Chapter 7

But, worse yet, in a later edition published by L.A. Burt Company, a "supplemental note" is added to discuss two letters which he thought supported the idea that sexual selection transformed the hairy animal into the hairless man. Darwin's correspondent (page 710) reports that a mandril seemed to be proud of a bare spot. Can anything be less scientific than trying to guess what an animal is thinking about? It would seem that this also was a subject about which it was "useless to speculate."

While on this subject it may be worth while to call your attention to other fantastic imaginings of which those are guilty who reject the Bible and enter the field of speculation--fiction surpassing anything to be found in the Arabian Nights. If one accepts the Scriptural account of the creation, he can credit God with the working of miracles and with the doing of many things that man cannot understand. The evolutionist, however, having substituted what he imagines to be a universal law for separate acts of creation must explain everything. The evolutionist, not to go back farther than life just now, begins with one or a few invisible germs of life on the planet and imagines that these invisible germs have, by the operation of what they call "resident forces," unaided from without, developed into all that we see to-day. They cannot in a lifetime explain the things that have to be explained, if their hypothesis is accepted--a useless waste of time even if explanation were possible.

Take the eye, for instance; believing in the Mosaic account, I believe that God made the eyes when He made man--not only made the eyes but carved out the caverns in the skull in which they hang. It is easy for the believer in the Bible to explain the eyes, because he believes in a God who can do all things and, according to the Bible, did create man as a part of a divine plan.

But how does the evolutionist explain the eye when he leaves God out? Here is the only guess that I have seen--if you find any others I shall be glad to know of them, as I am collecting the guesses of the evolutionists. The evolutionist guesses that there was a time when eyes were unknown--that is a necessary part of the hypothesis. And since the eye is a universal possession among living things the evolutionist guesses that it came into being--not by design or by act of God--but just happened, and how did it happen? I will give you the guess--a piece of pigment, or, as some say, a freckle appeared upon the skin of an animal that had no eyes. This piece of pigment or freckle converged the rays of the sun upon that spot and when the little animal felt the heat on that spot it turned the spot to the sun to get more heat. The increased heat irritated the skin--so the evolutionists guess, and a nerve came there and out of the nerve came the eye! Can you beat it? But this only accounts for one eye; there must have been another piece of pigment or freckle soon afterward and just in the right place in order to give the animal two eyes.

And, according to the evolutionist, there was a time when animals had no legs, and so the leg came by accident. How? Well, the guess is that a little animal without legs was wiggling along on its belly one day when it discovered a wart--it just happened so--and it was in the right place to be used to aid it in locomotion; so, it came to depend upon the wart, and use finally developed it into a leg. And then another wart and another leg, at the proper time--by accident--and accidentally in the proper place. Is it not astonishing that any person intelligent enough to teach school would talk such tommyrot to students and look serious while doing so?

And yet I read only a few weeks ago, on page 124 of a little book recently issued by a prominent New York minister, the following:

"Man has grown up in this universe gradually developing his powers and functions as responses to his environment. If he has _eyes_, so the _biologists_ assure us, it is because _light waves played upon the skin_ and eyes came out in answer; if he has _ears_ it is because the _air waves_ were there first and the ears came out to hear. Man never yet, _according to the evolutionist_, has developed any power save as a reality called it into being. There would be no fins if there were no water, no wings if there were no air, no legs if there were no land."

You see I only called your attention to forty per cent. of the absurdities; he speaks of eyes, ears, fins, wings and legs--five. I only called attention to eyes and legs--two. The evolutionist guesses himself away from God, but he only makes matters worse. How long did the "light waves" have to play on the skin before the eyes came out? The evolutionist is very deliberate; he is long on time. He would certainly give the eye thousands of years, if not millions, in which to develop; but how could he be sure that the light waves played all the time in one place or played in the same place generation after generation until the development was complete? And why did the light waves quit playing when two eyes were perfected? Why did they not keep on playing until there were eyes all over the body? Why do they not play to-day, so that we may see eyes in process of development? And if the light waves created the eyes, why did they not create them strong enough to bear the light? Why did the light waves make eyes and then make eyelids to keep the light out of the eyes?

And so with the ears. They must have gone _in_ "to hear" instead of _out_, and wasn't it lucky that they happened to go in on opposite sides of the head instead of cater-cornered or at random? Is it not easier to believe in a God who can make the eye, the ear, the fin, the wing, and the leg, as well as the light, the sound, the air, the water and the land?

