Pithecanthropus Erectusis the name invented by Haeckel for the "missing link," and given by Dr. Eugene Du Bois, a Dutch physician, to certain remains discovered by him on the island of Java in 1891. The remains consist of "an imperfect cranium, a femur bearing evidence of prolonged disease, and a molar tooth." (Dana,"Manual of Geology,"p. 1036.) The discoverer of these bones believed that they are the remains of a being between the man-apes and man. Prof. Virchow and other specialists in anatomy examined this find. It was established that the femur was found a year after the cranium. Some regard the remains as belonging to a low-grade man or to an idiot. (Dana,I c.) The cubic measurement of the skull is 60 cubic inches, about that of an idiot, that of a normal man being 90 cubic inches and that of an ape 30. These specimens were found in separate places. The skull is too small for the thigh-bone. The age of the strata in which they were found is uncertain. An authority of the first rank, Prof. Klaatsch, of Heidelberg University, says that the creature "does not supply the missing link."
Dr. Smith Woodward and Dr. Charles Dawson, in reconstructing a man from thePiltdown skull, discovered in 1912 on Piltdown Common, near Ucksfield, Sussex, England, built up something essentially monkey-like, with receding forehead, projecting brows, and a gorilla-like lower jaw. Prof. Keith, a renowned specialist, checking up on this reconstruction, comes to an entirely different conclusion. He finds that the work of Drs. Dawson and Woodward was done "in open defiance of all that scientists know about skulls, whether ancient or modern." His words are: "I soon saw that the parts of the reconstructed Piltdown skull had been apposed in a manner which was in open defiance of all that was known of skulls, ancient and modern, human and anthropoid. Articulating the bones in a manner which has been accepted by all anatomists in all times, I found that the brain-chamber, instead of measuring 1,070 cubic cm., as in Dr. Smith Woodward's reconstruction, measured 1,500 cubic cm.,—a large brain chamber for even modern man."
TheNeanderthal skullwas found in 1856 in the neighborhood of Duesseldorf by Dr. Fuhlrott, of Elberfeld. When the skull and other parts of the skeleton were exhibited at a scientific meeting held at Bonn the same year, a wide divergence of opinion at once developed among the specialists. By some, doubts were expressed as to the human character of the remains. Others held that the remains indicate a person of much the same stature as a European of the present day, but with such an unusual thickness in some of them as betokened a being of very extraordinary strength. Dr. Meyer, of Bonn, regarded the skull as the remains of a Cossack killed in 1814. Other scientists agreed with him. Modern science accepts the antiquity of the Neanderthal man, but the controversy has never ceased. The great Virchow declared the peculiarities of the bones to be the result of disease.
Near Liege, in Belgium, not more than seventy miles from the Neanderthal, theEngis skullwas found. After careful measurement it was proved not to differ materially from the skulls of modern Europeans.
Such experiences should prevent us from making any assertions respecting the primitive character, in race or physical conformation, of these cave-dwellers. Indeed. Prof. Huxley, in a very careful and elaborate paper upon the Neanderthal and Engis skulls, places an average skull of a modern native of Australia about half-way between those of the Neanderthal and Engis caves. Yes, he says that, after going through a large collection of Australian skulls, he "found it possible to select from these crania two (connected by all sorts of intermediate gradations), the one of which should very nearly resemble the Engis skull, while the other would somewhat less closely approximate to the Neanderthal skull in size, form, and proportions." "The Engis skull, perhaps the oldest known, is," according to Prof. Huxley, "a fair average skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brain of a savage." In this opinion Mr. Huxley is supported by one of the greatest anthropologists of his time, Daniel G. Brinton, who says concerning the cave-man of France and Belgium: "Neither in stature, cranial capacity, nor in muscular development did these earliest members of the species differ more from those now living than do these among themselves. We have no grounds for assigning to these earliest known men an inferior brain or a lower intelligence than is seen among various savage tribes still in existence."
Every new find, upon investigation, proves the truth of Virchow's words: "We must really acknowledge that there is a complete absence of any fossil type of a lower stage in the development of man. Nay, if we gather together all the fossil men hitherto found, and put them parallel with those of the present time, we can decidedly pronounce that there are among living men a much greater proportion of individuals which show a relatively inferior type than there are among the fossils known up to this time. . . . Every positive progress which we haw made in the region of prehistoric anthropology has removed us farther from the demonstration of this theory!"
Quite recently (in 1913) a remarkable fossil was found in the Oldoway gulch in northern German East Africa, by an expedition of the Geological Institute of the University of Berlin. The remains consist of a complete skeleton, which was found deeply imbedded in firm soil. Unquestionably ancient as these remains are,—the bones are completely fossilized,—they contained lamentably few "primitive characteristics," and hence have not been exploited in the interest of the evolutionary theory. A fragment of skull, a tooth, a thigh-bone, offer much more inviting fields to the evolutionists, since they permit his imagination to range without the restraint of fact. The Oldoway fossil, which is in every essential respect a normal human skeleton, possesses no special attractions for those who would represent man as a descendant of brutish ancestors.
Says Prof. Virchow: "We seek in vain for the missing link; there exists a definite barrier separating man from the animal which has not yet been effaced—heredity, which transmits to children the faculties of the parents. We have never seen a monkey bring a man into the world, nor a man produce a monkey. All men having a Simian (monkey-like) appearance are simply pathological variants, (abnormal varieties, due to some diseased condition). It was generally believed a few years ago that there existed a few human races which still remained in the primitive inferior condition of their organization. But all these races have been objects of minute investigation, and we know that they have an organization like ours, often, indeed, superior to that of the supposed higher races. Thus the Eskimo head and the head of the Terra del Fuegians belong to the perfected types. All the researches undertaken with the aim of finding continuity in progressive development have been without result. There exists no proanthrope, no man-monkey, and the 'connecting link' remains a phantom."
Dr. Berndt, of Berlin, recently said in the"Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau der Chemikerseitung"(April, 1914): "Max Weber, one of the best authorities on mammals, regards the anthropoid apes of to-day as a branchparallelto the human branch. Scholars like Cope, Adloeff, Klaatsch, prefer to push the origin of man back to the earliest age of terrestrial life, whence he went his wayfrom the very outsetseparate from the apes." This is a highly significant utterance. It means nothing more than this: there is not one recognizable link which unites man with the animal kingdom. All the intermediate forms between man and the original jelly-fish, which according to Haeckel and Vogt was his ancestor, have disappeared. For their existence we have nothing but the word of speculative scientists.
Concerning the Neanderthaler, the Cro-Magnon man. etc., Dr. Dawson has said: "Geological evidence resolves itself into a calculation of the rate of erosion of river valleys, of deposition of gravel and cave-earths, and of formation of stalagmite crusts, all of which are so variable and uncertain that, though it may be said that an impression of great antiquity beyond the time of received history has been left on the minds of geologists, no absolute antiquity has been proved; and while some, on such evidence, would stretch the antiquity of man to even half a million years, the oldest of these remains may, after all, not exceed our traditional six thousand. These skeletons tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral organization which he possesses now, and we may infer the same high intellectual and moral nature, fitting him for communication with God and headship over the lower world." Similarly Figuier held that "we know of no archaeological find (stone hatchets, etc.) that could not be pronounced only five thousand years old as well as fifty thousand."
Lionel S. Beale, the famous microscopist, testifies: "In support of all naturalistic conjectures concerning man's origin, there is not at this time the shadow of scientific evidence."
