Part 19

But if evolution has taken place, there is evidently a provision for the progress from the lower to the higher states, either in the education of circumstances (“conflict,”) or in the power of an interior spiritual influence “harmony,”) or both.

β. Evidence Derived from History.

We trace the development of Morality in—First, the family or social order; second, the civil order, or government.

Whatever may have been the extent of moral ignorance before the Deluge, it does not appear that the earth was yet prepared for the permanent habitation of the human race. All nations preserve traditions of the drowning of the early peoples by floods, such as have occurred frequently during geologic time. At the close of each period of dry land, a period of submergence has set in, and the depression of the level of the earth, and consequent overflow by the sea, has caused the death and subsequent preservation of the remains of the fauna and flora living upon it, while the elevation of the same has produced that interruption in the process of deposit in the same region which marks the intervals between geologic periods. Change in these respects do not occur to any very material extent at the present time in the regions inhabited by the most highly developed portions of the human race; and as the last which occurred seems to have been expressly designed for the preparation of the earth’s surface for the occupation of organized human society, it may be doubted whether many such changes are to be looked for in the future. The last great flooding was that which stratified the drift materials of the north, and carried the finer portions far over the south, determining the minor topography of the surface and supplying it with soils.

The existence of floods which drowned many races of men may be considered as established. The men destroyed by the one recorded by Moses are described by him as exceedingly wicked, so that “the earth was filled with violence.” In his eyes the Flood was designed for their extermination.

That their condition was evil must be fully believed if they were condemned by the executive of the Jewish law. This law, it will be remembered, permitted polygamy, slavery, revenge, aggressive war. The Jews were expected to rob their neighbors the Egyptians of jewels, and they were allowed “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” They were expected to butcher other nations, with their women and children, their flocks and their herds. If we look at the lives of men recorded in the Old Testament as examples of distinguished excellence, we find that their standard, however superior to that of the people around them, would ill accord with the morality of the present day. They were all polygamists, slaveholders and warriors. Abraham treated Hagar and Ishmael with inhumanity. Jacob, with his mother’s aid, deceived Isaac, and received thereby a blessing which extended to the whole Jewish nation. David, a man whom Paul tells us the Lord found to be after his own heart, slew the messenger who brought tidings of the death of Saul, and committed other acts which would stain the reputation of a Christian beyond redemption. It is scarcely necessary to turn to other nations if this be true of the chosen men of a chosen people. History indeed presents us with no people prior to, or contemporary with, the Jews who were not morally their inferiors.

If we turn to more modern periods, an examination of the morality of Greece and Rome reveals a curious intermixture of lower and higher moral conditions. While each of these nations produced excellent moralists, the influence of their teachings was not sufficient to elevate the masses above what would now be regarded as a very low standard. The popularity of those scenes of cruelty, the gladiatorial shows and the combats with wild beasts, sufficiently attests this. The Roman virtue of patriotism, while productive of many noble deeds, is in itself far from being a disinterested one, but partakes rather of the nature of partisanship and selfishness. If the Greeks were superior to the Romans in humanity, they were apparently their inferiors in the social virtues, and were much below the standard of Christian nations in both respects.

Ancient history points to a state of chronic war, in which the social relations were in confusion, and the development of the useful arts was almost impossible. Savage races, which continue to this day in a similar moral condition, are, we may easily believe, most unhappy. They are generally divided into tribes, which are mutually hostile, or friendly only with the view of injuring some other tribe. Might is their law, and robbery, rapine and murder express their mutual relations. This is the history of the lowest grade of barbarism, and the history of primeval man so far as it has come down to us in sacred and profane records. Man as a species first appears in history as a sinful being. Then a race maintaining a contest with the prevailing corruption and exhibiting a higher moral ideal is presented to us in Jewish history. Finally, early Christian society exhibits a greatly superior condition of things. In it polygamy scarcely existed, and slavery and war were condemned. But progress did not end here, for our Lord said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when He, the spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.”