There is such an abundance of ludicrous material that it is hard to resist the temptation to continue illustrations indefinitely, but a few more will be sufficient. In order that you may be prepared to ridicule these pseudo-scientists who come to you with guesses instead of facts, let me give you three recent bits of evolutionary lore.

Last November I was passing through Philadelphia and read in an afternoon paper a report of an address delivered in that city by a college professor employed in extension work. Here is an extract from the paper's account of the speech: "Evidence that early men climbed trees with their feet lies in the way we wear the heels of our shoes--more at the outside. A baby can wiggle its big toe without wiggling its other toes--an indication that it once used its big toe in climbing trees." What a consolation it must be to mothers to know that the baby is not to be blamed for wiggling the big toe without wiggling the other toes. It cannot help it, poor little thing; it is an inheritance from "the tree man," so the evolutionists tell us.

And here is another extract: "We often dream of falling. Those who fell out of the trees some fifty thousand years ago and were killed, of course, had no descendants. So those who fell and were _not_ hurt, of course, lived, and so we are never hurt in our dreams of falling." Of course, if we were actually descended from the inhabitants of trees, it would seem quite likely that we descended from those that were _not_ killed in falling. But they must have been badly frightened if the impression made upon their feeble minds could have lasted for fifty thousand years and still be vivid enough to scare us.

If the Bible said anything so idiotic as these guessers put forth in the name of science, scientists would have a great time ridiculing the sacred pages, but men who scoff at the recorded interpretation of dreams by Joseph and Daniel seem to be able to swallow the amusing interpretations offered by the Pennsylvania professor.

A few months ago the _Sunday School Times_ quoted a professor in an Illinois University as saying that the great day in history was the day when a water puppy crawled up on the land and, deciding to be a land animal, became man's progenitor. If these scientific speculators can agree upon the day they will probably insist on our abandoning Washington's birthday, the Fourth of July, and even Christmas, in order to join with the whole world in celebrating "Water Puppy Day."

Within the last few weeks the papers published a dispatch from Paris to the effect that an "eminent scientist" announced that he had communicated with the spirit of a dog and learned from the dog that it was happy. Must we believe this, too?

But is the law of "natural selection" a sufficient explanation, or a more satisfactory explanation, than sexual selection? It is based on the theory that where there is an advantage in any characteristic, animals that possess this characteristic survive and propagate their kind. This, according to Darwin's argument, leads to progress through the "survival of the fittest." This law or principle (natural selection), so carefully worked out by Darwin, is being given less and less weight by scientists. Darwin himself admits that he "perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection and the survival of the fittest" (page 76). John Burroughs, the naturalist, rejects it in a recent magazine article. The followers of Darwin are trying to retain evolution while rejecting the arguments that led Darwin to accept it as an explanation of the varied life on the planet. Some evolutionists reject Darwin's line of descent and believe that man, instead of coming from the ape, branched off from a common ancestor farther back, but "cousin" ape is as objectionable as "grandpa" ape.

While "survival of the fittest" may seem plausible when applied to individuals of the same species, it affords no explanation whatever, of the almost infinite number of creatures that have come under man's observation. To believe that natural selection, sexual selection or any other kind of selection can account for the countless differences we see about us requires more faith in _chance_ than a Christian is required to have in God.

Is it conceivable that the hawk and the hummingbird, the spider and the honey bee, the turkey gobbler and the mocking-bird, the butterfly and the eagle, the ostrich and the wren, the tree toad and the elephant, the giraffe and the kangaroo, the wolf and the lamb should all be the descendants of a common ancestor? Yet these and all other creatures must be blood relatives if man is next of kin to the monkey.

If the evolutionists are correct; if it is true that all that we see is the result of development from one or a few invisible germs of life, then, in plants as well as in animals there must be a line of descent connecting all the trees and vegetables and flowers with a common ancestry. Does it not strain the imagination to the breaking point to believe that the oak, the cedar, the pine and the palm are all the progeny of one ancient seed and that this seed was also the ancestor of wheat and corn, potato and tomato, onion and sugar beet, rose and violet, orchid and daisy, mountain flower and magnolia? Is it not more rational to believe in _God_ and explain the varieties of life in terms of divine power than to waste our lives in ridiculous attempts to explain the unexplainable? There is no mortification in admitting that there are insoluble mysteries; but it is shameful to spend the time that God has given for nobler use in vain attempts to exclude God from His own universe and to find in chance a substitute for God's power and wisdom and love.