William Hanna Thomson, M.D., LL.D., Physician to the Roosevelt Hospital; Consulting Physician to New York State Manhattan Hospital for the Insane, who has held a professorship in New York University Medical College; been president of the New York Academy of Medicine, etc, in his recent book."What is Physical Life?"says concerning the doctrine of evolution: "No contradiction could be greater than that between this doctrine and the greatest truth which underlies this human world."
The Russo-French physiologist, M. Elie DeCyon, for many years professor in the Faculty of Sciences and in the Academic Medico-chirurgicale at the University of Petrograd, has lately published a book of essays in which he says that the theory of evolution, especially in its relation to the ancestry of man, is a "pure assumption." He quotes Prof. Fraas, who devoted his long life to the study of fossil animals: "The idea that mankind has descended from any Simian (ape) species whatsoever, is certainly the most foolish ever put forth by a man writing on the history of man. It should be handed down to posterity in a new edition of the Memorial of Human Follies. No proof of this baroque theory can ever be given from discovered fossils." And to quote from another address by Virchow, delivered at Vienna: "I have never found a single ape skull which approaches at all the human one. Between men and apes there exists a line of sharp demarcation."
One of the most recent authoritative publications by a German anthropologist urges that "the apes are to be regarded as degenerate branches of the pre-human stock." This means, in a word, that man is not descended from the ape, but the ape from man. This is almost what may be calledreductio ad absurdum,and yet it is one of the latest pronouncements of scientific thought (Editorial in"New York Herald,"December 30, 1916). To the same effect are the words of Professor Wood-Jones, Professor of Anatomy in the University of London, England, who recently pointed out that so far from man having descended from anthropoid apes, it would be more accurate to say that these have been descended from man. This was claimed not only by reason of the best anatomical research, but to be "deducible from the whole trend of geological and anthropological discovery." On this account Professor Wood-Jones appealed for "an entire reconsideration of the post-Darwinian conceptions of man's comparatively recent emergence from the brute kingdom." (Quoted by W. H. Griffith Thomas in"What about Evolution?"p. 10.)
It is refreshing to turn aside from speculation to revelation, from conjectures and theories to proven facts, and no one has stated ascertained facts, touching the origin of man, more succinctly and more clearly than Prof. Dr. Friedrich Pfaff, professor of Natural Science in the University of Erlangen. He shows conclusively that the age of man is comparatively brief, extending only to a few thousand years; that man appeared suddenly; that the most ancient man known to us is not essentially different from the now living man, and that transitions from the ape to the man, or from the man to the ape, are nowhere found. The conclusion he reaches is that the Scriptural account of man, which is one and selfconsistent, is true; that God made man in his own image, fitted for fellowship with himself and favored with it—a state from which man has fallen, but to which restoration is possible through Him who is the brightness of his Father's glory, and "the express image of his Person."
We cannot refrain from reverting, in this connection, to the essential difference between the animal instincts and the intellect of man, and would quote, on this subject, the forceful statement of the case by Paul Haffner in his"Materialismus"(Mainz, 1865). We translate: "If the hypothesis of materialism were acceptable, if we were to believe that a merely animal form of consciousness might develop into spiritual and intellectual perceptions, we ought to be able to observe such capacities of change and growth also in the animal world of to-day. Yet this is not the case. For thousands of years we have observed the domestic animals, and still we can see no trace of a dawn of intellect. We expend much training upon them; we make them our confidants and treat them with inexhaustible tenderness, and still we never see them rise out of their narrow sphere and out of the bonds of their primitive desires and instincts. We note external imitation of human activities, such as the ludicrous virtuosity of the apes, and that superficial adaptation which we call 'animal training' and which is nothing but a development of sense stimuli; the animal does not know what it is doing, it is duped by man who knows how to employ its instincts and make them serviceable to his purposes. We cannot fail to note that never, not even under the most favorable conditions, do the animals step out of their original sphere; that neither by their own efforts nor through the aid of man are they able to rise into ideas of a spiritual or suprasensual nature; that they remain forever what they were in the beginning. Hence it cannot be denied that also men would have remained what they once were according to the notions of materialists. Only if from the beginning the light of spiritual life was enkindled in them, could they become, what they are to-day." ("Materialismus,"p. 59 f.)
It will be noted that when we hear the specialists in anatomy and biology, their expressions on the subject of man's ancestry are, as a rule, characterized by a strong dissent from the development theory, while the belief in a development of man from an ape-like ancestor, uttered with a note of cocksureness, is found mainly among amateurs in these sciences. Moreover, even among the believers in a rise of our race from brute origins, many, and the most distinguished among them, assert that the faculties of the human mind are indeed to be accounted for only on the basis of a special creative act of God. They cling, however, to the notion that the body of man is evolved from the lower animals—a view which has been very ably met by Prof. Orr of Glasgow, one of the foremost Biblical scholars of our time. He writes:
"It is well known that certain distinguished evolutionists, while handing over man's body to be accounted for by the ordinary processes of evolution, yet hold that man's mind cannot be wholly accounted for in a similar manner. The rational mind of man, they urge—I agree with the view, but am not called upon here to discuss it—has qualities and powers which separate it, not only in degree, but in kind, from the animal mind, and put an unbridgeable gulf, on the spiritual side, between man and the highest of the creatures below him. In other words, there is, in man's case, a rise on the spiritual side—the constitution of a new order or kingdom of existence—which requires for its explanation a distinct supernatural cause. Now the weakness of this theory, I have always felt, lies in its assumption that, while man's mind needs a supernatural cause to account for it, his body may be left to the ordinary processes of development. The difficulty of such a view is obvious. I have stated the point in this way. 'It is a corollary from the known laws of the connection of mind and body that every mind needs an organism fitted to it. If the mind of man is the product of a new cause, the brain, which is the instrument of that mind, must share in its peculiar origin. You cannot put a human mind into a Simian brain.' In other words, if there is a sudden rise on the spiritual side, there must be a rise on the physical—the organic—side to correspond." ("Virgin Birth of Christ,"p. 199.)
Can anything be more cogent, more conclusive?
The strongestdirectproof against the "ascent of man," however, has so far only been touched upon. I refer to the evidences derived from the history of Religion. To this I now invite the reader's close attention.
If man was developed from a lower order of creatures, or from any member of the animal kingdom, religion must have been a late development. That this "tailless, catarrhine, anthropoid ape" should have had anything resembling a religion, is, of course, not to be thought of. To imagine that he had a knowledge of the one, true God, his nature and his attributes, would be preposterous. How then explain the origin and rise of religion? The evolutionists do not agree on this subject. Herbert Spencer maintains thatAnimismwas the most primitive form of faith. Man reverenced spirits, the ghosts of the departed, then raised them to the eminence of divinities and finally developed the idea ofoneabsolute being, God. Others suggest, that primitive man first adored the terrible powers and awful phenomena of nature, was thus led to Polytheism (a religion of many Gods) and finally evolved Monotheism (a belief in one God). But all agree in this, that Religion in its earliest form was of a very crude and elementary character, and only in the course of many thousands of years, attained to the conception of one Supreme Being. There was at first a faith in gods,—Polytheism, and much later a faith in God—Monotheism.
