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Can the Christian Now 
 Believe in Evolution? 
 

 

 
 
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 <oeicai sent 
 
 Can the Christian Now 
 Believe in Evolution? 
 
 By 
 WILLIAM HALLOCK’JOHNSON, PH.D., D.D. 
 
 Professor in Lincoln University, Pennsylvania 
 Author of ‘The Christian Faith 
 Under Modern Searchlights” 
 
 _ PHILADELPHIA 
 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES COMPANY 
 
Copyricut, 1926, sy 
 Tue SunpAy ScHoo, Times CoMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE Unitep STATES OF AMERICA 
 
PREFACE 
 
 during the Christmas holidays, 1925, two sig- 
 nificant utterances were made on the subject 
 of evolution. Professor H. F. Osborn, at the dedica- 
 tion of the Peabody Museum at Yale University, de- 
 clared that the time had come when evolution should 
 be taught no longer as a theory but as a fact. Mean- 
 while, at the meeting of the American Philosophical 
 Association held in Northampton, Professor W. M. 
 Urban, in his presidential address, said that the ex- 
 treme statements now being made by evolutionary 
 scientists were an evidence of the recrudescence of 
 dogma. It is clear that the controversy has invaded 
 academic circles, and that it can no longer be dis- 
 missed as a contest between obscurantism on the one 
 hand and enlightened scholarship on the other. 
 The trial in the summer of 1925 at Dayton, Tenn., 
 attracted world-wide attention, but neither the argu- 
 ments in the courtroom nor the discussions in the press 
 can be said to have been specially illuminating. The 
 jury of intelligent public opinion, which must ulti- 
 mately decide the question, is in search of evidence 
 and argument rather than impassioned appeals to 
 prejudice. or authority. The Dayton trial, however, 
 set a great many people to thinking, and most people, 
 whatever their prejudices, want to know the facts. 
 - 
 
 \ TWO academic gatherings held simultaneously 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 The present modest contribution to the discussion 
 of evolution has a threefold aim: to examine anew 
 the present state of the evidence for biological evolu- 
 tion including the descent of man; to point out the 
 philosophy in which the theory of evolution naturally 
 if not inevitably eventuates; and to study the rela- 
 tions between this evolutionary philosophy and the 
 theistic and Christian view of the world. It is clear 
 that the relation between evolution and religion has 
 become the leading apologetic problem of our age, 
 and it is earnestly hoped that the following chapters 
 will do something to clarify the issues involved, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 I. Tue DARWINIAN REVOLUTION ....... 9 
 Il. Tue Anti-DarwINIAN Reaction .... 19 
 
 III. Can Betirer 1n Gop anp EvoLutTIon 
 eT PLOGREEER eather iil mie 27 
 
 IV. Gop In THE Gaps—THE ORIGIN OF 
 they Wp OURS eS ene a Ra RU el Ae 39 
 Mee ORICIN, OMAN iii, cate. Sat vee = VE 
 VI. Tue BoNnEs AND THE STONES ........ vA 
 WiLL VOLUTIONARY: DOUBTS 1.4 aleaneiiy eoiee 91 
 VIII. Tue MetapHysicaL REVIEW ........ 107 
 TX EVOLUTION AND: THE: PALL tigh oe es 123 
 X. Evolution AND REVELATION ........ 147 
 AL EVOLUTION AND MIRACLE 0606 cee: 165 
 Mle MBIST AND EVOLUTION oo iei ecco ves 179 
 

 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION 
 
“The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion 
 of nations, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the 
 mercy of a new generalization.” —EMERSON. 
 
 “One general law leading to the advancement of all organic 
 beings,—namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the 
 weakest die.” —DARWIN, 
 
 “Darwin, by his discovery of the mechanical principle of or- 
 ganic evolution . . . completed the doctrine of evolution and 
 gave it that unity and authority which was necessary in order 
 that it should reform the whole range of philosophy. Its most 
 important initial conception is the derivation of man, by natural 
 process from ape-like ancestors, and the consequent derivation of 
 his mental and moral qualities, by the operation of the struggle 
 for existence and natural selection, from the mental and moral 
 qualities of animals. Not the least important of the studies thus 
 initiated is that of the evolution of philosophy itself. Zoology 
 thus finally arrives, through Darwin, at its crowning develop- 
 ment; it teaches, and may even be said to comprise, the history 
 of man, sociology and psychology,’"—Sir E, Ray LANKESTER, 
 
