Part 2

(3) “The frequent occurrence both in plants or animals of useless parts which still remain as indications of organs that once were useful, and have long become useless.” {7e}

But is this scientific evidence? As to the 1st, the Bishop only claims for it that it “seems to point.” As to the 2nd, it quietly assumes the whole point at issue, for no one denies that there are variations “within each class or group,” and the fact that such variations exist within a certain class or group is no proof that they can extend beyond it. And as for the 3rd who knows that those that are called “useless parts” are really useless, though their use may not be known? And if they are useless now, what evidence is there that they were once useful, or were ever used? There is not the slightest scientific evidence in any one of these three points for the theory which they are adduced to support. There is not a single fact to prove the theory, and all that can be said by the most ardent advocate is that the conjecture seems to be probable. But how different is the evidence on the other side of the controversy! There we find certain clearly-defined and indisputable facts which cannot be doubted, and which cannot be reconciled with this new theory.

(1) Biological Evolution.

There cannot be a doubt that there are certain great classes of plants and animals found in the world, which have certain distinct characteristics, and which, as a matter of fact, do not merge into each other. There seems to be considerable variation in the names given to them, and they appear to be distinguished by the name sometimes of “species,” sometimes of “genus,” sometimes of “class or group,” and sometimes of “kind.” In the sentence quoted from Darwin on p. 6, he speaks of species, genera, and families; and describes them as being all descended each within its own class or group. This confusion of terms is difficult to reconcile with the boasted claim to scientific accuracy. That I may not be entangled by any questionable name I will distinguish these groups as A, B, C, D, etc., and our question is whether they have been evolved from each other or through each other, from a common stock; or whether they are separate creations. For the answer to this question let three facts be carefully considered.

(i.) There is the remarkable and clearly-established law of the sterility of all hybrids between any two of these great divisions. Both A and B may contain a great number of varieties, and all the varieties of A can breed freely with each other. In such case there is no failure of fertility in the progeny. The same is true of B and all the varieties that spring from it. If these varieties be expressed by the figures 1, 2, 3, etc., A1 may breed with A2, A3, or any other number, and so may introduce a fresh variety in the race A. But if A, or any variation of A, should breed with B, or any variation of B, there may be in the first instance a progeny; but there is a fixed and invariable law of nature that there should be no perpetuation of that progeny, for every individual so born is barren. Mules e.g., can never give birth to mules, and the mule race has no power of self-propagation. Now see how this bears on the subject of Evolution. If B were evolved out of A, there would, of course, be countless intermediate variations, and these variations would all have the power of perpetuating their kind. A would produce A1, A1 would produce A2, and so on, till A98 would produce A99, and, finally, to complete the series, A99 would produce A100, or B. But at this point, if the Evolution theory is to be reconciled with facts, a new and most strange law must be suddenly evolved; and the continuity of law must be broken. A98 may breed with A99, and their offspring may perpetuate their race; but if A99 should breed with A100, which is B, it is true there may be offspring, but that offspring will bare no power of self-perpetuation. How can evolutionism explain such a fracture in the continuity of law? And is not the scientific fact dead against the Evolution theory?

(ii.) As a matter of fact we do not find that continuous chain of intermediate links which the theory requires. The theory is, that as there are to be no sudden jumps in nature, the various numbers are evolved from each other in a vast series of almost imperceptible improvement; and it follows of necessity that, if the theory were true, instead of finding distinct classes, we should find various lines of progress stealing into each other in steps so minute that it would be very difficult to detect their differences. If, e.g., man has been evolved from monkey there ought not to be a yawning chasm, as there now is, between the two, but there ought to be a vast series of connecting links bridging the chasm between monkeyism and manhood; and there ought to be a race of monkeys still existing so near to man in physical structure and mental power that the birth of man from such a parentage should be within the range of natural probability. Let A be monkey, and B man, then there ought to be a continuous line of intermediate numbers, and A99 ought to approximate so closely to B that it would be perfectly natural for B to be its child.

But where are these links to be found? and what naturalist can discover them? If the theory be true, the process must still be going on, and the world must be teeming with these intermediate races. But where are they? Bishop Temple as attempted to answer this question thus:

If it be asked why this variety does not range by imperceptible degrees from extreme forms in one direction to extreme forms in the other, the answer is to be found in the enormous prodigality, and the equally enormous waste of life and living creatures . . . Eggs, and seeds, and germs are destroyed by millions, and so in a less but still enormous proportion are the young that come from those that have not been destroyed. There is no waste like the waste of life that is to be seen in nature . . . The inevitable operation of this waste, as Darwin’s investigation showed, has been to destroy all those varieties which were not well fitted to their surroundings, and to keep those that were. (P. 165.)

