2. The divine development begins in the beginning, with G.o.d, creating the heavens and the earth; but the theory of atheistic evolution has no beginning, a.s.serting the eternal existence of a changing world.
3. The divine development is the unfolding of an intelligent plan, showing the adaptation of means to ends for the accomplishment of a purpose; the atheistic theory of evolution denies plan, purpose, adaptation and final cause.
4. The divine development is conducted, and continually reinforced by the will of the Omnipotent G.o.d; the atheistic development evolves only the forces of matter.
5. The divine development has a moral character, and terminates in the highest holiness and happiness of all obedient men and angels; but the atheistic development contemplates and promises only the evolution of animal instinct and pa.s.sions, the eternal death of the individual, and, for the universe, only purposeless cycles of progress, and catastrophies of ruin.
In this chapter we discuss only the theory of atheistic evolution. In the discussion of all questions affecting human life it is advantageous to trace them to their origin, and to follow them out to their practical results. Thus we get a clear view of the whole subject, and are enabled to a.s.sign to it its proper influence. It is also a great benefit to the ma.s.s of mankind to conduct such discussions in plain language, and to translate the roundabout phrases, and the Latinized words of scientific men, as much as we can, into the vulgar tongue; to state the subjects of discussion so as to be understood of the people. So we shall put the whole business of Darwinism and development before you, reader, in a nutsh.e.l.l, by simply asking you the question at the head of this chapter, "Was your mother a monkey?"
What a question!
Well, then, your grandmother? her grandmother? or does it seem less offensive, or more likely to you to go back some thousands of years, and say your forefathers were apes?
That is exactly what Mr. Darwin says when we translate his scientific language into the vulgar tongue: "The early progenitors of man were no doubt once covered with hair, both s.e.xes having beards; their ears were pointed and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail having the proper muscles. The foot, judging from the condition of the great toe in the foetus, was then prehensile, and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm forest-clad land. The males were provided with great canine teeth, which served them as formidable weapons."[5] This ancient form "if seen by a naturalist, would undoubtedly have been ranked as an ape or a monkey.
And as man, under a genealogical point of view, belongs to the CATARHINE or Old World stock (of monkeys), we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated."[6] So here you have your genealogy, name and thing fully described. Mr. Darwin thinks it is quite an honorable pedigree: "Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of n.o.ble quality. * * * Unless we willfully close our eyes, we may, with our present knowledge, approximately recognize our parentage, nor need we feel ashamed of it. The most humble organism is something much higher than the inorganic dust under our feet; and no one with an unbiased mind can study any living creature, however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvelous structure and properties."[A] There are people, however, who do not grow enthusiastic at the idea of their long-tailed progenitors; but there is no accounting for taste in such matters!
For elderly people, who do not take so enthusiastically to monkeys as his junior readers, Mr. Darwin has provided a rather less gymnastic ancestry. How would you like to have a fish for your forefather? If it were one of Neptune"s n.o.ble tritons, or the Philistine fish-G.o.d, Dagon, or a mermaid, it might not be so repulsive as the ape; or even a twenty-pound salmon, flashing its silver and blue in the sunlight as it spins the line off the reel, might not be so utterly disgusting as the monkey burlesque of humanity. But, alas! Mr. Darwin has been sent to this proud nineteenth century as the prophet to teach us humility, and here is the scientific statement of the structure of our fishy forefathers: "At a still earlier period the progenitors of man must have been aquatic in their habits, for morphology plainly tells us that our lungs consist of a modified swim bladder which once served as a float.
These early predecessors of man thus seen in the dim recesses of time must have been as lowly organized as the lancelot or amphibioxus, or even still more lowly organized."[7]
That certainly is a very humble origin. We are not, however, by any means to the end of our pedigree. Mr. Darwin says that your codfish aristocracy are descended from a race of squirts--the squirts which you picked up on the sh.o.r.e and squeezed, when you were a boy, discharging these primitive Babc.o.c.k Extinguishers upon your playfellows, irreverently regardless of the harm done the poor squirt, the ancestor of the human race. If you doubt it, here is the latest deliverance of infallible science upon the subject. He describes the Ascidians: "They hardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple tough leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. They belong to the Molluscoida of Huxley, a lower division of the great family of the Mollusca; but they have recently been placed by some naturalists among the vermes or worms.