The progress revealed to us by history is truly great, and if a similar difference existed between the first of the human species and the first of whose condition we have information, we can conceive how low the origin must have been. History begins with a considerable progress in civilization, and from this we must infer a long preceding period of human existence, such as a gradual evolution would require.

γ. Rationale of Moral Development.

I. Of the Species. Let us now look at the moral condition of the infant man of the present time. We know his small accountability, his trust, his innocence. We know that he is free from the law that when he “would do good, evil is present with him,” for good and evil are alike unknown. We know that until growth has progressed to a certain degree he fully deserves the praise pronounced by Our Saviour, that “of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Growth, however, generally sees a change. We know that the buddings of evil appear but too soon: the lapse of a few months sees exhibitions of anger, disobedience, malice, falsehood, and their attendants—the fruit of a corruption within not manifested before.

In early youth it may be said that moral susceptibility is often in inverse ratio to physical vigor. But with growth the more physically vigorous are often sooner taught the lessons of life, for their energy brings them into earlier conflict with the antagonisms and contradictions of the world. Here is a beautiful example of the benevolent principle of compensation.

1. Innocence and the Fall. If physical evolution be a reality, we have reason to believe that the infantile stage of human morals, as well as of human intellect, was much prolonged in the history of our first parents. This constitutes the period of human purity, when we are told by Moses that the first pair dwelt in Eden. But the growth to maturity saw the development of all the qualities inherited from the irresponsible denizen of the forest. Man inherits from his predecessors in the creation the buddings of reason: he inherits passions, propensities and appetites. His corruption is that of his animal progenitors, and his sin is the low and bestial instinct of the brute creation. Thus only is the origin of sin made clear—a problem which the pride of man would have explained in any other way had it been possible.

But how startling the exhibition of evil by this new being as compared with the scenes of the countless ages already past! Then the right of the strongest was God’s law, and rapine and destruction were the history of life. But into man had been “breathed the breath of life,” and he had “become a living soul.” The law of right, the Divine Spirit, was planted within him, and the laws of the beast were in antagonism to that law. The natural development of his inherited qualities necessarily brought him into collision with that higher standard planted within him, and that war was commenced which shall never cease “till He hath put all things under His feet.” The first act of man’s disobedience constituted the Fall, and with it would come the first intellectual “knowledge of good and of evil”—an apprehension up to that time derived exclusively from the divinity within, or conscience.

Footnote 50:

In our present translation of Genesis, the Fall is ascribed to the influence of Satan assuming the form of the serpent, and this animal was cursed in consequence, and compelled to assume a prone position. This rendering may well be revised, since serpents, prone like others, existed in both America and Europe during the Eocene epoch, five times as great a period before Adam as has elapsed since his day. Clark states, with great probability, that “serpent” should be translated monkey or ape—a conclusion, it will be observed, exactly coinciding with our inductions on the basis of evolution. The instigation to evil by an ape merely states inheritance in another form. His curse, then, refers to the retention of the horizontal position by all other quadrumana, as we find it at the present day.

2. Free Agency. Heretofore development had been that of physical types, but the Lord had rested on the seventh day, for man closed the line of the physical creation. Now a new development was to begin—the development of mind, of morality and of grace.

On the previous days of Creation all had progressed in accordance with inevitable law apart from its objects. Now two lines of development were at the disposal of this being, between which his free will was to choose. Did he choose the courses dictated by the spirit of the brute, he was to be subject to the old law of the brute creation—the right of the strongest and spiritual death. Did he choose the guidance of the Divine Guest in his heart, he became subject to the laws which are to guide—I. the human species to an ultimate perfection, so far as consistent with this world; and II. the individual man to a higher life, where a new existence awaits him as a spiritual being, freed from the laws of terrestrial matter.

The charge brought against the theory of development, that it implies a necessary progress of man to all perfection without his coöperation—or necessitarianism, as it is called—is unfounded.