While evolution in plant life and in animal life _up to the highest form of animal_ might, if there were proof of it, be admitted without raising a presumption that would compel us to give a brute origin to man, why should we admit a thing of which there is no proof? Why should we encourage the guesses of these speculators and thus weaken our power to protest when they attempt the leap from the monkey to man? Let the evolutionist furnish his proof.

Although our chief concern is in protecting man from the demoralization involved in accepting a brute ancestry, it is better to put the advocates of evolution upon the defensive and challenge them to produce proof in support of their hypothesis in plant life and in the animal world. They will be kept so busy trying to find support for their hypothesis in the kingdoms below man that they will have little time left to combat the Word of God in respect to man's origin. Evolution joins issue with the Mosaic account of creation. God's law, as stated in Genesis, is _reproduction according to kind_; evolution implies reproduction _not_ according to kind. While the process of change implied in evolution is covered up in endless eons of time it is _change_ nevertheless. The Bible does not say that reproduction shall be _nearly_ according to kind or _seemingly_ according to kind. The statement is positive that it is _according to kind_, and that does not leave any room for the _changes_ however gradual or imperceptible that are necessary to support the evolutionary hypothesis.

We see about us everywhere and always proof of the Bible law, viz., reproduction according to kind; we find nothing in the universe to support Darwin's doctrine of reproduction other than of kind.

If you question the possibility of such changes as the Darwinian doctrine supposes you are reminded that the scientific speculators have raised the time limit. "If ten million years are not sufficient, take twenty," they say: "If fifty million years are not enough take one or two hundred millions." That accuracy is not essential in such guessing may be inferred from the fact that the estimates of the time that has elapsed since life began on the earth, vary from less than twenty-five million years to more than three hundred million. Darwin estimated this period at two hundred million years while Darwin's son estimated it at fifty-seven million.

It requires more than millions of years to account for the varieties of life that inhabit the earth; it requires a Creator, unlimited in power, unlimited intelligence, and unlimited love.

But the doctrine of evolution is sometimes carried farther than that. A short while ago Canon Barnes, of Westminster Abbey, startled his congregation by an interpretation of evolution that ran like this: "It now seems highly probable (probability again) that from some fundamental stuff in the universe the electrons arose. From them came matter. From matter, life emerged. From life came mind. From mind, spiritual consciousness was developing. There was a time when matter, life and mind, and the soul of man were not, but now they are. Each has arisen as a part of the vast scheme planned by God." (An American professor in a Christian college has recently expressed himself along substantially the same lines.)

But what has God been doing since the "stuff" began to develop? The verbs used by Canon Barnes indicate an internal development unaided from above. "Arose, came, emerged, etc.," all exclude the idea that God is within reach or call in man's extremity.

When I was a boy in college the materialists began with matter separated into infinitely small particles and every particle separated from every other particle by distance infinitely great. But now they say that it takes 1,740 electrons to make an atom of infinite fineness. God, they insist, has not had anything to do with this universe since 1,740 electrons formed a chorus and sang, "We'll be an atom by and by."

It requires measureless credulity to enable one to believe that all that we see about us came by chance, by a series of happy-go-lucky accidents. If only an infinite God could have formed hydrogen and oxygen and united them in just the right proportions to produce water--the daily need of every living thing--scattered among the flowers all the colours of the rainbow and every variety of perfume, adjusted the mocking-bird's throat to its musical scale, and fashioned a soul for man, why should we want to imprison such a God in an impenetrable past? This is a living world; why not a _living_ God upon the throne? Why not allow Him to work _now_?

Darwin is so sure that his theory is correct that he is ready to accuse the Creator of trying to deceive man if the theory is not sound. On page 41 he says: "To take any other view is to admit that our structure and that of all animals about us, is a mere snare to entrap our judgment;" as if the Almighty were in duty bound to make each species so separate from every other that _no one_ could possibly be confused by resemblances. There would seem to be differences enough. To put man in a class with the chimpanzee because of any resemblances that may be found is so unreasonable that the masses have never accepted it.

If we see houses of different size, from one room to one hundred, we do not say that the large houses grew out of small ones, but that the architect that could plan one could plan all.