Their larvae somewhat resemble tadpoles in shape, and have the power of swimming freely about. * * * We should thus be justified in believing that, at an extremely remote period, a group of animals existed resembling in many respects the larvae of our present Ascidians, which diverged into two great branches, the one retrograding in development and producing the present cla.s.s of Ascidians, the other rising to the crown and summit of the animal kingdom, by giving birth to the vertebrata."[8] Thus it appears that Mr. Darwin deduces his origin, and that of mankind in general, from one of these Ascidians, or, in plain English, makes them a race of squirts.
The notion of evolution is a belief that all living beings, plants as well as animals, have not been created, but, like Topsy, just grew, from the very smallest germs or spores. Evolutionists inform us that all kinds of organisms have been evolved from four or five primeval germs or spores; or more consistently with their great principle, that the simple gave birth to the differentiated, from one primeval germ or egg. Mr.
Darwin alleges four or five primal forms, acknowledging that a.n.a.logy would lead him up to one. But other members of this school consistently and boldly follow up the stream to its fountain, and allege a single primeval living seed as the origin of all living things, and that this must have been a microscopic animalcule, or plant spore, of the very lowest order, which, multiplying its kind, gave birth to improved and enlarged offspring; and they, in their turn, grew, and multiplied, and differentiated into varieties; and so, in the course of endless ages, the poorer sorts perishing and the better sorts prospering, the world became filled with its existing populations, without any new creative acts of G.o.d, and without any particular providential care over the new species.
The particular process according to which this multiplication and improvement took place, Mr. Darwin calls Natural Selection. Every creature tends to increase and multiply; and the very slowest breeders would soon fill the earth, were their multiplication not checked by hunger, by the attacks of enemies, and by the struggle for existence.
But all are not born alike strong, or swift, or of the same color; some of the same brood are better fitted to escape enemies, or to fight the battle of life, than others. These will survive, while the weak ones perish. This Mr. Wallace calls, the survival of the fittest. They will transmit their superior size, or swiftness, or better color, or whatever superiority they possess, to their offspring. The process will go on in successive generations, each adding an infinitesimal quant.i.ty to the stock gained by the past generation; just as breeders of improved stock increase the weight of cattle by breeding from the largest; or breeders of race-horses increase the speed by breeding from the swiftest. In this way varieties from the same family will grow into different species.
And, as only those differences which are beneficial to the animal are preserved, they will grow into improved species; and, as variations of all sorts take place, so all sorts of varieties and species arise in process of time. All will thus tend to perfect themselves according to the laws of nature, and without any special oversight or care of G.o.d, or of anybody but Natural Selection; which Mr. Darwin takes special care to describe as an unintelligent selector. He defines the nature which selects to be "the aggregate action and product of natural laws," and these laws are "the sequences of events as ascertained by us." He ridicules the idea of G.o.d"s special endowment of the fantail pigeon with additional feathers, or of the bull dog"s jaws with strength, and says, "But if we give up the principle in the one case, if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order, for instance, that the greyhound, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed; no shadow of reason can be a.s.signed for the belief that variations alike in nature, and the results of the same general laws which have been the groundwork through Natural Selection of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided."[9] This, then, is the grand distinctive difference of Mr. Darwin"s mode of producing the various animals; namely, that it is unintelligent, their variations are not designed nor intended by the Creator, but they are the results of a method of trial and error, producing a hit-and-miss pattern. The failures all perish, and the successes live and prosper; but there is no intentional or special guidance of G.o.d in the business. And the business includes the whole process of peopling the globe, from the creation of the first four or five germs down to the last formation of human society. G.o.d is thus dismissed from the greatest part of the world"s life, including all human affairs. This is not exactly atheism in theory, but practically it amounts to much the same thing.
