not a ..
new thing in ph .i'losophy, ,and su,ch is
tl1e
frailty of huma11 na
ture that it is not likely to , disappear suddenly from among ~
men. The
cr ,a.ze
of the
last hal.f centu1~
is little n1ore than
the · rec1·udese·nce of a philosophy which has divided
tl1e
opin - ~
ion of men from the earliest ages. In both the Egyptian and .
the
E.ast
Indian myth.0
1
logy ,, ·the
world and all
thi ,ngs
in.
it~
were evolved from an egg; and so in the Polynesian myths ..
But
the
Po
1
lynesians .
h,ad to
have
a bird to
lay the egg,
and .
tl1e Egyptians and the Br·ahmans had to have some , sort of ' a
deity to c:--eate heir ,s. The Greek philosophers str uggled with .
the probl
1
em
without
co·ming
to
any m
1
ore·
satisf ,aicito,ry co,n--..
clusion. Aniximander, iike Professor Huxley, traced every- ··
thing ba
1
ck to, ,an ''infinity'' which..gradttall .Y worked its,elf into ~
a sort
0
1
f
pristine
''mud'' ( som,ething
like
Huxley's explode d.
· ''bathybius:'), c,ut of which everything else evolved; wl1ilc
Thales of Miletus tried
to
think of water as the m
1
otl1e1·
of
everything, and Aneximenes prac tically deified the air. Dio
get1es imagin ,ed a ''mind stuff'' ( somethin .g like Weissmann's
''biophores,' '' Darwin's ''gemmu1es
po,ss,essed
with
affinity
for
each 0th .er, and Spencer's ''vitalized molecul
1
es'') wh .ich actecl ·
as
if
it had inte]ligence ;·
wl1ile
Heraclitus
th
1
ought that
fire-·
was the only
element
pure enough
to produce
the soul of
man. These speculations culmina ·t
1
ed in th.e gre iat poem of ~·
Lucretius entitled, De Rerum Natura, written shortly
·befo
1
re
the be,ginmio.g of the Chris,t.ian
1
era. His
atomic theory
was
something like
that which pr ·evails
at the
present time among .:
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pi1ysicis
1
ts. Amid the unceasing motion of these atoms there
somehow appeared, according to him, the orderly
f
orrns and
the living processes of nature. ,
Modern evolutionary speculations have not made much real
progress ovet tho se of the ancients. As already remarked,.
they are, in their
bolder
forms atheistic; while in their
mild- ·
er forms they are deistic admitting, indeed, the agency of
God at the beginning, but nowhere else. The attempt, how
ever, to give
the
doctrine standing
tl1rough
Darwin s theory
of
the Origin of Spe,cies by Means of Natural Se lection has not
been successful ; for at best, that theory can enlarge but lit
tle our comprehension
of the
adequacy
of
resident
forces
to
produce a,nd
conserve
variations of
,species,
and cannot in the
least degree banish the idea of design from the process.
It
is, there£ ore,
impossib ,]e
to get any such
proof
of
evo·
lution as shall seriously modify our conception of ·Chris
tianity. The : mechanism ,of the
unive ,r,se is so
complicated
that no man can say that
it
is closed to Divine interference.
Especially is this seen to be the case since we know that the
free w ll of man does pierce the joints of nat1tre liarness
and i1iterfere with its order to a limited extent. Man, by
cultivation,
mal
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The Fundamentals
Spiritual things are not to be discovered by material in-
•
struments
nor
detected
by
the
mat
1
erial
senses ,.
Physica l
science cannot penetrate to the origin of anything, but must
conte ,nt
itself
to deal
with
processes
already
begun. Profound
mystery hangs over the birth
of
e,Tery
human
soul. Wh
1
0
can tell wl1en
it
becomes a free personality, reflecting the
ima,ge
of its Creator? Is the soul, as well as tl1e body, be,got ,ten by the
p,arent
? .
This
question
has ,divi,de
1
d theologians from the
time
1
~£ Augustine to the
present
day.
The wors,t foes of
Ch ri stianity are not physicists but ineta
physicians. Hume is
more dangerous
than Darwi n; the ag
nosticism of Hamilton and Mansel is harder to meet than
that of Tyndall and
H11x1ey;
the fatalism of the philosophers
is lllore to be dreaded than the materialism of any s.cientific
men. The sophistries of the Socratic
phi10
sophy
touching
the
•
freedom
of
the will are more subtile
than
those
of
the Spen-
ceri jan s,choo]. ,Christianity,
being a
religio
1
n of fact ,and
hi.s
tory, is a free-born son in the family of the inductive sciences,
•
and is not special]y hampered by the
para ,doxe,s
inevitably con-
nect ,ed with al]
a,ttempts ,
to
1
give expressio ,n to ultimate
con
ceptions of truth, The
field, is ,no,w a,s free
as
it
has
ever been
to thos ,e :who are content to a,ct upon such
pos,itive evide,nce
of
the
trut :h of
Christianity as t he
Creator
has · b,e
1
en
pleased to
afford them. The evidence for evolution, even in its milder
•
form, does not
b
1
egin to be as strong as that for
tI1e revelation
•
,0 1 God in the Bible.
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