But if this be the solution of the difficulty, how is it that those at the bottom of the scale remain? One of the great principle employed to explain the theory is “the survival of the fittest.” The result therefore must be continuous progress, and the raison d’être of each successive formation is its superior fitness above the form from which it sprang. A1 survives because it is superior in fitness to A, and A2 because it is superior to A1, and so forth. The effect therefore of the Bishop’s principle would be that the inferior forms at the bottom of the scale would perish, while the superior that have risen out of them, by reason of their greater adaptation to their environment, would survive. But this is not the fact. As a matter of fact, A, at the bottom of the scale, survives, though A99, at the top, is gone. The countless multitude of intermediate formations has disappeared, but the parent stock remains. If ever there was a race of animals so near man as to render it nothing more than natural that it should give birth to man, that race has wholly disappeared, while animals vastly inferior still exist in all their strength. Such a fact appears to me to be fatal to the theory.

(iii.) But the geological evidence is stronger still. If all these creatures have arisen in succession, and perished, we may well ask, “Where are their bones?” Each successive race, according to the theory, has been sufficiently powerful to overpower its predecessors, and to reproduce its own kind. It is clear, therefore, that we should naturally look for the geological remains of those once-powerful animals. But here we are met by the hard, stubborn, rocky fact, that there is no trace of them in the geological record. We find the remains of A, B, C, D, etc., but between them there is a complete hiatus; and if there were 1000 links between A and B, the geologist cannot show you one of them. He can show you A, and he can show you B; but as for A 20, 30, and 40, he can only tell you that they are not yet discovered. I know that some good Christian people are afraid of geology, and in that I believe they make a great mistake; for though I grant there may be danger in shallow, superficial, theoretical geology, I never can doubt that the real record of the rocks is in perfect harmony with the real record of Scripture. So, in this instance, it has furnished us with an unanswerable proof that the evolutionist theory is not founded in fact, and that nothing has yet been discovered in the geological record to shake our confidence in the grand, old, Scriptural statement, “God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the ground after its kind: and God saw that it was good.” We all know that it is not the object of the Book of Genesis to teach science; and some, I grieve to think, are not afraid of calling it a myth, or even a poem for the childhood of the world; but I venture to affirm that the statement of the Inspired Book which describes each kind as a separate creation is more in accordance with well-known geological facts, and is therefore more scientifically accurate than the theories of those who adopt the conjecture that the various kinds, species, or groups evolved themselves either from each other or from a common stock.

(2) Cosmical Evolution.

But if this be the case with Biological Evolution, how is it with Cosmical Evolution, or the evolution of inanimate matter? Bishop Temple describes it as “that which begins with Laplace, and explains the way in which the earth was fitted to be the habitation of living creatures;” {11a} and again he says: {11b}

It cannot, then, be well denied that the astronomers and geologists here made it exceedingly probable that this earth on which we live has been brought to its present condition by passing through a succession of changes from an original state of great heat and fluidity, perhaps even from a mixture mainly consisting of gases; that such a body as the planet Jupiter represents one of the stages through which it has passed; that such a body as the moon represents a stage toward which it is tending; that it has shrank as it cooled, and as it shrank formed the elevations which we call mountains, and the depressions which contain the seas and oceans; that it has been worn by the action of heat from within and water from without, and in consequence of this action presents the appearance when examined below the surface of successive strata or layers; that different kinds of animal and vegetable life have followed one another on the surface, and that some of their remains are found in these strata now: and that all this has taken enormous periods of time. All this is exceedingly probable, because it is the way in which, as Laplace first pointed out, under well established scientific laws of matter, particularly the law of gravitation and the law of the radiation of heat, a great fluid mass would naturally change.

There is nothing in that explanation to militate against the Scriptural accounts of the formation of the present world; and it may have pleased God to make use of the laws of gravitation and radiation of heat in order to bring our world into its present form. But the structure of the earth is not all, or nearly all.

There is found on the earth, and within it, an infinite variety of substances. There are metals; such as gold, silver, lead, iron, etc. There are precious stones of gorgeous beauty, diamonds, rubies, etc., etc. There is vegetable matter of every description, from the tenderest blade of grass to the hard wood of the forest oak. And there are animals of all classes and all characters, from the lowest mollusk to the most perfect and elaborate vertebrate. And the question is, What made them? Were they produced by the cooling of the earth? Was it gravitation or radiation that made the gold, the ruby, the fern, the oak, the animal, and the water?