It is this excommunication of G.o.d"s agency from the management of the world, and especially from human affairs, by Mr. Darwin"s method, which has so commended his books to the unG.o.dly world. There is a general agreement among this cla.s.s of writers, that Mr. Darwin has destroyed the basis of the argument for the being of G.o.d from design as displayed in the adaptations of birds and beasts to their conditions. Mr. Huxley says that "when he first read Mr. Darwin"s book, what struck him most forcibly was the conviction that teleology, as commonly understood, had received its death blow at Mr. Darwin"s hands."[10] "For the notion that every organism has been created as it is, and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin subst.i.tutes the conception of something which may fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding conditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and become extinguished. * * * For the teleologist (the Christian) an organism exists, because it was made for the conditions in which it was found.
For the Darwinian an organism exists, because out of many of its kind it is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in which it was found. * * * If we apprehend the spirit of the Origin of Species rightly, then nothing can be more entirely and absolutely opposed to teleology, as it is commonly understood, than the Darwinian theory."[11] Prof. Haeckel argues to the same purpose that Darwin"s theory leads inevitably to Atheism and Materialism. Dr. Buchner says of Darwin"s theory, "It is the most thoroughly naturalistic that can be imagined, and far more atheistic than that of his decried predecessor, Lamarck." Carl Vogt also commends it because "It turns the Creator, and his occasional intervention in the revolution of the earth and in the production of species, without any hesitation out of doors, inasmuch as it does not leave the smallest room for the agency of such a Being. The first living germ being granted, out of it the creation develops itself progressively by Natural Selection, through all the geologic periods of our planet, by the simple law of descent. No new species arise by creation, and none perishes by annihilation; the natural cause of things, the process of evolution of all organisms, and of the earth itself, is of itself sufficient for the production of all we see. Thus man is not a special creation, produced in a different way, and distinct from other animals, endowed with an individual soul, and animated by the breath of G.o.d; on the contrary, man is only the highest product of the progressive evolution of animal life, springing from the group of apes next below him."[12]
Whether, therefore, Mr. Darwin himself intends his theory to be atheistic or not, it has had the misfortune to be so viewed by the greater number of its supporters; and, accordingly, it is this view of it which we shall keep prominent in the following discussion. Mr. Darwin does undoubtedly intend his theory to be antagonistic to the Bible account of creation and providence, and an improvement upon it; and, whether atheistic or not, it is undoubtedly anti-Christian.
_I. The History of the Theory._
The first thing which strikes a common person on first hearing this theory is that it is a very queer notion for any Christian man to invent. We are naturally curious to know how a man, educated in a Christian country, could have fallen into it. But it is, in fact, no new discovery, but an old heathen superst.i.tion. Some four hundred years before Christ, when the world had almost wholly apostatized into idolatry, Democritus, among the Greeks, became offended with the vulgar heathen G.o.ds, and set himself to invent a plan of the world without them. From Eastern travelers the Greeks knew that the Brahmins, in India, had a theory of the world developing itself from a primeval egg.
He set himself to refine upon it, and imagined virtually the Nebular Hypothesis. He said that all matter consisted of very small atoms, dancing about in all directions, from all eternity, and which at last happened into the various forms of the present world.
The ancient Phoenicians held a theory that all life was from the sea; and that, as the wet mud produces all sorts of herbs in spring now, so originally it produced all manner of animals. They worshiped it as a G.o.d, and called it Mot, or Mud. Anaximander took up the theory and carried it out in true Darwinian style, alleging that the first men sprang from the ground watered by the sea, and that they had spines like sea urchins; evidently deriving them from the Radiates. Lucretius still further developed the theory in a poem in six books. The spread of Christianity, however, hindered the spread of the doctrine, as Mr.