I 
 THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION 
 
 P NHREE great generalizations of science, the 
 
 Copernican, the Newtonian and the Darwinian, 
 
 have had a disturbing effect upon religious 
 thought. The two polar problems in modern religious 
 philosophy are man’s place in nature and God’s place 
 in nature, and the teaching of Copernicus had an 
 obvious bearing upon the first while that of Newton 
 concerned the second. It remained for Darwin to pro- 
 pose a theory so comprehensive as to have a vital 
 bearing on both of these central problems of religious 
 thought. 
 
 When Alexander the Great pushed his conquests to 
 the East, he assumed more and more the dress and 
 habits of the Persians and to the disgust of his friends 
 compelled even his Greek associates to pay him divine 
 honors. In some such way the Darwinian theory of 
 natural selection, as it conquered one after another of 
 the provinces of human thought, took on more and 
 more the character of a mechanical or materialistic 
 philosophy and assumed to be the queen of the sci- 
 ences and the master key to all knowledge. 
 
 The religious tendencies of Darwinism, especially 
 as it hardened into Neo-Darwinism, might be illus- 
 trated by the inner logic of the theory itself, or from 
 the statements of its most eminent spokesmen, or from 
 
 11 
 
12 Tus CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 the consequences in the religious career of those who 
 most ardently embraced it. There have not been lack- 
 ing abundant warnings in the experience and in the 
 utterances of Darwinians themselves that Darwinism 
 has sounded the death knell of religion. 
 
 With Darwin’s absorption in the advocacy of natu- 
 ral selection, his religious convictions were atrophied, 
 and his latest utterances showed his agnosticism alike 
 as to the origin of the world and the destiny of man. 
 In the case of a leading disciple, Romanes, the accept- 
 ance of Darwinism led, for a long period at least, to 
 a complete eclipse of faith and to the writing of a 
 treatise designed to show that belief in God was no 
 longer possible for intelligent men. Darwin’s most 
 authoritative spokesmen in England, Huxley the bril- 
 liant controversialist, and Spencer the systematic 
 thinker, both exploited Darwinism in the interest of 
 an agnostic metaphysic. In France Renan predicted 
 as a result of Darwinism the gradual dying out of re- 
 ligion, while at a later date Metchnikoff flatly declared 
 that man, the progeny of the brute, shares his destiny. 
 
 In Germany the two most prominent exponents of 
 Darwin’s theories substituted materialism and mecha- 
 nism for a theistic view of the world. Heckel in his 
 youth was strongly religious and said in a letter: 
 “There is nothing else in this enthusiasm for the mi- 
 croscope and the cell but the happiness and delight in 
 this immense and miraculous world of the infinitely 
 small, in which the Creator has revealed His most 
 wonderful power and wisdom” (“The Story of the 
 Development of a Youth”), Later he could say that 
 
Tuer DARWINIAN REVOLUTION 13 
 
 “with a single stroke Darwin has annihilated the 
 dogma of creation,’ and he asserted that the theory 
 of evolution, which he held in the Darwinian form, 
 had given the coup de grace to the theistic postulates 
 of God, freedom and immortality. Germany’s other 
 most prominent Darwinist, Weismann, believed that 
 the great riddle had been solved of the origin of what 
 is suited to its purpose without the cooperation of pur- 
 posive forces. The doctrine of evolution, he said, 
 “supplies the keystone in the arch of our interpreta- 
 tion of nature and gives it unity; for the first time it 
 makes it possible to form a conception of a world- 
 mechanism, in which each stage is the result of the 
 one before it, and the cause of the succeeding one” 
 (“The Evolution Theory,” 1904, I, pp. 6, 7). 
 
 Darwinism presented a militant challenge to two 
 of the fundamental doctrines of theism, those of crea- 
 tion and design. It is true that Darwin retained in the 
 various editions of his published work the allusion to 
 the several powers of life as having been “originally 
 breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one,” 
 but this inconsistency or concession to prejudice has 
 been removed with scant ceremony by later expositors. 
 The leading disciples of Darwin have been and con- 
 tinue to be hostile not only to special creation but to 
 creation in general, and.they would agree with Heckel 
 that the doctrine of descent means practically “the 
 non-miraculous theory of creation’ (“History of 
 Creation,” p. 422). 
 