Now, let is [tr. note: sic] be observed that this is the onlypossibleview from the standpoint of Evolution. Remember that this doctrine is not only conceived as bearing on the development of the animal kingdom. The principle is assumed to operate in the development of the earth, of man, of society, of government, of manufactures, of language, of literature, science, art, and religion. According to the theory, there must have been progress from a crude form of spirit-worship to a worship of gods, and thence to a worship of one God. But what are the facts? Has religion so developed? It has not.
Not only has history failed to show a single form of belief which has advanced in the manner demonstrated, but every religion, no matter how pure and exalted, has gone through a process of degeneration, of devolution.
The founders of the comparative study (or Science) of Religion, and the greatest authorities in its various departments, are practically unanimous in their opinion, that all pagan systems of mythology and religion contain remnants of a more exalted form of belief, of a higher, clearer knowledge of the Divinity, which gradually became dimmed and corrupted.
From Max Mueller's Lecture on theVedas(the ancient hymns of India) we quote the following: As a result "to which a comparative study of religion is sure to lead, we shall learn that religions in their most ancient form, or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times."
Le Page Renouf expresses his entire agreement with the "matured judgment" of Emmanuel Rouge: "The first characteristic of the Egyptian religion is the Unity of God most energetically expressed: God, One, Sole and Only—no others with Him…. the Only Being …. The belief in the Unity of the Supreme God and in His attributes as Creator and Lawgiver of man, whom He has endowed with an immortal soul, ….these are the primitive notions,enchased in the midst of mythological superfetations accumulated in the centuries." Franz Lenormant reached the same conclusion. Elsewhere, Renouf says: "It is incontestably true, that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religions are not the comparatively late result of a process of development. The sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient; and the last stage of the Egyptian religion …. was by far the grossest and most corrupt." ("Religion of Ancient Egypt,"p. 95.) This opinion is supported by the testimony of the Egyptian inscriptions. In the very oldest inscriptions reference is had to a Supreme God and Lord of all, to whom no shrines were raised, whose abode was unknown, who was not graven in stone, while the Egptian [tr. note: sic] of a later day adored the crocodile, the ichneumon, serpents, bulls, cats, and ibises.
The history of Hindu belief presents testimony of a still more startling nature. In the Vedas we find statements and prayers which are clear proof of an early Monotheism. Thus the IX book of the Rig Veda contains the following prayer. "Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? The one-born Lord of all that is; he established the heaven and sky; he is the one king of the breathing and awakening world; he through whom the heaven was established; he who measured out the light in the air—he who alone is God above all gods." Here the belief in one Supreme Being is clearly set forth. And yet this faith in one God in the course of time degenerated into a worship of 33,000 divinities—until Gautama the Buddha evolved a system that denied the very existence of God.
Turning to Greece we have the testimony of Prof. Max Mueller to this effect: "When we ascend to the distant heights of Greek history the idea of God, as the Supreme Being, stands before us as a simple fact." ("Essays,"II, p. 146.) Carl Boettcher, in his great work on the Treeworship of the Greeks, maintains: "As far as the legends of the Greeks can be traced into prehistoric ages, the entire nation worshipped a single God, nameless, without statues, without a temple, invisible and omnipresent." This he regards as a tradition of "irrefutable inner truthfulness…. The beginning of Polytheism therefore represents thesecondphase of Greek religion, which was preceded by a Monotheism." Every student of Greek literature knows that this original belief at an early age gave place to a worship of the gods on Olympus, a worship which in turn gave way to openly avowed atheism. The Greeks were aware of this decay. Plato, in his Phaidros (274 B) quotes Socrates as saying: "I know of an old saying, that our ancestors knew what constituted the true worship of God; if we could but discover what it was, would we then have need ofhumantheories and opinions on the matter?" Certainly a startling statement from the lips of a pagan. Undoubtedly Welcker was right when he asserted, as the ultimate result of his researches: "This (Greek) polytheism has settled before the eyes of men like a high and continuous mountain range, beyond which it is the privilege only of general historical study to recognize, as from a higher point of view, the natural primitive monotheism." Concerning the monotheistic ideas of later Greek thought, the same author says that they are to be regarded not as a result of an ascending line of evolution ("aufsteigende Linie der Entwickelung"), but as "areturnof the profound wisdom of old age to the feeling of primitive simplicity."
Of the Phoenicians the greatest student of their history and religion, F. K. Movers, says: "Nature worship gradually obscured the purer God-idea of a more ancient stage of belief, but has never entirely obliterated it." He refers to an evident "adulteration of a purer and more ancient God-idea."
Regarding the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia, M. Haug, the famous Zend scholar, asserts that "Monotheism was the leading idea of Zoroaster's theology;" he called God Ahura-mazda, i. e., "the Living Creator." Zoroaster did not teach a theological Dualism. He arrived "at the idea of the unity and indivisibility of the Supreme Being," and only as "in course of time this doctrine was changed andcorrupted… the dualism of God and the devil arose." "Monotheism wassupersededby Dualism."
Both Dr. F. Hommel and Friedrich Delitzsch agree on the question of an early Arabian and Sumerian monotheism. Dr. Hommel demonstrates from the personal surnames contained in the inscriptions the existence of a "very exalted monotheism" in the most ancient times of the Arabian nation, about 2500 B. C., and among the Semitic tribes of northern Babylonia. This "monotheistic religion" degenerated under the influence of Babylonian polytheism. The same opinion was held years ago by Julius Oppert, the Assyriologist, who was led to a belief in "a universal primitive monotheism as the basis of all religions."
Expressions similar to the above might be adduced from Rawlinson, Legge ("Religions of China"), Doellinger, Victor v. Strauss-Torney (the Egyptologist), Jacob Grimm, and others. In short, the majority of independent and unprejudiced students of heathen beliefs, from the days of A. W. v. Schlegel to our own, have reached the conclusion, that all religions in their later stages exhibit a much lower conception of the Divinity than in their earlier form. It is only the hopelessly prejudiced who can say, as does John Fiske, that "to regard classic paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to sin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy." Sinning against the consonant testimony of universal history is a venial offense, it would seem, when the integrity of this "sound inductive philosophy"—that is, of the Spencerian theory—is at stake. It needs but a glance at the well-known facts of religious history to show the working of thisLaw of Decayas influencing the development of every system of ethnic belief which has a recorded history or a literature.
The workings of this law can be traced even in the case of the savage tribes of our own day. Of the African negroes, P. Bandin says that "their traditions and religious doctrines … show clearly that they are a people in decadence…. They have an obscure and confused idea of the only God, …. who no longer receives worship." ("Fetichism,"p. 7-10.) Winwood Reade testifies: "The negroes possess the remnants of a noble and sublime religion, though they have forgotten its precepts and debased its ceremonies." They still retain a recollection "of God, the Supreme, the Creator." Concerning the Zulus, Bastian records that they informed him that "their ancestors possessed the knowledge of …. thatsource of beingwhich is above, which gives life to men." ("Vorgeschichtliche Schoepfungslieder.") A missionary of the Lutheran General Synod, Rev. J. C. Pedersen, wrote in"Lutheran Observer,"August, 1910, concerning the African natives that they still have a considerable display of religion, but "ask him, who is the God in whom you trust? what do you mean by trusting? how can he help you? and he will answer, 'I don't know, but the old people used to say so, and taught us to say so.'" John Hanning Speke, in his"Journal of the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"records reminiscences among the degraded savages among whom he dwelt, of a supreme God who dwells in heaven, but who no longer received worship. Mungo Park, in the diary of his"Travels in the Interior of Africa,"says that the Mandingoes, a degenerate race of fetish worshippers, still possessed the knowledge of one God, but do not offer up prayers and supplications to him.