Tyndall feelingly laments, until the Saracens overspread the East, when some of them, it seems, favored it. But it seems to be an unlucky dogma, since, with the downfall of the power of the false prophet, the anti-Christian form of science went down again.
The dogma of the trans.m.u.tation of species reappeared, however, in the Romish Church in a religious form; the old heathenism, which had never been wholly banished from the minds of men, thus rea.s.serting itself.
About the tenth century some began to teach that the bread of the communion of the Lord"s Supper was transubstantiated, and the wine also, into the body, and blood, and soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is probably the most complete trans.m.u.tation of species which has ever been imagined or described. The evolution of bread into Deity is only equaled by Mr. Tyndall"s endowment of matter with all the potencies of life and thought; a miracle differing from the popish transubstantiation only in the element of time, but in its essential nature equally supernatural. The dogma excited great discussion for centuries, and produced as many theories of transubstantiation as we now observe of evolution, keeping philosophic minds and pens busy till the dawn of modern science after the Reformation.
La Place threw out the Nebular Hypothesis, which is substantially Democritus" concourse of atoms, only La Place endeavored to subst.i.tute circular motions under the law of gravitation, instead of Democritus"
chance arrangement, as a sufficient cause for the formation and motions of planets. Herschel"s discovery of the nebulae was hastily laid hold of by a number of writers, and notably by the author of the Vestiges of Creation, as furnishing the primeval matter necessary for world-making; and till the spectroscopic discoveries of the composite nature of gaseous nebulae, they were claimed as specimens of worlds in process of formation. La Place supposed his nebulous matter to be gas in a state of white-heat combustion, compared with which the heat of the hottest fire would be a cool bath. In no other way could he dissipate the world"s substance into sufficient thinness for his vortices. But Spencer saw that this tremendous heat would be fatal to all forms of life, and especially to sensitive beings; and Tyndall shows us that this original matter must have had all the potencies of life and sensation, and a potency of sensation means being able to feel. Now the worst fate threatened against sinners in the Bible is a place in the lake burning with fire and brimstone, which burns at 500 Fahrenheit; but the temperature of the original fire-mist was a thousand times hotter. Some of these scientists call such a fate as the Bible threatens against the wicked, cruel. But here is a h.e.l.l manufactured by the evolutionists infinitely worse than that of the Bible; for the h.e.l.l of the Bible is only for the wicked, but the evolutionists" h.e.l.l is indiscriminately for all, saints and sinners, and all sorts of creatures, innocent as babes unborn of any crime; yet they, or, which is the same thing, the matter containing all the potency of their sensations, that is their power of feeling, were born in this h.e.l.l, and kept in it from all eternity, until it pleased the evolutionists to begin to cool it down a little. However, it was rather scientific than benevolent reasons which induced Mr.
Spencer to reverse the order of procedure, and make his star dust cold to begin with, and to heat it up by condensation and pressure to about the temperature of molten iron; which was still an uncomfortably warm lodging for Mr. Tyndall"s potencies of sensation for some millions of years. The division of opinion about the original nebulae, however, still prevails; some evolutionists of the old-fashioned order still taking their nebulae hot, while others, with Spencer, prefer it cold, with star dust.
As to the Spontaneous Generation of life, there has been less progress of opinion, though great variety has been exhibited. Ovid and Virgil describe the way in which a carca.s.s produces bees. It was generally believed that putrid meat produced the maggots, till the blow-flies were discovered laying their eggs. Then it was alleged that the entozoa, the worms found in the bodies of animals, were self-produced, without eggs, until the microscope discovered that one could lay 60,000 eggs. Strauss, however, adhered to the idea that as the tapeworm, as he supposed, was self-produced, so man was originated by the primeval slime. So also Professor Vogt, and M. Tremaux develop their animals from the land, and the latter accounts for their various qualities from the various qualities of their respective birthplaces, the crop being conditioned by the soil. But Mr. Darwin derives all his organisms from the sea.
