My Dear Mr. Editor,
1893 318 The author of "Natural Law in the Spiritual World" could scarcely be expected to deliver anything but a eulogy on the theory of evolution. This anticipation has been realised in his American lectures, the first of which is characteristically entitled the "Ascent of Man." The Professor is nothing if not enthusiastic; accordingly the author of "the Greatest Thing in the World" tells us that evolution is "the last and most splendid contribution of science to the faith of the world."
We beg leave however in a brief manner to present to your readers two out of many serious indictments that must be made against this theory.
1. — Evolution does not rest upon facts, but upon assumptions.
2. — Its tendencies are to destroy faith in God and His word.
In the first place then, one listening to the confident asseverations of the upholders of evolution might reasonably suppose that every care was taken to observe the phenomena they thus profess to account for; and that, before the theory was formulated, a full investigation and a complete induction were made of the whole series of biological and other facts falling within its province. Indeed this much might almost be implied from the Professor's own words. "Each worker toiled in his own little place, the geologist in his quarry … Suddenly these workers looked up; they spoke to one another; they had each discovered a law; they whispered its name. It was the same word that went round. They had each discovered evolution."
We find however that the alleged discovery was after all only a guess, the "swift induction of an adventurous mind from a momentary glimpse of a (supposed) natural law;" and that this development theory which asserts man to be "lineally descended from a sponge," and which sees "no more in a beautiful maiden than a cross between a dodo and a daddy long-legs," is in point of fact a mere scientific dream, fascinating no doubt as some dreams are, but a "baseless fabric" like them all.
In support of this we produce testimony, which the Professor himself will be sure to respect, viz: his own, as given in these very lectures. For the Lowell lecturer assures his audience that "Evolution is after all a Vision." Now although "Vision" is spelt with a capital V, it can mean no more than a phantasm, a creature of the imagination. And when we are told our remote ancestor; were blobs of jelly in some primeval slime, it is really a kindness to be informed at the same time, that the theory has after all no more foundation than a dream.
But if the interpretation is one, the dreams of the aforesaid "workers" are not one; for it seems the eminent scientists themselves do not by any means agree as to the "Visions" they see. Mr. D. himself supplies us with this information. He confesses "there is everywhere at this moment the most disturbing uncertainty as to how the ascent even of species has been brought about. The attacks on the Darwinian theory from the outside were never so keen as are the controversies, now raging in scientific circles, over the fundamental principles of Darwinism itself." Again, "the whole field of science is hot with controversies and discussions;" "at present there is not a chapter of the record (i.e., of evolution) that is not incomplete, not a page that is wholly finished." Since therefore Mr. D. admits that even the fundamental principles of Darwinism are the subject of controversy among men of science themselves, we have the evidence of the evolutionist himself in support of our thesis; — that evolution does not rest upon established facts, but upon debatable assumptions.
And after such concessions as these have been made, we are somewhat astounded to read farther on — "it is certain that the materials for his (man's) body have been brought together from an unknown multitude of lowlier forms of life." Taking the Professor's own hint as to the uncertainty of science we feel constrained to ask him for a few indubitable facts just to establish satisfactorily this little point. There are none however forthcoming. We ask for proof, and he gives us a metaphor about the Cathedral of St. Mark's. In sooth, we did not expect a demonstration, for it is well-known that no passage from a lower species to the human has ever come under the observation of any one; neither has the same been brought about by experiments of any kind. As therefore the statement in question does not rest upon either observation or experiment, the Jachin and Boaz of science, we submit that it would be more correct to say "it is assumed etc." than "it is certain, etc." And if it is only an assumption that we are descendants of the apes, surely we may be allowed to throw such a theory to the dogs.
But though the Professor does not prove his theory, he sufficiently establishes his own powers of imagination and graphic description in the entertaining account he gives of the supposed ascent of man. In the growth of the human embryo, the scientific Seer discerns "a condensed zoology, a recapitulation and epitome of the main chapters in the natural history of the world. The same processes of development which once took thousands of years for their consummation are here condensed, foreshortened, concentrated into the space of months." Then the aspiring efforts of past animal organisms through incalculable ages are traced from the single cell upwards, as on a "moving panorama:" worms, fish, amphibian, reptile. "At last the true mammalian form emerges from the crowd." Then come the apes, and after one last superhuman or perhaps we ought to say supersimian struggle, man appears.