 The most obvious effect of Darwinism was to 
 destroy the design argument in the form presented 
 
14 THe CHRISTIAN AND E,\voLUTION 
 
 by Paley’s Natural Theology. Darwin carried by as- 
 sault the two ramparts of Paley’s argument: first, 
 that the adaptation of organ to use was everywhere 
 so patent a fact that it could only be accounted for 
 as being the intention of an intelligent (and benevo- 
 lent) Creator; and, second, that each species was 
 specially created and thus that the proof of wise and 
 beneficent design was cumulative. Paley’s defenses 
 were demolished when it was shown that the fortut- 
 tous could account for the fit, that chance could mimic 
 the work of design,.and that the only creation in the 
 world of life—if any be grudgingly admitted—was 
 that of one or more primordial germs of life. Chance, 
 and in the popular mind a cruel chance, had been sub- 
 stituted for beneficent design. 
 
 Another and a practically momentous corollary was 
 drawn from Darwinism in the moral sphere. If the 
 descent of man is to be taken seriously, then con- 
 science must be evolved from the instincts of the herd 
 and the sense of obligation is resolved into expediency 
 or social convention. What Darwin called “the im- 
 perious word ought” (“Descent of Man,” I, chap. 4) 
 loses its imperial quality when it is reduced to the 
 level of instinct. There is no obligation, apart from 
 social sanctions, for an individual to do what he does 
 not wish to do. As Howison has said: “The so-called 
 Philosophy of Evolution, when given such a scope as 
 to make evolution the ground and explanation of mind 
 in man, is destructive of the reality of the human 
 person, and therefore of that entire world of moral 
 good, of beauty, and of unqualified truth, which de- 
 
Tur DarwiINIAN REVOLUTION 15 
 
 pends on personal reality for its being” (‘“The Limits 
 of Evolution,” 1901, p. 6). 
 
 Not only has the sense of obligation been weakened 
 by the derivation of ethics from instinct, but there 
 has been a transvaluation of values so that the ethics 
 of the jungle and of the blond beast have been promul- 
 gated under the egis of Darwinism. If a code of 
 morals should be derived from nature as depicted by 
 Darwin in one aspect of his theory, the first com- 
 mandment of the law would be, “Survive; let the 
 strong live, and the weak go to the wall.” The ethics 
 of a Caiaphas, a Herod, or a Pilate may under cover 
 of Darwinism be recommended as more authoritative 
 than the ethics of Christ. 
 
 Nietzsche, apostle of individualism and revolt, has 
 been called “Darwin with a difference.” In spite of 
 his ridicule of Darwin in his later years, there is no 
 doubt that Darwin supplied Nietzsche with his philo- 
 sophical basis. War as supremely exemplifying the 
 struggle for existence was no longer excused as a re- 
 grettable necessity but commended as the highest of 
 duties. Nietzsche, who was Darwin in philosophical 
 dress, certainly did much to sweep away the obstacles 
 to militarism and to supply the atmosphere in which 
 it could flourish and bear its choicest fruit. 
 
 Before the world war, Bernhardi the militarist fell 
 back on Darwin: ‘‘Wherever we look in nature, we 
 find that war is a fundamental Jaw of evolution. This 
 great verity, which has been recognized in past ages, 
 has been convincingly demonstrated in modern times 
 by Charles Darwin.” During the war Viscount Bryce 
 
 2 
 
16 Tue CHristiAN AND Evolution 
 
 said that German militarism found in the Darwinian 
 doctrine of natural selection, the method of social and 
 political progress (Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1916) ; 
 and Professor Vernon Kellogg, after a period of free 
 converse with German officers, says that the point of 
 view of the German officer “is a point of view that 
 will never allow any land or people controlled by it 
 to exist peaceably by the side of a people governed 
 by our point of view. ... It is a point of view that 
 justifies itself by a whole-hearted acceptance of the 
 worst of Neo-Darwinism, the Allmacht of natural 
 selection applied rigorously to human life and society 
 and Kultur” (Both in Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 1917, 
 pp. 146, 148). 
 