Electricity in its galvanic form was for a while the agent to fire the earthly or marine mud with the vital spark; and Mr. Crosse"s experiments were supposed instances of the creation of acarii or mites in the battery bath, until it was found that the bath contained eggs and the electricity only hatched them. Some English evolutionists still adhere to the theory of Spontaneous Generation, but the leading Germans deny any instance of it being known. Huxley denies that any case of it has been established as now practicable; but supposes that if we could have been present at the beginning of the world, when all the elements were young and vigorous, we should have seen the chemical elements of the earth and air combining to form living beings, by the mere powers of their nature. If that were the fact, it would be a fact unique and unparalleled, utterly out of the course of nature, and so as contrary to the theory of evolution as if these living beings had been inspired with life by Almighty G.o.d.
So the theory here again is divided. Two utterly irreconcilable ideas of the origin of life claim our belief--the theories of Biogenesis, and of Abiogenesis, the one says all life is from the egg, and has always been so; and so we have an eternal begetting of finite creatures; the other alleges the spontaneous beginning of plants and animals; a fact, if it be a fact, as unparalleled as creation, and far more miraculous.
As to the history of the progress of the germs of plants and animals thus produced, we find still greater diversities of opinion, not only as to details, but as to principles. Each inventor has added to, or altered, the original idea of evolution, until it has been burdened with more improvements and new patents than the sewing machine; only the evolutionary improvements bid fair to improve the theory out of existence. We have seen M. Tremaux, with the autochthonic Athenians, deriving the powers of improvement of plants and animals from their native soils. Lamarck on the contrary, inspired all his plants and animals--fungi and frogs, and elephants and apes--with the desire of getting on in the world and improving their limbs by exercise; so the greyhound grew slim and fleet by running; the giraffe"s neck elongated by reaching up to the branches of the trees on which it browsed, and the duck acquired web feet by swimming. Others attributed the evolution of differences to external conditions. The negro became black by exposure to the tropical sun; the arctic hare received its coat of thick white fur from the cold climate, and the buffalo and camel their humps of fat from the sterility of their pastures at certain seasons, and the consequent need of a reserved store of fat for food for the rest of the body. Mr. Darwin"s doctrine of Natural Selection refuses Lamarck"s notion of any conscious attempt of the plant or animal at improvement; and equally denies the power of external nature to improve anything, except by killing off poor specimens, save in that very limited range where good pastures make fat animals for a season or two. An innate power of accidental variation to a very small amount, and the slow but constant adding up of profitable variations during countless generations, with the killing off of the unimproved breeds by Natural Selection, is his patent populator and improver. But this theory is too slow for the nineteenth century, and so neither Huxley, nor Parsons, nor Mivart, nor even Wallace, accepts the doctrine as Darwin propounds it.
It is, in fact, already becoming unpopular among scientific men. Lyell proposed the origination of new species by leaps; as we see great geniuses born of commonplace parents; and Huxley supports that opinion, and Parsons, Owen and Mivart coincide in this inexplicable explanation.
The author of the Vestiges of Creation accounts for improved species from a prolongation of the period of gestation. But Hyatt and Cope derive them from quite the contrary process--accelerated development of gestation. MM. Ferris and Kolliker derive them from parthenogenesis, a mode of genesis of which our world offers no example whatever.
The origin of man, with all his mental powers and religious aspirations, is the great difficulty. Mr. Mivart excludes man wholly from the influence of Natural Selection, from the time he acquired a soul. Mr.
Wallace, rejecting the action of one Supreme Intelligence for everything but the origin of universal forces and laws, "Contemplates the possibility that the development of the essentially human portions of man"s structure and intellect may have been determined by the directing influence of some higher intelligent beings acting through natural and universal laws;"[13] _i. e._, the G.o.ds of the old heathen nations. And so after twenty-two centuries wandering over the world, we have got back to where Democritus started from--to pure old heathenism.