However, as soon as the Professor has thus introduced us to our long-lost relatives, he politely informs us that the relationship between us is "all but proved." One almost hears his tones of apology and regret, as he explains that after all, you know, evolution is only a Vision. Things are not yet very definite; at present man can really choose whatever early relatives he pleases. For embryology is such a very young science; and between ourselves this embryological argument is at present, founded on analogy! As to this last sentence, Mr. D.'s actual words are "Our ideas of the probable history of the human ovum, for the first few days, are mainly taken from our knowledge of the development of other mammals and of birds and reptiles." So that the embryological argument for evolution in another form is as follows: — Certain things are found true of the embryos of the rabbit, of the pigeon, of the frog, etc. and it is assumed that the very same things are true of the human embryo.
We therefore repeat that, upon the Professor's own showing, evolution is not grounded upon observed facts, but upon guesses and suppositions.
It is admitted on all hands that embryology is the most obscure branch of biology. The very highest magnifying power of the best microscopes reveals no essential differences between the ova of man, ape, dog, etc. But undeniably there is the most radical difference; and this much is clear, that in the earliest embryonic stage similarity is no proof of identity. These facts might have taught caution to our Professor and others, who have rashly concluded that, because the growing embryo in its various transformations resembles other forms of life, it must therefore be identical with them. There is indisputably a radical difference in the unicellular stage despite the close resemblance, and essential difference abides throughout all subsequent changes. Analogy is ever a precarious argument; it is the favourite logic of the imagination when one sees lions' heads and smugglers' caves in the glowing embers. We are here insensibly reminded of the foolish man, who called his neighbours one evening to help him reach a large cheese out of the pond. They, wiser than he, found he had been observing the reflection of the moon in the water. The poor man's reasoning was doubtless founded on analogy; but the analogy must have been at fault somewhere. Let evolutionists beware, lest the analogy between the embryos of a man and a monkey be even less than between the moon's image and a submerged cheese.* A wiser than they said "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."
{*For the Professor's abuse of analogical reasoning in his book on "Natural Law, etc.," see articles in B.T. vol. xv. pp. 220, 269, 286, 301, 317.}
Some years ago, a useful lesson was read to the scientific world on the folly of assuming theories to be true without actual proof. Professor Huxley announced in a leading scientific paper in 1869, that a vast sheet of living matter enveloped the earth beneath the seas. This deep-sea slime, designated by him Bathybius Haeckelii, was alleged to be protoplasm. And he maintained that this gelatinous jelly-like substance was the "physical basis of life." Strauss and its German god-father Haeckel, carried away by enthusiasm, triumphantly declared it to be the bridge between the living and the non-living, the organic and the inorganic. But oh, the pity of it! the bubble soon burst. In 1876 "Bathybius" was publicly interred; for during the voyage of the ship Challenger, it was discovered that "Bathybius" was quite inorganic, being made up mostly of sulphate of lime. Huxley himself confessed on a subsequent occasion that "Biogenesis is victorious along the whole line."
It is not our present intention to do more than thus point out for the sake of simple folk that the groundwork on which is built the popular notion of evolution or the "development theory" is entirely of a visionary nature. And seeing it is purely a "working hypothesis," and unsatisfactory to men of science themselves into the bargain, the less said about it, as we wait for proof, the better; especially since its tendencies are of a pronounced infidel nature, as we hope to show in another letter. (D.V.)
Yours faithfully in Christ, "YOD."
Note — The quotations of Prof. D. in these letters are taken from the reports of his lectures in the "British Weekly" of April 20th, and subsequent dates.
Drummond on Evolution.
(Second Letter.) Dear Mr. Editor,
1893 334 Having shown that evolution after all is only a "working hypothesis" which remains to be proved, I desire in a few words to point out to your readers that evolution as expounded by Professor Drummond and others, by impugning the power and wisdom of God, tends to destroy faith in Him and His word.
It is intended to refer to two points only, but these are of the highest importance, viz. — that evolution denies (1) the Biblical account of creation (2) the Biblical doctrine of sin.
In the first place, then, we are taught in the Scripture that God, after the chaotic state described in Gen. 1:2, in six days made the world fit for the habitation of man, creating him and placing him at its head as His vicegerent.* And we are specially told that the same power, that in the beginning called all things into being when they were not, made "every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew," and that, too, without the aid of rain and tillage; "for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground" (Gen. 2:5).
{*The reader will find this, and kindred topics very fully dealt with in the Editor's papers on the "Early Chapters of Genesis" which commenced B. T. vol. xviii., p. 193.}
But this account is a flat contradiction of the theory of evolution. The passage quoted makes it clear that vegetation was created in a state of perfection and maturity; and the same appears from Gen. 1:11: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and it was so." Thus the tree preceded the seed, and not vice versa; but evolution insists upon the universal law of progression from "low to high," from immaturity to maturity, from the structureless cell to the perfect organization. So that we are called to accept either an unproved theory or an inspired history; and in this the believer has no choice.