 Bernard Shaw in his “Back to Methuselah” shows 
 that the severest critics of Darwinism in its moral 
 aspects are not to be found among the theologians. 
 He says that ‘“Neo-Darwinism in politics had pro- 
 duced a European catastrophe of a magnitude so ap- 
 palling, and a scope so unpredictable, that as I write 
 these lines in 1920, it is still far from certain whether 
 our civilization will survive it’ (p. 9). “At the 
 present moment one half of Europe, having knocked 
 the other half down, is trying to kick it to death, 
 and may succeed: a procedure which is, logically, 
 sound Neo-Darwinism” (p. 10). 
 
 Under the title of “Darwin the Destroyer,” a dis- 
 ciple of Darwin, Gamaliel Bradford, has recently said: 
 “It was Darwin, the gentle, the kindly, the human, 
 who could not bear the sight of blood, who raged 
 against the cruelty of vivisection and slavery, who 
 
TuHet Darwinian REVOLUTION 17 
 
 detested suffering in men and animals, it was Darwin 
 who at least typified the rigorous logic that wrecked 
 the universe for me and for millions of others” (Harp- 
 ers Magazine, Sept., 1926). 
 
 The anti-religious tendency of Darwinism has not 
 been confined to the sphere of philosophical theism or 
 even of ethics, but the very citadel of Christianity as a 
 system of doctrine and life has been assailed. Doubt 
 has been thrown upon the authority of the Bible, upon 
 the doctrines of sin and redemption and even upon 
 the spiritual nature and destiny of man. Whatever 
 elements favorable to theism a robust faith may find 
 in Darwinism, its influence upon popular thought has 
 been all the other way. For half a century it has 
 been found in closest alliance with a philosophy which 
 denies that this world is the product of the will and 
 wisdom of God, and with a morality which substi- 
 tutes the law of struggle and strife for the law of 
 sacrifice and love. Judged by its fruits or historical 
 effects, Darwinism has brought with it an anti-theistic 
 philosophy and an anti-Christian morality. 
 

 
CHAPTER II 
 THE ANTI-DARWINIAN REACTION 
 
“The more deeply I pursued the alleged evidence for it [the 
 Darwinian theory] and sought to gain, through special investiga- 
 tion, some essential proof of the. genetic relationships of animals, 
 the more clearly I recognized that the theory is a seductive ro- 
 mance, which deceptively pretends to give results and explanations 
 rather than doctrine based upon positive foundations.”—ALsrrt 
 FLEISCH MANN. 
 
 “In the present work, we shall endeavor to show that Evolu- 
 tion has long since degenerated into a dogma, which is believed 
 in spite of the facts, and not on account of them.”—GEorcE BARRY 
 O’ Toots. 
 
 “The theistic evolutionist who tries to occupy a middle ground 
 between those who accept the Bible account of creation and those 
 who reject God entirely reminds one of a traveler in the moun- 
 tains, who, having fallen halfway down a steep slope, catches 
 hold of a frail bush. It takes so much of his strength to keep 
 from going lower that he is useless as an aid to others. ‘Those 
 who have accepted evolution in the belief that it was not anti- 
 Christian may well revise their conclusions in view of the ac- 
 cumulating evidence of its baneful influence.”-—Wim1.1AmM JENNINGS 
 BrYAN, 
 
 “The question in dispute is whether atheists and agnostics have 
 a right to teach irreligion in public schools—whether teachers 
 drawing salaries from the public treasury shall be permitted to 
 undermine belief in God, the Bible, and Christ, by teaching not 
 scientific truth but unproven and unsupported guesses which can- 
 not be true unless the Bible is false,”—-WiLLIAM JENNINGS Bryan. 
 