In the record of his famous circumnavigation of the globe, Captain Cook says that the cannibals of New Zealand still acknowledged a superior being, although their religion was a crude system of spiritualistic practices.
Concerning the Koreans Mrs. L. H. Underwood, medical missionary, says that a thousand unworthy deities now crowd the temples, although the great universal Ruler is still worshipped at times, and the "ancient purity of faith and worship has become sadly darkened."
The foremost student of modern missions, Johann Warneck, in"The Living Christ and Dying Heathenism"(F. H. Revell Co.,) comes to the conclusion that the Christian religion and its monotheism are not only not a development from lower origins, but that the heathen religions, historically considered, are a degeneracy from a higher knowledge of God. In other words, the application of the doctrine of evolution to the field of comparative religion is a mistake. "Any form of Animism known to me has no lines leading to perfection, but only incontestable marks of degeneration," says the author. "In heathenism the gold of the divine thought becomes dross."
Says he, "I have been counselled to recognize that the idea of evolution at present ruling the scientific world must also rule in the investigation of religion. I am not unacquainted with the literature of the subject, I have described animistic heathenism as concretely as I could; I confined myself strictly to that. I began with the facts of experience; then I drew inferences from them. If these do not agree with the dominant hypothesis of evolution, that is due to the brutal facts, and not to the prepossessions of the observer.
"I do not deny that something can be said for the idea of evolution in the religions of mankind, but the study of Animism, with which I have long been familiar as an eyewitness, did not lead me to that idea. Rather the conviction which I arrived at is, that animistic heathenism is not a transition stage to a higher religion. There are no facts to prove that animistic heathenism somewhere and somehow evolved upwards towards a purer knowledge of God. I have worked as a missionary for many years in contact with thousands of the adherents of animistic heathenism and I have been convinced that the force of that heathenism is hostile to God."
In the same work Dr. Warneck says that among the Battaks of Sumatra there are "remains of a pure idea of God." but there is also a host of spirits, born of fear, which thrust themselves between God and man. "The idea of God which is found in the religions of the Indian Archipelago, and probably also of Africa, cannot have been distilled from the motley jumble of gods and of nature, for it exists in direct opposition to the latter. The idea of God is preserved, but His worship is lost." In reviewing this book the late Dr. Schmauk said in 1910: "A dispassionate study of heathen religions confirms the view of Paul that heathenism is a fall from a better knowledge of God. The idols come between God and man."
W. St. Clair Tisdale, concludes an exhaustive study of"Christianity and Other Faiths"with the statement: "It follows that Monotheism historically preceded Polytheism, and that the latter is a corruption of the former. It is impossible to explain the facts away. Taken together they show that, as the Bible asserts, man at the very beginning of history knew the One True God. This implies a Revelation of some sort and traces of that Revelation are still found in many ancient faiths."
We conclude that the history of religion does not only fail to support the evolutionistic postulate of a slow upward development of religions from crude original beliefs, but quite the reverse. It is true that the popular handbooks of comparative religion quite generally teach a development of religious belief through animism, fetishism, and polytheism to monotheism. But the consonant testimony of specialists in the field of historical study and of those who have had first-hand acquaintance with the aborigines of heathen lands, is a strong dissent from this position. Here again we find confident assertion of an evolutionistic process mainly among those who lack the qualifications of original research. Even as it is not the specialist in biology that still maintains the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, but the non-professional and the amateur, even so the specialist acquainted with the original sources, and the explorer, possessing first hand knowledge, asserts a decline, through history, from purer to less spiritual faiths, while the bias of the evolutionist, who has no first hand knowledge of the sources constrains him to begin his scheme of religion with animism and fetish-worship. The theory which holds him in thrall demands such a construction. But the theory is contradicted by the facts, which point unmistakably to a degeneration of the race, to a Fall of Man.
John Fiske, who, in the seventies of the last century, popularized Darwinism in the United States, asserts that the scope of evolution is much wider than the organic field. "There is no subject great or small" he wrote in"A Century of Science,""that has not come to be affected by this doctrine." A development has been recognized in plants, mountains, oysters, subjunctive moods, and the confederacies of savage tribes (p. 35). Fiske is one of those defenders of the evolutionistic philosophy who irritate by reason of their cocksureness. Hear him, in"Darwinism and Other Essays:" "One could count on one's fingers the number of eminent naturalists who still decline to adopt it"—the Darwinian hypothesis. That was in 1876. To-day we know that one cannot on one finger the eminent naturalists of the present century who still accept it—Haeckel. It is possible that Fiske's extension of the development theory, along lines laid down by Herbert Spencer, to all human history, even to "tribal confederacies," is likewise subject to a revision. Indeed, it would seem that even without special or detailed knowledge, the failure of human history to conform with this universal law would be apparent. Consider once more the basic concepts of Evolution. They are two in number, 1. Everything that is, has been evolved, having been involved (potentially, as a possibility) in that which preceded it. Potentially, the feather of the blue-bird was in the speck of original protoplasm, potentially the flights of Dante's and Goethe's genius were in the primordial cell. All that has occurred in history hasdevelopedout of antecedents. Furthermore: 2. All that exists has developedaccording to natural laws. Scientists have given up the law which Darwin called "Natural Selection," and Spencer himself cashiered the law which he had called "Survival of the Fittest." But evolutionists continue to assert that somehow, by the action of certain laws, that which exists has naturally—there is no need of divine Providence, overruling the affairs of men,—has naturally been developed out of its antecedents. And so history is read by the evolutionist. He sees in all the institutions of civilization, in every department of culture, in the rise and fall of nations, the progress and decay of literatures, a result of natural laws, working out the evolution of human society as it exists to-day.
What, then, is the verdict of history? Does it conform to this scheme? Is there a demonstrable development, by inherent forces, of human society, from lower to higher ranges of culture? Civilization [tr note: sic] have risen, civilizations have perished: is there in this traceable the working of natural law?
Dr. Emil Reich, in the"Contemporary Review,"1889. p. 45 ff. pointed out the failure of the development theory as applied to human culture. Hebrew religion as well as the Hebrew state were not derived from Babylonian, Egyptian, Arabic or Hittite culture; Greek art is not a derivative product of Egyptian, Assyrian, or Phoenician art; Greek religion and mythology are not derived from other pagan systems; Roman law has not been developed out of Greek, Aryan, or Egyptian law; the English constitutional form of government has no antecedents in German or Norman-French history; German music is not a result of development out of Dutch, French, or Italian music. Dr. Reich sums up the matter: "Institutions do not 'evolve,' nor are they 'derived,' they step into existence by fulguration"—sudden flashes—, "by a process that is technically identical with the theological idea of creation. The whole concept of evolution does not at all apply to history."
In this argument there is considerable force. For, indeed, what natural law can account for the rise of human institutions, so infinitely diversified in their structure? Every age is divided into epochs, and at the center of each epoch there is some personage of force and genius. But how did Cromwell, Lincoln, Bismarck arise? What force produced them? Whence did they evolve? Yet without these three names, three great periods in the world's history would be meaningless.