After such a history of the theory of evolution, and in presence of such contradictory presentations by its advocates, I need scarcely say that it is by no means an established scientific principle, were it not for the insolent manner in which some of them a.s.sert it as scientifically demonstrated; and denounce the Bible doctrine of creation as mere superst.i.tion, "A feather bed of respectable and respected tradition,"
and warn off Christians from any attempt to investigate theories of cosmogony; and overbear the ignorant by the array of the names of men of science who give their sanction to some phase of the theory. But let it be borne in mind that no well-established scientific principle, no demonstrated law, exhibits such contradictory and conflicting phases as those we have just witnessed. The laws of gravitation, or of chemical affinity, for instance, offer no such contradictions of their adherents; because they are founded on facts, while evolution is a mere notion, founded on ignorance and error, as we shall presently see. Accordingly, by far the greater number of the greatest scientists oppose it, as utterly unscientific, and have recorded their opposition, and the reasons for it. Sir John Herschel and Sir Wm. Thompson, among astronomers, have proclaimed its antagonism to the facts of physical astronomy. No new facts subversive of the foundations of faith in G.o.d as recognized in the universe by Bacon, Newton, Boyle, Descartes, Leibnitz, Pascal, Paley and Bell, have been discovered by such scientists as Whewell, Sedgwick, Brewster, Faraday, Hugh Miller, or our American geologists, Dawson, Hitchc.o.c.k, and Dana. Nor have the deliberate and expanded demonstrations of its unscientific character by the late lamented Aga.s.siz been ever fairly met, much less overturned. I refer to these honored names for the benefit of that large cla.s.s who must take their science upon faith in some scientific prophet or apostle, in default of any possibility of personal investigation of the facts.
Indeed, to the great majority, even of so-called scientific men, their science must be founded upon faith in the dogma of some scientific pope and council. And to such it may be rea.s.suring, amidst the evolutionists"
cries of Science! Science! to know that a great many of the greatest scientists, in spite of all these confused a.s.sertions, do still believe in Almighty G.o.d, do call their souls their own, and hope when they die to go to heaven.
As a specimen of the contempt in which this theory is held by the princes of science, read the following extract of an address by Aga.s.siz, at a recent meeting of the Academy of Science:[14]
"As I grow older in the ranks of science," said the professor, "I feel more and more the danger of stretching inferences from a few observations to a wide field. I see that the younger generation among naturalists are at this moment falling into the mistake of making a.s.sertions and presenting views as scientific principles which are not even based upon real observation. I think it is time that some positive remonstrance be made against that tendency. The manner in which the evolution theory in zoology is treated would lead those who are not special zoologists to suppose that observations have been made by which it can be inferred that there is in nature such a thing as change among organized beings actually taking place. _There is no such thing on record._ It is shifting the ground from one field of observation to another to make this statement, and when the a.s.sertions go so far as to exclude from the domain of science those who will not be dragged into this mire of mere a.s.sertion, then it is time to protest.
"He thought it was intolerant to say he was not on scientific grounds because he was not falling into the path which was occupied by those who maintain that all organized beings have been derived from a few original progenitors. Other supporters of the trans.m.u.tation doctrine a.s.sume that they can demonstrate the changes to have taken place by showing certain degrees of resemblance; but what they never touch is the quality and condition of those few first progenitors from which they were evolved.
They a.s.sume that they contained all that is necessary to evolve what exists now. That is begging the question at the outset; for if these first prototypes contained the principle of evolution, we should know something about them from observation, and it should be shown that there are such organized beings as are capable of evolution.
"I ask, Whence came these properties? If this power and capacity of change is not inherent to the first progenitors, then I ask, Whence came the impulses by which those progenitors which have not this power of change in themselves acquire them? What is the power by which they are started in directions which are not determined by their primitive nature? From the total silence of the supporters of the trans.m.u.tation theory on these and other points, _he did not think it worth their while to take the slightest notice of this doctrine of evolution in his scientific considerations_. He acknowledged what the evolutionists had done incidentally in scientific research; none had done more than Mr.
Darwin. He believed he had been injured woefully by his adherents. He was a far better man than most of his school made him."