IT 
 THE ANTI-DARWINIAN REACTION 
 
 T THE opening of the century an adjustment 
 seemed to have been made and a sort of modus 
 vivendt established between Darwinism and re- 
 
 ligion. The scientific critique of Darwin had toned 
 down or made less certain those elements in Darwin- 
 ism which were most hostile to religion, the factors 
 of chance and of cruelty, and it seemed possible for © 
 a doctrine of descent to dwell in the same house with 
 Christian theism, if not on terms of intimacy, at least 
 without violent contention. Within the past few years 
 the situation has rapidly changed. In the press and 
 on the platform, in the pulpit and in ecclesiastical as- 
 semblies, and in state legislatures and courts, Dar- 
 winism and evolution have become the subjects of 
 heated and prolonged debate. Darwinism in the two- 
 fold sense of a doctrine of selection and a doctrine of 
 descent has become news both in the secular and in 
 the religious press, and it is evident that the whole 
 subject of the relation of the Darwinian theory to 
 religious thought has been reopened and the battle will 
 have to be fought over again. 
 
 The history of the Darwinian theory would cover 
 its triumphal march over the field of biology and then 
 the rapid extension of its conquests over other and 
 remoter fields until there seemed to be no more worlds 
 
 21 
 
22 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvOLUTION 
 
 to conquer. The academic world has become “evolu- 
 tion mad.” Everything must now be viewed from 
 the evolutionary standpoint and the theory of descent 
 is the magic key which will unlock the mysteries of 
 the universe. Everything pre-Darwinian in biology, 
 in philosophy, in theology, and even in logic and in 
 morals must be thrown upon the intellectual scrap 
 heap. Against this extreme position a reaction was 
 to have been expected, and an increasing volume of 
 protest has been made of late, both against the claims 
 of evolution in outside fields and against the truth 
 of evolution in its own field of biology. 
 
 The anti-Darwinian polemic has taken two forms. 
 In the first place there has been in recent years a grow- 
 ing tendency among evolutionary scientists to chal- 
 lenge or deny the sufficiency of the theory of natural 
 selection to account for the origin of species, and in 
 the second place a new and vigorous attack has been 
 made upon Darwinism in particular and upon the 
 whole evolutionary theory on the ground of its al- 
 leged anti-theistic and anti-Biblical character. 
 
 The indictment against Darwinism in its broader 
 sense as a theory of natural selection and a theory of 
 descent runs somewhat as follows: 
 
 An anti-theistic philosophy, promulgated under the 
 name of “the dominant category,” is poisoning the 
 springs of religious faith in our youth; the whole 
 critical movement which has made a jumble of the 
 Old Testament and has discredited the Old Testament 
 history and religion is expressly founded upon the 
 theory of evolution; the skeptical criticism which 
 
THE AntiI-DARWINIAN REACTION 23 
 
 seeks to eliminate the supernatural from the New 
 Testament draws strength from the same source; the 
 evolutionist with his denial of the fall and of the need 
 of redemption aims at the heart of Christianity as a 
 religion of redemption; the application of evolution- 
 ary principles to ethics robs both conscience and the 
 law of God of their authority. But when we examine 
 the foundation upon which these consequences so dis- 
 astrous to religion are built, we find them to be of the 
 flimsiest character. Evolution, it is contended, is only 
 an unproved and unprovable guess, and the theory 
 has become so extended and so vague in its meaning 
 as to lack scientific value; it is bound to fall by its 
 own weight and is already in a state of collapse. 
 Those who have engaged in this polemic have be- 
 longed for the most part to the conservative or funda- 
 mentalist wing of the church in America. Books and 
 pamphlets which have been influential in the discus- 
 sion have been Philip Mauro’s “Evolution at the Bar,” 
 1922; Alfred Fairhurst’s “Organic Evolution Con- 
 sidered,” 2d ed., 1913; A. W. McCann’s ‘“God—or 
 Gorilla,’ 1922; George McC. Price’s “New Geology,” 
 1923; “The Phantom of Organic Evolution,” 1925; 
 L. T. Townsend’s “Collapse of Evolution,” 1922; 
 W. H. Griffith Thomas’ “What About Evolution?” 
 1918; and George Barry O’Toole’s “The Case 
 Against Evolution,” 1925. | 
 ' The most popular leader of the anti-Darwinian 
 crusade in America has been Hon, William J. Bryan, 
 who has thrown into the movement all of his earnest- 
 ness and his power of popular appeal. He has done 
 