By what combination of forces shall we say that the various geniuses have developed which, in a manner almost spectacular, rise before us as we study the literatures of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare were spent under circumstances which might have produced in him one dull and unaspiring British country lout, like, as one egg to another, to a hundred thousand others who lived in his age. What made this one country boy the most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? Study the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, or Coleridge, and then tell me why the first two should become the greatest lyric poets of their time, and the third, one of England's deepest thinkers? Why did they not develop, one into a satisfied Scottish farmer, the other into a peddler of notions, and the third into a fat and comfortable English banker?
We quote from an article which appeared in"Theological Quarterly"some twenty years ago:
"What process of evolution resulted in the lives and deeds of such men as Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, [tr. note: sic] Constantine the Great, Luther, Napoleon I, and Bismarck? All these great makers of history were what they were far less in consequence and by the continuation of the course of previous events or developments, than largely in spite of the past and in direct opposition to forces which had worked together in shaping the condition of things with which they had to deal. The Macedonian empire would never have sprung into being but for an Alexander, in whose mind the chief facts for its realization were united. The Rome which Julius Ceasar [tr. note: sic] left behind him was not that which he had found, only carried forward to a new stage of development, but the embodiment of ideas conceived in his mind, a quantity which under God the greatest Roman hadmadeout of a quantity which he had found. The distinctive features of the Constantinian empire as compared with that of Diocletian, or of the tetrarchy of which he was the head, were not evolved from earlier political principles, but stood out in bold contrast and even in direct opposition to the very fundamentals of antique statesmanship, and so new in politics that even Constantine permitted them to slip away from his grasp long before the sunset of his life had come. Luther was not a more fully developed Hus or Savonarola, and the Reformation was not the more advanced stage or completion of a movement inaugurated by the Humanists, but a work of God the actuating spirit of which was as diametrically contrary to the rationalistic spirit which animated Erasmus and, in a measure, Zwingli and his abettors, as it was to anti-christian Rome,—which was in 1517 essentially what it had been in 1302, when Boniface VIII issued his bullUnam sanctumas a definition of the rights and powers of Popery. Napoleon did not carry onward but broke away from the tumult of French politics when he laid the greater part of western Europe at his feet, and the battle of Austerlitz and the rule of the Hundred Days were no more evolved from the French Revolution as by intrinsic necessity than the burning of Moscow and the Russian snows which turned to naught the campaign of 1812." (A. L. Graebner.)
According to the theory we would expect that in the various departments ofart,perfection would be a late blossom, burgeoning forth only after ages of feeble experiment and attempt. But what are the facts? As we study the history of any art,—be it literature or any department of literature; be it architecture, sculpture, the domestic arts, or even the art of war,—we find the highest culmination either at points which specifically exclude the idea of a development or, indeed, perfection shines forth in the very beginning, all subsequent art being decay and apostasy from that primal perfection.
In epic poetry, the greatest work does not stand at the end of a long period of development, but the first and oldest is the greatest. Nothing has ever been produced to equal the Iliad and Odyssey, written 900 B. C. We have epics that will always hold a prominent place in literature, Virgil's Aeneid, Milton's Paradise Lost, but neither these nor the many flights attempted into epic poetry before or since will be seriously considered as rivalling the rhapsodies of Homer.
The first novel ever written, Cervantes' Don Quijote, [tr. note: sic] remains one of the greatest.
The oldest dramatists, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, have never been surpassed.
And so in every department of art, the earliest stage of development seems to be the very most perfect. Pyramid building was a pastime of the earliest Pharaos; [tr. note: sic] the later did not attempt to rival these structures with any of their own. No finer jewelry can be produced to-day than the gold ornaments found in the oldest tombs of Egypt. The finest examples of East Indian architecture are the oldest. Gothic art was not a slow development but came to utter perfection in its earliest examples,—as in the Cathedral of Amiens.
Evolution represents the history of our race as a constant climb, from brute or near-brute beginnings, to ever higher forms of civilization, until the heights which our race has reached in the present century were attained. In reality, the reverse process, a constant and invariable process of degeneration characterizes the history of nations and peoples. Where Christianity entered as a factor, as in the history of Western Europe and in the results of Christian missions in heathen lands, we can indeed observe a rise out of barbaric or savage conditions to refinement and culture. But only where the Christian gospel is preached, was the natural process of decay, of degeneration, interfered with. Elsewhere, that is to say, where purely natural forces were given free play, mankind has declined physically, mentally, spiritually. All civilizations illustrate this law of decay. Wilhelm F. Griewe, in his"Primitives Suedamerika"(Cincinnati, 1893), summarizes his observations on the South American continent as follows: "The Malaysian aborigines of South America, in a period of 3,000 years, failed to advance in development. The Japanese discoverers of Peru testify that they found the natives in a condition of extreme decay; within a period of 1,500 years they had made no progress but had retrogressed. When the Spaniards came, they described the natives of Chile and Argentina in such a manner that it is quite evident how little these tribes had progressed in 3,000 years. The Araucanians of Chile have, even in historic times, greatly degenerated; they have lost the very meaning of many words; retaining the shell, they have lost the kernel. In Peru, the age of heroic deeds and wonderful architecture was followed by decay, —religious, moral, intellectual decay. The population was all but destroyed by vices and cruelty. Their neighbors, the Chibchas, likewise described an arc which ended in devil-worship. Similarly, the history of the Botokudes is degeneration, vice, atrocities. The negro tribes in the north and east of South America record no progress, but, on the other hand, sank into abominations, slavery, cannibalism. Where, then, is there support for the evolutionary theory, with its assumption of an upward trend from a brute condition to civilized and cultured life? Everywhere in primitive South America we see before our very eyes the process of decline and decay. Also the religious idea became obscured. Some of these tribes had an original monotheism. They recognized a supreme creator of all things and gave him various names. But the spiritual character of their knowledge of God was gradually obscured, God was dragged into the sphere of sense and lower divinities were associated with Him,—a downward development which absolutely contradicts the Darwinian hypothesis. From an original, pure, spiritual worship to gross idolatry,—that is the religious decay which in the world outside the Bible meets us everywhere, also among the original races of South America."
Thus in the history of human society, we observe, unless the divine power of the gospel supplies the sole preserving and regenerating element, a universal law of decay in human affairs. Innumerable times, and at the most crucial moments of human history, not the fittest but the unfittest survived. Dr. A. L. Graebner said: "The principle of the 'survival of the fittest' is so far from accounting for the phenomena of history, that the principle itself is flatly contradicted and utterly exploded by a sober investigation of historical facts. That there are in nature numerous instances of a survival of the _un_fittest, is not only conceded by our evolutionists, but has been deliberately forged into an argument against teleology (divine purpose) and divine providence! And, we ask, was it by the survival of the fittest that Julius Ceasar, [tr. note: sic] one of the grandest rulers of all ages, should succumb under the daggers of Brutus and Cassius: that Paul and Seneca should die by authority of their inferior, Nero; that Popery, rotten to the core and represented by men who would have brought on the ignominous [tr. note: sic] collapse or extinction of every other dynasty in the days of the Roman pornocracy, should survive, while the illustrious house of Henry I. sank away to ruin in the third and fourth generation; that John Hus should die at the stake and Jean Charlier de Gerson in timid monastic retirement, while Balthasar Cossa, by far their inferior in talents and learning, and every inch an infamous scoundrel, having for a time disgraced even the Roman see as John XXIII, ended his days as a Cardinal and Bishop of Tusculum and Dean of the Sacred College; that Girolamo Savonarola, one of the most remarkable and pure-minded leaders of his day and of all times, should be fought down and crushed in a struggle with men not one of whom was worthy of unloosing his shoe's latchet, among them Alexander VI, one of the most scandalous wretches of all history? Survival of the fittest!"