It is to be acknowledged, however, that many scientists are evolutionists. Mr. Darwin is not alone in his belief. If he were, it would not be worth while to spend time in examining it. Quite a number of scientific men have fallen into it, and lecture and write commendations of it; and it has become quite popular among a certain cla.s.s who do not like to accept the Bible doctrine that G.o.d created man, with its necessary consequence that the creature ought to obey his Creator; and they have proceeded to patch it out into completeness--for, as you observe, it is a little defective; like its own primeval squirt, it lacks a head and a tail--it has neither a beginning nor an end properly fitted to it. It takes a piece out of the middle of the universe from the management of G.o.d, but it leaves the beginning and the end totally unaccounted for; telling us neither whence came the first germs, nor whither tends the final fully developed angel. Mr. Darwin, though he calls one of his works, the Origin of Species, really avoids the question of origin. He admits the miracle of the creation of the four or five original germs of life, which, according to the evolutionists, is as unscientific as if he admitted four or five hundred. They desire to escape the operation of G.o.d altogether.
Moreover, he gives no account of the origin of the law of heredity, by which each being produces its like; nor yet of the origin of the power of variation, according to which profitable variations occur. Here, then, is still a field in which G.o.d reigns. But it is specially with Mr.
Darwin"s admission of the Creator to bestow the origin of life that evolutionists are displeased. If they admit G.o.d at the beginning of the world they see plainly that there is no possibility of getting rid of him afterward. Messrs. Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, Buchner, Haeckel and Vogt combine their forces accordingly to evolve the world as we find it without G.o.d"s intervention.
Mr. Huxley, perceiving that to make either man, or monkey, or nomad, you must have materials, kindly brings a little pitcher of protoplasm, which he calls the physical basis of life. It is the meat our Caesar feeds on, and indeed, for that matter, all living things. All vegetable and animal tissues are made up mostly of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen; and as the materials of which all living beings are built are the same originally, and are simply these chemical substances with a little iron, salt and lime, with their properties, he will have it that all life, including man"s life and thought, is merely a development of protoplasm.
This is the clay out of which all the various bricks, and tiles, and tea cups, and porcelain vases of the great world building are built. We don"t need to begin with monkeys, nor fish, or pollywogs, now to develop into men, for we go down to the very bottom, since we have the stuff they all are made of, namely, protoplasm. Still this clay needs a potter to mold and bake it.
The difficulty about the protoplasm is that it must be _alive_. You can not get a living pollywog, no more than a living elephant, out of dead protoplasm. Mr. Huxley shows very well that all protoplasm consists of the same materials; in fact, that all flesh is gra.s.s, as the Scripture says. The difficulty is how to convert the gra.s.s into flesh, unless by some animal eating it; or to convert the nitrogen, carbon and water into gra.s.s or grain, or any other form of protein or protoplasm, without the previous action of some plant. In short, how are we to make the chemical materials live? Here Mr. Tyndall comes in and endows the matter of the universe with life, and with all the potency of producing bodies and souls. In his famous Belfast Address he says: "Abandoning all disguise, the confession that I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the vision backward, beyond the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in this matter, which we in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life."
Yet, after all this marvelous endowment of matter with all potency, we have not got quite back to the beginning. For still the questions arise, Where did this almighty matter come from? Who endowed it with these wonderful potencies? And how does it happen to work so well, in such orderly and regular evolution of star dust, suns, planets, pollywogs, monkeys, men and maggots, in eternal cycles, ever advancing higher and doing better and better for the race, though poorly enough, it appears, for the miserable individuals? Here Buchner, Vogt, Spencer and other materialists come in and perfect that which was lacking; showing how the star dust made itself, and how the paving stones made themselves, and are under no obligations to any Creator but themselves. Matter and force are all they need, and endless time in which to work, and they will account for the universe without any Creator at all. Everything and every person must be just as it is, according to the regular operation of the laws of Nature.