But a groundless hypothesis--even an absurd one--would be unworthy of notice if it did no harm. This hypothesis, however, does incalculable harm. It teaches that Christianity impairs the race physically. That was the first implication at which I revolted. It led me to review the doctrine and reject it entirely. If hatred is the law of man's development; that is, if man has reached his present perfection by a cruel law under which the strong kill off the weak--then, if there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we must turn backward toward the brute if we dare to substitute the law of love for the law of hate. That is the conclusion that I reached and it is the conclusion that Darwin himself reached. On pages 149-50 he says: "With savages the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the progress of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor laws; our medical experts exert their utmost skill to save the lives of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from weak constitutions would have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man."

This confession deserves analysis. First, he commends, by implication, the savage method of eliminating the weak, while, by implication, he condemns "civilized men" for prolonging the life of the weak. He even blames vaccination because it has preserved thousands who might otherwise have succumbed (for the benefit of the race?). Can you imagine anything more brutal? And then note the low level of the argument. "No one who has attended the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man." All on a brute basis.

His hypothesis breaks down here. The minds which, according to Darwin, are developed by natural selection and sexual selection, use their power to suspend the law by which they have reached their high positions. Medicine is one of the greatest of the sciences and its chief object is to save life and strengthen the weak. That, Darwin complains, interferes with "the survival of the fittest." If he complains of vaccination, what would he say of the more recent discovery of remedies for typhoid fever, yellow fever and the black plague? And what would he think of saving weak babies by pasteurizing milk and of the efforts to find a specific for tuberculosis and cancer? Can such a barbarous doctrine be sound?

But Darwin's doctrine is even more destructive. His heart rebels against the "hard reason" upon which his heartless hypothesis is built. He says: "The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly the result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as a part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered in the manner indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself while performing an operation, for he knows he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were to intentionally neglect the weak and the helpless, it could be only for a contingent benefit, with overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubted bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind."

The moral nature which, according to Darwin, is also developed by natural selection and sexual selection, repudiates the brutal law to which, if his reasoning is correct, it owes its origin. Can that doctrine be accepted as scientific when its author admits that we cannot apply it "without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature"? On the contrary, civilization is measured by the moral revolt against the cruel doctrine developed by Darwin.

Darwin rightly decided to suspend his doctrine, even at the risk of impairing the race. But some of his followers are more hardened. A few years ago I read a book in which the author defended the use of alcohol on the ground that it rendered a service to society by killing off the degenerates. And this argument was advanced by a scientist in the fall of 1920 at a congress against alcohol.

The language which I have quoted proves that Darwinism is directly antagonistic to Christianity, which boasts of its eleemosynary institutions and of the care it bestows on the weak and the helpless. Darwin, by putting man on a brute basis and ignoring spiritual values, attacks the very foundations of Christianity.

Those who accept Darwin's views are in the habit of saying that it need not lessen their reverence for God to believe that the Creator fashioned a germ of life and endowed it with power to develop into what we see to-day. It is true that a God who could make man as he is, could have made him by the long-drawn-out process suggested by Darwin. To do either would require infinite power, beyond the ability of man to comprehend. But what is the _natural tendency_ of Darwin's doctrine?

Will man's attitude toward Darwin's God be the same as it would be toward the God of Moses? Will the believer in Darwin's God be as conscious of God's presence in his daily life? Will he be as sensitive to God's will and as anxious to find out what God wants him to do?

Will the believer in Darwin's God be as fervent in prayer and as open to the reception of divine suggestions?

I shall later trace the influence of Darwinism on world peace when the doctrine is espoused by one bold enough to carry it to its logical conclusion, but I must now point out its natural and logical effect upon young Christians.

A boy is born in a Christian family; as soon as he is able to join words together into sentences his mother teaches him to lisp the child's prayer: "Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." A little later the boy is taught the Lord's Prayer and each day he lays his petition before the Heavenly Father: "Give us this day our daily bread"; "Lead us not into temptation"; "Deliver us from evil"; "Forgive our trespasses"; etc.

He talks with God. He goes to Sunday school and learns that the Heavenly Father is even more kind than earthly parents; he hears the preacher tell how precious our lives are in the sight of God--how even a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice. All his faith is built upon the Book that informs him that he is made in the image of God; that Christ came to reveal God to man and to be man's Saviour.