The article from which we have quoted points out the relevancy, to the question at issue, of the principle of degeneration and gradual decay in historical organisms or institutions. "Our scientists who bother themselves and others about the descent of man have favored with a keen interest the Bushmen of Australia and other types of savage humanity, with receding skulls, flat noses, thin legs, little or no clothing, and not much of morals or religion. The lower in the scale and the farther remote from the civilized Caucasian a newly discovered or investigated tribe or specimen, living or dead, would appear to be, the greater was the value set on the discovery, because the nearer science was supposed to have come to the missing link, the transition from brute to man. Of course, the missing link will never be discovered, because it never existed. There is no transition from brute to man, and never was. But if there were a species of beings which might be classed either with man or with brutes, a transitional species, even that would not necessarily represent a transition in the direction from brute to man. We do not say that a transition from man to brute is possible; for it is not; but we do say that the evolutionist who sees in Bushmen and other savages specimens of humanity representing the earlier stages of development, through which the more highly developed species had long since passed on the way from the primitive state of man to their present state, makes a great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark Twain and his friend, who, having slept all day, rushed from the hotel in scanty clothing, climbed the observatory and to the amusement of the guests loudly admired what they took to be the famous Rigi sunrise, while in fact they were vociferating and gesticulating at the setting sun. But while our tourists had soon found out their mistake, our evolutionists have not; which does not make it any less a mistake. St. Paul has drawn a vivid picture of the degenerating influence of sin upon the nations under the righteous wrath of God,* [[* Rom. 1, 18-32.]] and the course which the Greek nation and the Roman would have run from their pristine vigor exhibited in the days of Thermopylae and Cannae down to the state ofmarasmus senilispictured by Juvenal, a state of rottenness which even the transfusion of German blood into the putrid veins of that degenerate and decaying race could not remedy, is a fearful corroboration of the apostle's testimony."
We cannot leave this subject without briefly adverting to a great historic fact, indeed, the most massive and significant fact in all history, which, in its remoter bearings, not only strikes at the very heart of the evolutionistic philosophy, but at the same time wounds it mortally in all its parts. I refer to the Resurrection of our Lord. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central fact of our Christian belief and it is, rightly understood, the all-sufficient answer to the theory of evolution. Christ's resurrection is an historical fact fully as much as the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis in 480 B. C., the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, and the peace of Versailles of 1919 are historical facts, proven by the word and record of contemporary witnesses. But if Christ was raised then we have proof for the following tenets, all contradicting evolutionary speculation at so many vital points: 1) The existence of a personal God who is concerned with human affairs; 2) The reality of miraculous interference with natural forces; 3) The truth of atonement and the redemption, and 4) The inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures (hence also of the creation account in Genesis). The details of the argument are beyond the scope of this paper, but a little patient study will bring to light the fact that each of these four basic ideas is dove-tailed, mortised and anchored so firmly in the fact of Christ's resurrection, that you can get rid of them all only by denying that fact. Hence it is, aside from any investigation of proofs of evolutionism, clear to the Christian student that there must be some fault either in reason or in observation that vitiates the whole theory. The resurrection of Christ is a fact, a fact to which the entire history of Christianity testifies, the most tremendous fact in the history of the world. And it stands fore-square against a theory which says that there is no personal God, that there is no sin, no redemption; that there are no miracles, no revelation, no inspiration; that there is no absolute religion nor an absolute standard of right and wrong.
Compare all that has been said by scientists themselves about the evolutionary theory, and what remains? This, only, that some how, we do not know when, life arose, and some how, we do not know by what laws, one form evolved from another, until we and the world about us have become what we are now. Now, the fact that nolawshave so far been discovered by scientists to account for this presumed development of all things by inherent forces, is very significant and the conclusions which logically follow from it deserve our attention. Since Darwin's solution, Natural Selection, was discarded, twenty or thirty years ago, many other solutions have been propounded, but none has received the assent of even a respectable group of scientists, let alone by all. These solutions, —such as the theories of de Vries and Mendel, are frankly no more than guesses based on certain observation in plant life and insect life and their originators by no means assert that they have found a law by which the universe can be accounted for. But if there is no universal law, there is onlychance. Hence it is clear that what we are asked to believe is that ancient Greek speculation was after all not far from the truth, that through a fortuitous (accidental) concourse of atoms the world came into being, and that by chance combinations of elements the great variety of living things arose.
Such is the condition of evolutionistic thought to-day. That there is nodirectevidence for organic evolution is generally admitted. That geology cannot be quoted for it is also quite generally conceded, since the sudden rise of perfect (not half-developed) insects, of perfect fish, of perfect mammals, is clear even to the man who merely turns the leaves of Geikie's, Le Conte's, and Dana's text books, or visits Field's Museum. Yetsome-howthings must have gotten to be what they are by development from earlier forms,—this about sums up what is really contained in the concept of evolution as it appears in most recent scientific literature, so far as scientists at all touch upon the subject. However, they by no means urge the evolutionary principle as they used to do. Bacteriologists especially, so I am informed by a chemist of international repute, Dr. P. A. Kober, of New York, as a class are inclined to give up the theory as a "bad guess." Why, they find in fossil fish diseased portions which bear unmistakable traces of the action of bacteria which live to-day, in other words, which in "countless millions of years" have not progressed enough to show any change recognizable under the most powerful miscroscope! [tr. note: sic] Anthropologists shake their head when they are told by evolutionists that the animal which shows clearest "resemblance" in a structural way, to certain points in human anatomy, is a small fossil ape, about the size of a house cat, with a skull one inch in diameter! There remains no proof, direct or indirect, of anyprincipleworking the changes which are believed to have occurred. All things have evolved, if they have evolved at all,by chance.
Now, over against this doctrine of chance there stands the monumental fact that throughout nature, living and non-living, there runs a principle ofdesign. The minerals, the plants, the animals, all exhibit, as even the superficial observer knows or might know, a plan. There is design in the crystals in which elements exist when they pass from a liquid into a solid state; there is design in the leaf and flower of every plant; there is plan, design, in the structure and physiology of animals. We would add, there is an evident plan in the history of the Chosen Race, the Jews, as we possess it in the Old and New Testaments; there is a plan in the moral sphere, laws producing unvaried results; there is an ordered scheme even in the life of the individual. But let us limit our investigation to the domain of nature. Let us note how little necessity there is for assuming that by mere chance things have come to be what they are.
As a rule each chemical substance has an individual crystal by which it can be distinguished. It is possible to classify the thousands of different crystals, since all belong to one of six classes, according as their surfaces are grouped symmetrically around the axes of the crystal. The salt crystal has one form, the topaz another, quartz and beryl another, borax another, and these forms are absolutely unvaried wherever these substances are found in nature or in the chemist's retort. It is not here our intention to point out how impossible it is to assume that there has been an evoluton [tr. note: sic] of one of these forms out of another. The point is that there is not chance, but orderly arrangement, symmetrical shape, in a word, most evident design.
Turning to plant life, even the amateur student cannot fail to observe that the entire world of plants is built on a beautiful system which argues most powerfully not for accidental arrangement but for plan. The place of every leaf on every plant is fixed beforehand by unerring mathematical rule. As the stems grow on, leaf after leaf appears exactly in its predestined place, producing a perfect symmetry;—a symnetry [tr. note: sic] which manifests itself not in one single monotonous pattern for all plants, but in a definite number of forms exhibited by different species, and arithmetically expressed by the series of fractions, 1/2, 1/3, 2/5, 3/8, 5/13, 8/21, etc., according as the formative energy in its spiral course up the developing stem lays down at corresponding intervals 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, or 21 ranks of alternative leaves.