As Buchner, Vogt and Spencer have given the system a head, Lubbock, Evans and others have supplied it with a tail, and demonstrated how society, and morals, and religion have been excogitated by the apes out of their meditations in the forests. It is a fearful and wonderful account they give us of the origin of marriage from the battles of the baboons, of the rights of property established by terrible fights for groves of good chestnuts, of the beginnings of morals from the instincts of brutes, and of the dawnings of religion, or rather of superst.i.tion, from the dreams of these animals; the result of the whole being that civilization, and society, and law, and order, and religion, are all simply the evolution of the instincts of the brutes, and that there is no necessity for invoking any supernatural interference to produce them.
The termination of the whole, as far as you and I are concerned, is that "We shall fade away as the faint cloud melts into the blue ether," into the eternal sleep of death.
It thus appears that there is an orderly succession and attempted adjustment of one part of the doctrine of evolution to another, and that all the various workers are cooperating toward one grand result. It is true they differ widely in their professed religious creeds and political partialities. Mr. Darwin avows his belief in a Creator. Mr.
Huxley votes on the London School Board for the introduction of the Bible into the public schools. Mr. Spencer is willing to allow the existence of some great unknowable mystery. Some of the French and German evolutionists dispense with any reference to G.o.d, as an unnecessary hypothesis. Others oppose the idea of G.o.d altogether, as inimical to progress. M. Comte proposed a worship of humanity. M.
Strauss would worship the universe. But with all this variety of uniform, and armor, and tactics, the evolutionists are all soldiers of the same army, and are all fighting the same great battle, for the brutal origin of man, and his independence of G.o.d. From which independence of G.o.d, and brutal origin of mankind, result very important consequences. For the belief of this notion necessarily destroys all faith in the Bible, and in the Christianity which it reveals, and revolutionizes the basis of the civilization founded upon it, and all the laws protecting life, property, marriage and religion; which laws are based upon the belief of mankind in the dignity of man, the sacredness of human life, and the sanction of morality by the All-seeing Judge of all the earth, who will reward every man according to his works. For all practical purposes it makes no great difference whether a man denies that there is any G.o.d at all, or admits that there is some kind of a G.o.d who created the world millions of years ago, and just set it a spinning to work out its destiny as best it might, but never after concerned himself about it, or its people, and never will; for n.o.body will ever trouble his head about a G.o.d who never troubles his head about him.
Most of the evolutionists are zealous advocates of their system. These propagandists have had such a degree of success in attracting public attention, in inspiring a large proportion of the secular press, besides scientific journals, as advocates of their notions, and in obtaining entrance for them into the common school books, put into the hands of our children, and into ma.s.sive quartos published by State legislatures with the money of Christian people, and in the prevalent corruption of public morals and breach of private trusts necessarily resulting from the evolution of these principles, that we are compelled, in self-defense, to examine the doctrine of evolution. It is all very well for Mr. Tyndall to warn off everybody, but evolutionists, from any investigations into cosmogony; about which he owns that they know very little now, and will not know much for some millions of years to come.
But common people, who will not live so long, but who in the meantime have to live and make money, and save it, who have children to rear, and houses which they do not want burned over their heads, who have taxes to pay, increasing every year, and public plunderers to prosecute and whose ballots may be asked one of these days for the subst.i.tution of the communes of the original apes, and the Red Republic for these United States, all upon the alleged scientific proof for the truth of the doctrine of evolution, and the consequent abolishment of Christianity--common people, I maintain, by whose money and votes this dogma is to be established, will not be debarred from asking the why and the wherefore, neither by Mr. Tyndall, nor by any other scientific pope.
It is a little too late in the day for men who do not know their own mind from the Alps to Belfast, and who doubt whether G.o.d made them whenever they are dyspeptic, to stand up before the public demanding that we shut our eyes and open our mouths, and swallow every preposterous notion they think proper to proclaim as science, to the destruction of our faith in the G.o.d who made us, of our respect for our brethren of mankind, and of our hope of heaven.