In the Biblical account of creation we learn that the being of man, as indeed everything organic and inorganic sprang into life and perfection and beauty at the divine word. And we are thus given to see that God is not One such as ourselves, but One Who could and did act at the beginning in a way beyond human analogy, without the aid or use of "natural laws" or intermediate causes of any kind. But evolution seeks to overthrow this conception, giving us the picture of a Being, called Nature, struggling through "incalculable ages" to make a man. Just as the mighty steam engines of the present day have been gradually evolved, by means of a long series of experiments which began with a boy playing with his mother's tea-kettle*; so man, the head and crown of the animal kingdom, was similarly evolved from a formless cell, millions of which could find accommodation in a raindrop. Nature, the God of evolution, was apparently unable to see the end from the beginning, had no ideal plan before it, was hindered by its own laws, learnt wisdom (with uncommon slowness) by its mistakes and failures, and finally, after astonishing perseverance, with a supreme effort produced the genus homo, one of whom is now able to scientifically review the methods of his Maker and explain them with much assurance to a delighted American audience.
{* First Lecture.}
Thus do the blind leaders of the blind fall into the ditch for who does not see that this "Nature" is but a "graven image," the fruit of men's vain imaginings and utterly opposed to the God of the Bible? It is a man-made idol as much as Baal or Astarte, and, whatever its pretensions, is no more from heaven than was Diana of the Ephesians. Let believers beware of this studied attempt to supplant the living God by a plastic deity which is forced to accommodate itself to every scientific guess. It is not now said for the first time that the Darwinian theory turns the Creator out of doors and leaves not the smallest room for such a Being.* This is bold work for an unfledged hypothesis that was hatched in a dream, and has no more basis in real science than in scripture.
{*It was said by Carl Vogt, a thorough-going materialist, to Darwin himself.}
It is plain the latter utterly refuses to countenance the fairy tale of evolution, that Adam was an Anthropoid ape, who managed to cross the great gulf now fixed between apehood and manhood. The Holy Ghost records the creation of man in these words, "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7). It is useless to object that this is only a metaphorical way of describing the ascent of the human species through "incalculable ages" from the alleged primal monad. For the very opposite is confirmed by Gen. 3:19: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Nothing is clearer than that Adam was not simply a lower organism raised to a higher form, but a subject of special creatorial power. For it is stated to be one of the sad results of his fall that his body must return to the dust of the ground from whence he was taken. He was therefore a true creation, and moreover created for life, and not for death; seeing that death came in by sin.
Moreover, the position which man was created to occupy in regard to the brutes is irreconcileable with the evolutionary theory. Thus, having received the inbreathing of the Almighty, he was thereby fitted to represent God here below, and to have rule and dominion over the works of His hands. In consonance with this, man appeared the sixth day. But the Darwinian theory will have it that he was unknown ages coming. So that for immense periods the earth was without any fitted for the place of sovereignty that man even now occupies. The truth is that man was specially prepared for his post by special intervention of the Most High.
It is usual for scientists to seek to throw a stigma on the teaching of Gen. 1 and ii. by high-sounding phrases intended to throw people off the track. Listen to Professor Geddes: — "Evolution supersedes those cruder anthropomorphisms of arbitrary creation and of mechanical contrivance which present the universe as an aggregate of finished products."* But long words prove no arguments, and here like the discolourations of the cuttlefish only serve to cover a retreat. Anthropomorphism literally means the imputation of the form of man to God; though it is sometimes applied to scriptural expressions such as "And God said," etc. But what the sceptic insinuates is that such terms are less illustrative of the majesty and power of God than the formulae of evolution. In other words, for man to be created in immediate response to the words "Let us make man in our image" is too crudely anthropomorphic, too human a way of doing it. We submit, however, that it is much more after the manner of men, to represent the Deity experimenting on various forms of life from the amoeba upwards, "trusting to the chapter of accidents for variation," only to arrive at the ideal after untold millenaries. This smacks more of human weakness than of infinite power. We might learn from the Gospels that, when the deed followed the word without the medium of ordinary causes, it was not a "crude anthropomorphism" but a Divine act. This expression therefore, as well as others in the above quotation, is loose, inaccurate, and misleading; yet it is a fair sample of the shifts evolutionists resort to in order to obtain a hearing for their theory of creation.
