angels might learn to know him by his works. Creation is thus God's great object lesson for men and angels to learn. But learning is a process, gradual, slow, from one step to another. Therefore the object lesson must not be precipitated all in a heap upon the infantile intellects of the learners, but unfolded by degrees. Geologists assure us that so it was in the past; that first the lifeless strata were deposited; next, light was evolved; afterward, fishes, and marine reptiles, and birds; then came the carboniferous or plant era; afterward the mammalia; last of all man. You observe here an ascending scale of creation, beginning with first principles and simple forms, and ascending to the most complicated; a series of experiments in God's great lecture-room, illustrative of the various steps of the evolution of the divine idea. But six thousand years before geology was born Moses described this same evolution of creation, in the first chapter of Genesis. As he could not have learned it from any science known in his day, God Himself must have shown it to him. The divine idea is still in process of evolution for our instruction. We behold it in the continual formation of new strata by the destruction of the old; in the chemical combinations of the elements of the air, sea, and earth; in the evolution of the grass from the seed, and of the oak from the acorn; in the development of the insect germ into the caterpillar, and the butterfly; in the hatching of the egg into the chicken; and in the growth of the infant into the man. We observe also a divine development of society, an advance of civilization, a providential guidance of history, and a fall and disorder among mankind, with a process of redemption, medical, educational, political and religious, for the human race. The whole process, therefore, of the creation, natural history, and moral government of the world, is the development of a divine idea, according to a divine plan, by the direct or mediate efficacy of divine power, for the accomplishment of the divine purpose as revealed to us in the divine word, the Holy Scriptures. Galen taught that the study of physiology was a divine hymn. This divine development is to be clearly and sharply distinguished from the atheistic theory of evolution. They differ in the following particulars : 1. The divine development of the world is a great fact; the theory of atheistic evolution is only a baseless theory, a fiction. 2. The divine development begins in the beginning, with God, creating the heavens and the earth; but the theory of atheistic evolution has no beginning, asserting the eternal existence of a changing world. 3. The divine development is the unfolding of an intelligent plan, showing the adaptation of means to ends for the accomplishment of a purpose; the atheistic theory of evolution denies plan, purpose, adaptation and final cause. 4. The divine development is conducted, and continually reinforced by the will of the Omnipotent God; the atheistic development evolves only the forces of matter. 5. The divine development has a moral character, and terminates in the highest holiness and happiness of all obedient men and angels; but the atheistic development contemplates and promises only the evolution of animal instinct and passions, the eternal death of the individual, and, for the universe, only purposeless cycles of progress, and catastrophies of ruin. In this chapter we discuss only the theory of atheistic evolution. In the discussion of all questions affecting human life it is advantageous to trace them to their origin, and to follow them out to their practical results. Thus we get a clear view of the whole subject, and are enabled to assign to it its proper influence. It is also a great benefit to the mass of mankind to conduct such discussions in plain language, and to translate the roundabout phrases, and the Latinized words of scientific men, as much as we can, into the vulgar tongue; to state the subjects of discussion so as to be understood of the people. So we shall put the whole business of Darwinism and development before you, reader, in a nutshell, by simply asking you the question at the head of this chapter, "Was your mother a monkey?" What a question! Well, then, your grandmother? her grandmother? or does it seem less offensive, or more likely to you to go back some thousands of years, and say your forefathers were apes? That is exactly what Mr. Darwin says when we translate his scientific language into the vulgar tongue: "The early progenitors of man were no doubt once covered with hair, both sexes having beards; their ears were pointed and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail having the proper muscles. The foot, judging from the condition of the great toe in the foetus, was then prehensile, and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm forest-clad land. The males were provided with great canine teeth, which served them as formidable weapons."* This ancient form "if seen by a naturalist, would undoubtedly have been ranked as an ape or a monkey. And as man, under a genealogical point of view, belongs to the CATARHINE or Old World stock (of monkeys), we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated."† So here you have your genealogy, name and thing fully described. Mr. Darwin thinks it is quite an honorable pedigree: "Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality. *** *The Descent of Man, p. 198, American Edition. Unless we willfully close our eyes, we may, with our present knowledge, approximately recognize our parentage, nor need we feel ashamed of it. The most humble organism is something much higher than the inorganic dust under our feet; and no one with an unbiased mind can study any living creature, however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvelous structure and properties."* There are people, however, who do not grow enthusiastic at the idea of their long-tailed progenitors; but there is no accounting for taste in such matters! For elderly people, who do not take so enthusiastically to monkeys as his junior readers, Mr. Darwin has provided a rather less gymnastic ancestry. How would you like to have a fish for your forefather? If it were one of Neptune's noble tritons, or the Philistine fish-god, Dagon, or a mermaid, it might not be so repulsive as the ape; or even a twenty-pound salmon, flashing its silver and blue in the sunlight as it spins the line off the reel, might not be so utterly disgusting as the monkey burlesque of humanity. But, alas! Mr. Darwin has been sent to this proud nineteenth century as the prophet to teach us humility, and here is the scientific statement of the structure of our fishy forefathers: "At a still earlier period the progenitors of man must have been aquatic in their habits, for morphology plainly tells us that our lungs consist of a modified swim bladder which once served as a float. These early predecessors of man thus seen in the dim recesses of time must have been as lowly organized as the lancelot or amphibioxus, or even still more lowly organized."* That certainly is a very humble origin. We are not, however, by any means to the end of our pedigree. Mr. Darwin says that your codfish aristocracy are descended from a race of squirts--the squirts which you picked up on *Descent of Man, p. 199, Am. Ed. the shore and squeezed, when you were a boy, discharging these primitive Babcock Extinguishers upon your playfellows, irreverently regardless of the harm done the poor squirt, the ancestor of the human race. If you doubt it, here is the latest deliverance of infallible science upon the subject. He describes the Ascidians: "They hardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple tough leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. They belong to the Molluscoida of Huxley, a lower division of the great family of the Mollusca; but they have recently been placed by some naturalists among the vermes or worms. Their larvæ somewhat resemble tadpoles in shape, and have the power of swimming freely about. *** We should. thus be justified in believing that, at an extremely remote period, a group of animals existed resembling in many respects the larvæ of our present Ascidians, which diverged into two great branches, the one retrograding in development and producing the present class of Ascidians, the other rising to the crown and summit of the animal kingdom, by giving birth to the vertebrata." Thus it appears that Mr. Darwin deduces his origin, and that of mankind in general, from one of these Ascidians, or, in plain English, makes them a race of squirts. The notion of evolution is a belief that all living beings, plants as well as animals, have not been created, but, like Topsy, just grew, from the very smallest germs or spores. Evolutionists inform us that all kinds of organisms have been evolved from four or five primeval germs or spores; or more consistently with their great principle, that the simple gave birth to the differentiated, from one primeval germ or egg. Mr. Darwin alleges four or five primal forms, acknowledging that analogy would lead him up to one. But other members of this school consistently and *Descent of Man, 197, Am. Ed. |