The free will of man remains the source alike of his progress and his relapse. But the choice once made, the laws of spiritual development are apparently as inevitable as those of matter. Thus men whose religious capacities are increased by attention to the Divine Monitor within are in the advance of progress—progress coinciding with that which in material things is called the harmonic. On the other hand, those whose motives are of the lower origin fall under the working of the law of conflict.

The lesson derivable from the preceding considerations would seem to be “necessitarian” as respects the whole human race, considered by itself; and I believe it is to be truly so interpreted. That is, the Creator of all things has set agencies at work which will slowly develop a perfect humanity out of His lower creation, and nothing can thwart the process or alter the result. “My word shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” This is our great encouragement, our noblest hope—second only to that which looks to a blessed inheritance in another world. It is this thought that should inspire the farmer, who as he toils wonders, “Why all this labor? The Good Father could have made me like the lilies, who, though they toil not, neither spin, are yet clothed in glory; and why should I, a nobler being, be subject to the dust and the sweat of labor?” This thought should enlighten every artisan of the thousands that people the factories and guide their whirling machinery in our modern cities. Every revolution of a wheel is moving the car of progress, and the timed stroke of the crank and the rhythmic throw of the shuttle are but the music the spheres have sung since time began. A new significance then appears in the prayer of David: “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us: the work of our hands, O Lord, establish Thou it.” But beware of the catastrophe, for “He will sit as a refiner:” “the wheat shall be gathered into barns, but the chaff shall be burned with unquenchable fire.” If this be true, let us look for—

3. The Extinction of Evil. How is necessitarianism to be reconciled with free will? It appears to me, thus: When a being whose safety depends on the perfection of a system of laws abandons the system by which he lives, he becomes subject to that lower grade of laws which govern lower intelligences. Man, falling from the laws of right, comes under the dominion of the laws of brute force; as said our Saviour: “Salt is good, but if the salt have lost his savor, it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast forth and trodden under foot of men.”

Evil, being unsatisfying to the human heart, is in its nature ever progressive, whether in the individual or the nation; and in estimating the practical results to man of the actions prompted by the lower portion of our nature, it is only necessary to carry out to its full development each of those animal qualities which may in certain states of society be restrained by the social system. In human history those qualities have repeatedly had this development, and the battle of progress is fought to decide whether they shall overthrow the system that restrains them, or be overthrown by it.

Entire obedience to the lower instincts of our nature ensures destruction to the weaker, and generally to the stronger also. A most marked case of this kind is seen where the developed vices of civilization are introduced among a savage people—as, for example, the North American Indians. These seem in consequence to be hastening to extinction.

But a system or a circuit of existence has been allotted to the civil associations of the animal species man, independently of his moral development. It may be briefly stated thus: Races begin as poor offshoots or emigrants from a parent stock. The law of labor develops their powers, and increases their wealth and numbers. These will be diminished by their various vices; but on the whole, in proportion as the intellectual and economical elements prevail, wealth will increase; that is, they accumulate power. When this has been accomplished, and before activity has slackened its speed, the nation has reached the culminating point, and then it enters upon the period of decline. The restraints imposed by economy and active occupation being removed, the beastly traits find in accumulated power only increased means of gratification, and industry and prosperity sink together. Power is squandered, little is accumulated, and the nation goes down to its extinction amid scenes of internal strife and vice. Its cycle is soon fulfilled, and other nations, fresh from scenes of labor, assault it, absorb its fragments, and it dies. This has been the world’s history, and it remains to be seen whether the virtues of the nations now existing will be sufficient to save them from a like fate.

Thus the history of the animal man in nations is wonderfully like that of the type or families of the animal and vegetable kingdoms during geologic ages. They rise, they increase and reach a period of multiplication and power. The force allotted to them becoming exhausted, they diminish and sink and die.

II. Of the Individual. In discussing physical development, we are as yet compelled to restrict ourselves to the evidence of its existence and some laws observed in the operation of its causative force. What that force is, or what are its primary laws, we know not.

So in the progress of moral development we endeavor to prove its existence and the mode of its operation, but why that mode should exist, rather than some other mode, we cannot explain.