But in addition to these various substances, the world abounds with what we call “Laws.” There are the laws of electricity, of heat, of chemistry, of force, of motion, etc.; besides those to which all these great changes are ascribed, the laws of heat and gravitation—and, What made them? Are they all the result of the cooling of the earth? Was one mass of fluid matter cooled into iron, one into gold, one into wood, and one into flesh? and did they all evolve from themselves by some mysterious power, those wonderful laws of nature to which they are all subject and which they all obey? In their case there was no “struggle for existence,” no “survival of the fittest,” and no “natural selection”—no thought, no mind, no design, and no plan in themselves; and it is indeed hard to suppose that they not only evolved themselves, but also evolved laws of such marvellous subtlety and power, that their discovery and use form the greatest achievement of modern science.

It may perhaps interest some to know how it is all supposed to have been done, and as Mr. Herbert Spencer appears to be the great apostle of the theory, I will give, in his own words, the conclusion of his elaborate argument. In “First Principles” (p. 396) he gives his great conclusion, and prints it in italics that there may be no mistake as to its vast importance: “Evolution,” he says, “is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.” Is it for such as that that we are to give up our faith in the creation of God?

But this is not all, for not merely is the earth filled with various substances, and governed by various laws; but there is a third element for which even Mr. Spencer’s definition fails to account, and that is life. There is life abounding everywhere; but what science can tell us either what it is or whence it came? Was it produced either by gravitation or radiation? Did the cooling of the earth produce life on its surface? I know no greater evidence of the utter failure of the evolutionist theory than the suggestion made on one occasion (I think in an inaugural address to the British Association), that life came in a meteoric stone from some already formed habitable world. With reference to such an idea it is enough to ask four questions. How did it get into that other world? How did it attach itself to the meteoric stone? How did it survive the awful blow which it must have experienced when it struck the earth? and how did it spread itself when it found itself alone in the utter loneliness of an uninhabited world? Such is the theory of those who would struggle to create a world without a God; and I venture to affirm that there is infinitely more true science in the words, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

But, though I have thus followed Bishop Temple in his twofold division of the theory of Evolution, there is another twofold division which I regard as of incomparably greater importance. I refer to the Theistic and Atheistic theory.

I. There is a Theistic theory, for there can be no doubt whatever that many of those who accept the Evolution theory hold it in the firm belief in the creative power of a self-existing Creator. Bishop Temple, e.g., states the question thus:

In the one case the Creator made the animals at once such as they now are; in the other case He impressed on certain particles of matter, which either at the beginning or at some point in the history of His creation He endowed with life, such inherent powers that in the ordinary course of time living creatures such as the present were developed. The creative power remains the same in either case. {13}

For my own part, I should be almost disposed to consider that the creative power was the greater on the theory of Evolution; for to make a germ which should evolve itself into all the countless varieties, both of animate and inanimate existence, is, if possible, a greater miracle than the creation of each separate species. There is great skill shown in the manufacture both of a railway train and a steamboat, but the skill would be of a much higher order if a person were to construct a train with its engine and all its carriages, and impart to it the remarkable property that when it arrived at the sea-coast it should of itself without the action of man, turn itself into a steamboat.

Thus a person may hold the Evolution theory to its fullest extent without entertaining the slightest doubt as to the creative power of our God. Indeed, Bishop Temple says:

The doctrine of Evolution leaves the argument for an intelligent Creator and Governor of the world stronger than it was before. There is still as much as ever the proof of an intelligent purpose pervading all creation. The difference is that the execution of that purpose belongs more to the original act of creation, less to acts of government since. There is more Divine foresight, there is less Divine interposition; and whatever has been taken from the latter has been added to the former. (P. 122.)

There is such a joy in the blessed assurance of Divine interposition, and it seems so clearly taught in Scripture, that it is impossible to regard without the utmost jealousy the suggestion of even such a transfer as that described in these words. But still, however greatly we may regret the theory, we are bound in justice to recognise the fact that those who hold it may believe in a Creator God with a faith as firm and unshaken as that which brings peace to our own souls.

I cannot refrain from adding that this was the view of Darwin himself. He has been claimed as an ally by those who deny the creation of God; so that it is most satisfactory to read such a passage as that with which his book concludes:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed BY THE CREATOR into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved. (P. 429.)

We may wholly differ from him in his theory of Evolution, but we rejoice to agree with him in the conviction that life, was originally breathed forth by the Creator.