{* Chambers' Encyclopedia, ed. 1889. Art. "Evolution," vol. iv. p. 478.}
But, in the second place, evolution is not less opposed to the Biblical account of the entrance of sin into the world. The Holy Spirit distinctly says "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." "By one man's disobedience the mass were constituted sinners" (Rom. 5:12-19). So that the rebellion of Adam in the garden of Eden, against the authority of God, is stated to be the mark of time and circumstances when sin made its appearance. Evolution however denies this in toto, saying we inherit our evil habits from the brute beast. Sin, we are told, is a "vestigial structure" — in other words, "the residuum of the animal in man." The "malformations of the moral nature" are simply remnants of the lower forms of organic life through which man has passed. "If man inherits the gill-slits of a shark" (which, by-the-bye, is an assumption without the shadow of a proof), "is it unscientific to expect that he will inherit the spirit of a shark"*; etc., etc.? We answer that the analogy is false, and therefore it is most unscientific to expect anything of the sort. Supposing a man had the "gill-slits of a shark" (which we repeat has to be proved), they would be atrophied and useless; but if be had the spirit of a shark, it could only be known by the performance of its functions. We therefore deny that any real analogy can be maintained between an effete physical organ and a ferocious propensity only apparent in a high state of development. With a little exercise of the imagination we might find scores of such arguments, all equally worthless. For instance, is not the fondness of children for lollipops indicative that bears or hummingbirds were among their ancestors? Is not their inclination to play in the gutter and make mud-pies, strong proof that they are directly descended from ducks or eels? Is not the prevalence of the game of hide-and-seek in the nursery, conclusive evidence that they are not far removed from squirrels and monkeys? In short, the whole argument might be treated as highly ridiculous, were it not such a serious design to attenuate, if not to destroy, the responsibility of man and the heinousness of sin.
{* Third Lecture.}
To show, however, that the extent to which this baseless theorizing is carried is not misrepresented, the following extract, professing to account for the origin of the mental and moral emotions, is given.* "In creatures very far down the scale of life, the Annelids, Mr. Romance distinguished what appeared to him to be one of the earliest emotions — Fear. Somewhat higher up, among the Insects, he met with the social feelings, as well as Industry, Pugnacity, and Curiosity. Jealousy seems to have been born into the world with Fishes; Sympathy with Birds. The Carnivora are responsible for Cruelty, Hate, and Grief; the Anthropoid Apes for Remorse, Shame, the Sense of the Ludicrous, and Deceit." "These emotions, appear in the mind of the growing child in the same order as they appear on the animal scale." We add to this Professor Drummond's confession in the former part of this lecture that "Evolution of Mind is an open question;" which is itself a sufficient warning to leave this quagmire of uncertain and unfounded speculation for the solid facts of revelation.
{* Fifth Lecture.}
"In Thy light shall we see light"; but this theory is a return to pagan darkness. For after all, evolution is but a modification of the heathen doctrine of metempsychosis. What Pythagoras and others taught of the individual soul migrating to and from the brutes, Haeckel, Darwin, etc., taught, and Drummond echoes, of the race.
The lecturer on the "Ascent of Man" spoke of our derivation from lower organisms as an "unspeakable exaltation"* and sought with much fervour to bring his audience to the same mind. But we are not so enamoured of the "gospel of dirt." The poet's notion was much more respectable, though equally unfounded in the main, who said
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting …
Trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, Who is our home."
{* First Lecture.}
In reference, however, to this second point also, we must choose between the word of God and the word of evolutionists. According to God, sin is lawlessness, a life without Him in the world, a mind at enmity with Him; but according to so-called science, sin is merely the exercise of undesirable propensities, inherited from ancient animal ancestors, letting loose the blood of the tiger in family life, as Professor Drummond puts it.* The Bible says, God made man upright, and that sin is the result of his fall from the upright state he had at the beginning; but evolution declares sin to be the remnant of an imperfect and undeveloped state from which he has now advanced and trusts that these "vestigial structures" will entirely disappear as he makes further progress. Scripture denounces sin as being committed against God; but evolution considers sin as that which opposes the social well-being of mankind. And we may be sure that whatever makes light of sin, as the theory in question does, can never be of God Who gave none other than His own Son to be His Lamb, the Remover of the sin of the world.
{* Third Lecture.}
In conclusion, the sum of what these two letters have sought to show concerning evolution is:
1. — That it is not founded upon facts, but is a theory unprovided with a proof.
2. — It denies the Biblical account of creation.
3. — It denies the Scriptural revelation concerning the origin and nature of sin.
And we believe, in spite of the religious professions of its champion, that this development theory is dishonouring to God and defiling to the conscience. We pray, therefore, that the children of God may be preserved from its contaminations.
Yours faithfully in Christ, YOD [W. J. Hocking]."