By Rev. Henry H. Beach, Grand Junction, Colorado.
(Copyright, 1912, by Henry H. Beach.)
This paper is not a discussion of variations lying within the boundaries of heredity; nor do we remember that the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures reveal anything on that subject; nor do we think that it can be rationally discussed until species and genus are defined.
Failure to condition spontaneous generation by sterilized hay tea, and a chronic inability to discover the missing link, have shaken the popularity of Darwinism. Will it recover? Or is it falling into a fixed condition of innocuous desuetude?
As a purely academic question, who cares whether a protoplastic cell, or an amoeba, or an ascidian larva, was his primordial progenitor? It does not grip us. It is doubtful whether any purely academic question ever grips anybody. But the issue between Darwinism and mankind is not a purely academic question.
Half his life Charles Darwin was afraid of the reproaches of Christians. It was something like the fear felt by another Charles, of the reproaches of the Huguenots were he to consent to the assassination of Coligny. He refers to it in the “Introduction to the Descent of Man”:
“During many years I collected notes on the origin and descent of man, without any intention of publishing on the subject, but rather with the determination not to publish; as I thought that I should thus add to the prejudices against my views.”
At the end of the book he says: “I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denominated by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lowly form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction.”
He confessed his fear by protesting his innocence: “I have done nothing - only explained a choice between two theories of bringing man into the world”. This way of putting it is characteristic. He often refers to traversing the doctrine of successive creations, as the sum of his offending. The prestidigitator calls special attention to one hand while he works the trick with the other. His apprehensions were not altogether groundless.
Professor Haeckel was braver, or more rash, when he styled the “Descent of Man” as “anti-Genesis”; with equal truth and moderation he might have added, anti-John, anti-Hebrews and anti-Christ. The point to pierce the business and bosoms of men is a denial of the integrity and reliability of the Word of God. We cannot depend on the Bible to show us “how to go to heaven” if it misleads us as to “how the heavens go” regarding the origin, nature, descent and destiny of brutes and men. Darwinists have been digging at the foundations of society and souls; and their powers of endurance are a matter of some moment.
We venture to differentiate life and if we go too far are sure to be corrected:
Vegetable life is the sum of the forces which pervade the organism, causes it to grow and preserves it from decay.
Brute life is the sum of the forces which pervade the organism, causes it to grow, preserves it from decay, is conscious and thinks.
Human life is the sum of the forces which pervade the organism, causes it to grow, preserves it from decay, is conscious, thinks and is religious.
It is logical to assume, until disproved, that these three kinds of life touch each other, but never merge. They associate as intimately as air and light, but are as far from passing from plants to brutes and from brutes to men as from not-being to being. “By faith we understand the ages to be set in order by the saying of God, in regard to the things seen not having come out of the things manifest” (Heb. 11:3).
He who would overthrow Biblical Christianity expects to take the initiative. He recognizes that there is always a presumption in favor of an existing institution; and has always been swift to open the battle.
Professor Huxley, in his article on evolution, in the ninth edition of the Britannica, has ably brought together the arguments for Darwinism; and we will follow his order.
GROWTH
Given a nucleated cell, and Darwinists have watched the process of generation from its beginning to birth, “with the best optical instruments”. There have been two theories. The first theory is that nothing new is produced in the living world; the germs from which all organisms have developed have contained in miniature, and passed on down through successive generations, all the essential organs of adults. To get anything out of anything it must first be in it. This is archaic. The second theory is that evolution is progressive; it results from something innate in things, dynamic and pantheistic. This is up to date.
All that the Darwinists, “with the best optical instruments”, have actually seen is growth; but they have inferred a whole pantheon. Natural selection is the supreme demiurge; sexual selection and variation are subordinates. A billion years ago there was a God, but He immediately disappeared. It was necessary to have Him then, to bridge the gulf between nothing and something. Having discovered growth, they called it evolution, thinking perhaps the name might prove useful, but we trust not to be blamed for preferring growth, for “evolution” is something of a harlequin, having turned a complete somersault within a hundred years, while growth is universally acknowledged to be a character of vegetable, animal, and human life.
In addition to finding natural growth, Professor Huxley claims the discovery of a “tendency to assume a definite living form”. This of course is ridiculous. The sun rises with sufficient regularity to become a striking phenomenon, and we have discovered a tendency towards sunrises. Speculation is invoked, but speculation died with the great god Pan when Jesus was born. Scientific observations are dumb, except to say that all God’s creatures are fearfully and wonderfully made.