The position of each blossom is determined beforehand by that of the leaves; so that the shape of every flower-cluster in a boquet [tr. note: sic] is given by the same simple mathematical law which arranges the foliage. Every flower has a "Numerical Plan." Although not easy to make out in all cases, yet generally it is plain to see that each blossom is based upon a particular number, which runs through all or most of its parts. And a principal thing which a botanist notices when examining a flower is its numerical plan. It is upon this that the symmetry of the blossom depends. Thus the stonecrop and the flax are based upon the number five, which is exhibited in all their parts. Some flowers of this same stonecrop have their parts in fours, and then that number runs throughout; namely, there are four sepals, four petals, eight stamens (two sets), and four pistils.
Next let us touch upon the plan which connects the plant with the animal world. The wonderful adaptations of many flowers and insects to each other, as to the fertilization of the former, and as to the life of the individual insect and the propagation of its kind, are evidence of design. For example, there are certain species of plants that are dependent for their fertilization on certain species of moths which live in the flowers, and the moths, in turn, are dependent on the plants. They deposit their eggs in the ovaries of the flowers where the young are hatched and nourished. The moths in some cases carry the pollen and place it on the stigmas of the flowers, as if guided by intelligence. So marvellous are the provisions which are made to ensure the fertilization of plants that the dean of Amercan [tr. note: sic] botanists, Professor Asa Gray, exclaims: "If these structures and their operations do not argue intention, what stronger evidence of intention in nature can there possibly be? If they do, such evidences are countless, and almost every blossom brings distinct testimony to the existence and providence of a Designer and Ordainer, without whom, we may well believe, not merely a sparrow, not even a grain of pollen, may fall." (On this entire subject read Selina Gaye's"The Great World's Farm,"published by the MacMillan Co., New York.)
We can only lightly touch on the wonders of design in the structure and functions of animals. Here is a feather, any feather, say, the feather of an eagle. We quote the following on "One of Nature's Wonders—the Feather'' from an article in a popular magazine:
"To most people a feather is just a feather, either pretty or plain according to how the coloring strikes their individual fancy. Yet when a feather is examined critically, it becomes a wonder and yet more wonderful—it is amazing when its details are understood. Never was there a thing better planned and builded for the uses intended.
"Take, for instance, a plain feather—say the tail feather of an eagle. The long quill is made of feather-bone, that wonderfully light, yet strong material that forms the rigid part of all feathers, so tough that it is almost impossible to break it, yet so flexible it will bend into a circle and then spring back like a bit of whalebone! Nothing that man has ever been able to make can equal it.
"There is no blood, no nerves, no circulation and apparently no life in a full grown feather, yet it does not decompose; indeed, it is one of the hardest things in the world to destroy by any process of decomposition. It retains its resiliency and all its flexibility for years—all that is necessary is to keep it dry. It is finished all along the rib (or quill) with a hard, glossy enamel on the outside and this enamel keeps its polish as long as the feather lasts.
"From [tr. note: sic on punctuation] an engineering standpoint, or the standpoint of the mechanic or artisan, there is absolutely no suggestion of betterment to be made, for the feather is an exact, perfectly finished product. Its long central quill tapers from base to point with geometric precision, thereby giving perfect resistance to bending force, and this is one of the combination of secrets that enables the bird to fly as easily as man can walk. Also this long quill is hollow, thereby all extra weight is done away with and added strength gained because of the tube contraction; and to make it perfect from a mechanical standpoint, the under side of the quill is reinforced by a doublerolled thickening of the shell of the quill itself so that strains are equalized.
"This long quill is also curved slightly, to meet air resistance again and overcome it when the whole tail is spread, fan-like, to suddenly alter a direction or check speed in flight.
"The long, soft side masses are formed of a multitude of tiny feathers, each one perfectly equipped, perfectly made, mechanically and geometrically without fault. Each of these tiny side feathers has its own midrib that tapers from base to tip, and each of these midribs carries its own equipment of side 'hairs' so beautifully constructed that it locks automatically into the one on each side of it in such a way that it makes a solid yet flexible mass of the whole surface, against which the air flows as the bird flies.
"If these side feathers be split apart they will come back into place so exactly that the split cannot be detected. Nothing else in nature repairs itself with such precision. Many things, for instance the claw leg of the crawfish, will replace itself exactly when destroyed, but the feather alonerepairsits own breaks precisely and automatically.
"Taken as a whole, the feather is one of the most perfect products of nature because the material used is the one best thing throughout, the engineering principles involved are without fault, the mathematical plan is precise, the construction is perfect, the coloring and artistry are flawless, and there is not one single point about it that can be constructively criticized.
"This short article can only hint at the wonderful things one may find in a single feather, and it is something well worth not an hour, but weeks or months of the most painstaking and careful study, for it covers an amazing field."
The electric battery in certain fishes is so palpable a case of design that Charles Darwin admitted his inability to account for it by Natural Selection. The electric ray, or torpedo, for instance, has been provided with a battery which, while it closely resembles, yet in the beauty and compactness of its structure, it greatly exceeds the batteries by which man has now learned to make the laws of electricity subservient to his will. In this battery there are no less than 940 hexagonal columns, like those of a bee's comb, and each of these is subdivided by a series of horizontal plates, which appear to be analogous to the plates of the batteries used in automobiles. The whole is supplied with an enormous amount of nervous matter, four great branches of which are as large as the animal's spinal cord, and these spread out in a multitude of thread-like filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pass into all the cells. "A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of Faraday, and of many others which are still inscrutable to us, is exhibited in this structure." Well may Mr. Darwin say, "It is impossible to conceive by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced. We see the purpose—that a special apparatus should be prepared; but we have not the remotest notion of the means employed. Yet we can see so much as this, that here again, other laws, belonging altogether to another department of nature—laws of organic growth—are made subservient to a very definite and very peculiar purpose.' [tr. note: sic on punctuation]
"The new-born kangaroo," says Professor Owen, "is an inch in length, naked, blind, with very rudimental limbs and tail; in one which I examined the morning after the birth, I could discern no act of sucking; it hung, like a germ, from the end of the long nipple, and seemed unable to draw sustenance therefrom by its own efforts. The mother accordingly is provided with a peculiar adaptation of a muscle (cremaster) to the mammary gland, by which she can inject the milk from the nipple into the mouth of the pendulous embryo. Were the larynx of the creature like that of the parent, the milk might, probably would, enter the windpipe and cause suffocation: but the larynx is cone-shaped, with the opening at the apex, which projects, as in the whaletribe, into the back aperture of the nostrils, where it is closely embraced by the muscles of the 'soft palate.' The air-passage is thus completely separated from the fauces (mouth), and the injected milk passes in a divided stream, on either side the base of the larynx, into the oesophagus. These correlated modifications of maternal and foetal structures,designedwith especial reference to the peculiar conditions of both mother and off-spring, afford, as it seems to me, irrefragable evidence ofcreative forsight. The parts of this apparatus cannot have produced one another; one part is in the mother, another part in the young one; without their harmony they could not be effective; but nothing except design can operate to make them harmonious. They are intended to work together; and we cannot resist the conviction of this intention when the facts first come before us."
We cannot stop to pass in review the structural marvels of the human eye and ear, of the digestive organs, and circulatory system of animals, of adaptations of fishes to the watery element. But we must mention an outstanding feature of all animal life, the evident likeness of plan upon which theentire kingdomof sentient life is constructed. From amoeba and other infusorial animals of simplest structure, through coral and oyster, bird, reptile, to mammals, there is an evident gradation, many structures being represented in entire great groups of living beings, such as the air-breathing lung. Here is a grand plan of animal life, which permits us to classify all living things into a system. There are classes and subclasses, orders or families, suborders, tribes, sub-tribes, genera, species, and varieties, just as in the world of plants and even, according to their atomic weight, among the elements. We see in all this, Creative Design. The evolutionist believes that he can percive [tr. note: sic] stages of progress. Similarity of plan is interpreted as proof that there is a common origin. Are we to admit, in the face of all that has been said about the fixity of species (to mention only this), the reasonableness of such an assumption? Does orderliness and plan argue for development? The steam-engine is a machine of remarkable structure. It has had, in one sense of the term, a wonderful "evolution." It is based on certain principles, the foundation one of which is the expansibility of steam, and its ability, when confined in a cylinder, to give motion to a piston. The steam-engine was first used for pumping, then for turning machinery, then for propelling boats, and now its crowning department is seen in the locomotive. There is a plan, a likeness, a similarity, which runs through all steam-engines, whether they be found in the mine, in the mill, beneath the deck of the steamship, or on the railroad track. But the locomotive is not formed from the mine engine; it is made new, and is a distinct type. And yet, the same principles are seen in both. Even so it is with the genera of animals. The whale and the elephant both have backbones, jointed limbs, warm blood, and a hundred homologous organs. They are both mammals, both are sagacious, and are gifted with acute senses. But otherwise they are unlike as the monster locomotive that pulls the heavy train over the Sierras, and the compound engines of theVaterland. Similarity of structures argues powerfully for unity of plan, but by no means proves identity of origin.
The evidence of design in nature conflicts with the idea that all things in the organic domain have come to be what they are by chance. But it agrees perfectly with the Christian view of animal nature. What is that? It is that God created the different classes of existences in the strict sense; that is, that he created them separate classes and species, each with its own peculiarities and habits, while, at the same time, they rise one above the other in general and steady order, with certain general organs and functions, which run through nearly all except the lowest classes, each higher class having also some distinct and additional peculiarities not found in those below it. In other words, to the Christian the steadily ascending scale in the work of creation is only the unfolding or development of the great plan of creation that was in the mind of God. He believes that God did not create one or more simple cells or germs, and cause all higher forms to be evolved from them, interfering only once or twice (when the backbone appeared, the nourishing breast, the mind of man, etc.), but that he, in the execution of his plan, created successively as distinct orders and species those things and beings which now exist as distinct orders and species, and many of which have become extinct. This is the Story of Creation as given in Genesis: Each plant, each animal, created in its own place in the scale of living thing, but each created as a species,—"after their kind," the phrase repeated after each creative act of the third, fifth, and sixth day, except with reference to man, who was not created as a "species" but after the image of God.
But the evidences of design are yet of a higher nature than we have so far considered. There is not only Creative Intelligence at work in the pollen of flowers, the breathing of sponges, and the eagle's orb of vision; Mind dominatesthe universe as a whole. Everywhere there is law and periodic, rhythmical motion. The Lord, speaking to Job, refers to the "measures" of the earth, the "lines" which He has stretched upon it. He asks, concerning the heavenly bodies: "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?" And Job answers: "I know that Thou canst do everything."
And so there is a Reign of Law in the dew on the grass (Job 38, 28), and in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. The Universe is ruled by Mind.
Professor Koelliker (Leipsic) says in his work"Ueber die Darwinsche Schoepfungstheorie"(1904): "The development theory of Darwin is not needed to enable us to understand the regular harmonious progress of the complete series of organic forms from the simpler to the more perfect. The existence of general laws of nature explains this harmony, even if we assume that all beings have arisen separately and independent of one another. Darwin forgets that inorganic nature, in which there can be no thought of a genetic connection of forms," that one form of crystal, for instance, arose out of another, "exhibits the same regular plan, as the organic world (of plants and animals), and that, to cite only one example, there is as much a natural system of minerals as of plants and animals." We can go a step farther and say that there is system and orderly design even in the position and movements of the stars,—which certainly have not been evolved one from the other.
More marvellous still, we are permitted to believe that there is an identity of plan connecting the arrangement of atoms in a molecule and the position of the stars and planets. Dr. Charles Young, Professor of Astronomy in Princeton College, says in his larger text-book upon his special theme that "our planetary system (the sun and planets) is not a mere accidental aggregation of bodies," that "there are a multitude of relations actually observed which are wholly independent of gravitation." In other words, in the position and motions of the planets there are evidences of design which cannot be accounted for by natural law. We shall point out an instance of such arrangement,—the progressive distance of the planets from the sun, as first discovered by Titius of Wittenberg, and later (in 1772) brought to the attention of the scientific world, by Johann Bode, the celebrated German astronomer. It is exhibited by writing a line of nine 4's and then placing regularly increasing numbers under the several 4's, beginning with the second. Thus 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, and 384, each increased by 4, will give the resultant series, 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 52, 100, 196, 388. These numbers divided by 10 are approximately the true distance of the planets from the sun in terms of the radius of the earth's orbit, with the exception of Neptune. Hence there is, in the arrangmeent of the planets, as orderly a system as we have noted with reference to the leaves on a plant. Any rational man on earth, finding an orderly system of materials arranged in such relation by such means, would instantly conclude that it must be due to intelligence and not to mere chance.
Now, it is a remarkable fact that in the so-called Periodic Law of the elements constituting matter the same relation is observed. Of the eighty elements, no two now known have exactly the same capacity to resist heat, and no two atoms of the same elements have the same weight as compared with an atom of hydrogen. But these differences in resistance to heat and in weight, are not haphazard, but are so regularly progressive that they can be arranged in a series of regularly progressive increasing intervals. Most marvellous of all, however, when these differences in specific gravity are examined, we find that they bear a close resemblance to the arrangement of the planets in progressive distances from the sun. "There appears to be one law for atoms and for worlds."
Again we ask, when there is such orderly arrangement and plan throughout nature, should the orderly plan of plant and animal life be regarded as a proof of evolution? Certainly, atoms have not evolved from atoms, nor planets from planets.
And again, since omnipotence alone can account for the "sweet influences of the Pleiades," the "bringing forth of Mazzaroth"—the constellations of the heavens in their nightly revolutions,—why resist the conviction that omnipotence, voiced forth in the beginning, accounts for the life on earth that now exists?
One more consideration, and we have done. Life on earth exists only through a combination of very complex physical conditions. These conditions are such as cannot, in their combination, be referred to chance, Fairhurst says, in his"Organic Evolution Considered:""The simple substances which constitute the earth are of such kinds and are found in such relative quantities as not only to render life possible, but also to contribute to the well-being of man as an intelligent and moral agent. I look upon the concurrence of all these things, according to any theory ofchance,as being entirely impossible. The conditions that must be fulfilled before living beings are possible are so complex thatnothing short of the wisdom of a Supreme Intelligence could have produced them."(cf. Rom. 1, 20.)