24 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 much to bring the subject to the fore in ecclesiastical 
 gatherings, in state legislatures and boards of educa- 
 tion, and has made it a general topic of discussion 
 throughout the country. In the Dayton trial Mr. 
 Bryan with his opponent, Mr. Darrow, held the center 
 of the world stage. His tragic death at the close of 
 the trial stilled the voice of ridicule and had a sober- 
 ing effect upon both parties in the controversy. 
 Opponents of evolution have not always belonged 
 to the fundamentalist wing of the church. A trench- 
 ant argument against what is termed this “modern 
 fetish” is made by Professor William H. Wood in his 
 “Religion of Science,’ 1922, Professor Wood, in 
 his attitude toward the Bible, miracles, and the like, 
 is allied rather to the liberal or “modernist” group in 
 the church, and yet he stoutly rejects evolution, de- 
 claring that it is without proof, that it is destructive 
 of religious belief, that theistic evolution is an illogi- 
 cal combination, and that evolution is immoral in its 
 consequences. He says on these points: “No animal 
 ever has become a man as far as knowledge goes” (p. 
 146). “There is no evidence that man as man has 
 been evolved out of lower natural forms or organ- 
 isms” (p. 149). “Evolution finds no supreme per- 
 sonality in the universe” (p. 133). “The plain 
 teaching of evolution is to deny personal immortality” 
 (p. 156). “To reduce the dignity, the glory and the 
 immortality of man to germ-cell eternity is to cut the 
 nerve of progress, destroy civilization, open the door 
 for all the animal traits and introduce the beast-like 
 struggle which terminates in the survival of the 
 
THe AntI-DARWINIAN REACTION 25 
 
 strongest. It would set back the clock of progress 
 many thousand years” (p. 118). 
 
 It has been a weakness of the anti-evolutionary cri- 
 tique that it has been carried on largely by laymen in 
 science whose testimony could be dismissed as incom- 
 petent and as warped by theological bias, but a recent 
 book by Professor Louis T. More, an educator of 
 note, a specialist in physics and the author of scien- 
 tific monographs and articles, is not open to this 
 criticism. The title of his book, “The Dogma of 
 Evolution,” 1925, puts the evolutionist on the de- 
 fensive. He repeatedly charges the biologist with 
 looseness of thought, and, speaking of Darwin, says 
 that the physicist who is trained in habits of exact 
 phraseology and rigorous logic is discouraged by “the 
 loose language and the still looser reasoning of the 
 evolutionist and the biologist” (p. 236). To express 
 a doubt of the genetic connection of man, both body 
 and soul, with the lower animals has been regarded 
 as almost the unpardonable sin in academic circles, 
 and the experts of the American Association for the 
 Advancement of Science officially declared in De- 
 cember, 1922, that “The council of the association 
 affirms that the evidences of the evolution of man are 
 sufficient to convince every scientist of note in the 
 world.” It is now disconcerting to find Professor 
 More saying bluntly that “the evolution of man from 
 the lower animals” is “purely a matter of guess” (p. 
 331). | | 
 
 In spite of certain guarded concessions which Pro- 
 fessor More makes to the evolutionist, his book in its 
 
26 THe CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTIon 
 
 whole tone and animus might have been written by 
 the most convinced creationist. The book is in fact 
 a slashing critique of the evolution theory in its pop- 
 ular forms. Professor More contends that the hy- 
 potheses of natural selection, inheritance of acquired 
 characters, mutations, and the like “are not proved 
 and are really metaphysical and unverifiable in char- 
 acter’; that these hypotheses “inevitably lead to a 
 mechanistic philosophy in which the phenomena of 
 life are to be explained by physical and chemical 
 processes,” and that the expansion of biological evolu- 
 tion to include the realm of consciousness and social 
 and ethical life has created confusion and disaster. 
 ‘In its religious application, “the real tendency of 
 evolution is to be found in the philosophy of Nietzsche 
 and not in the life of Christ” (p. 383). 
 
 Enough has been said to show that the revolt against 
 Darwinism or evolution is not confined to any narrow 
 circle within the church. The protest against the in- 
 sufficiency of its evidence, the looseness of its logic 
 and the anti-religious implications of its teachings has 
 become vocal even within the halls of learning. In 
 December, 1922, the experts of the American Associa- 
 tion for the Advancement of Science, Professors 
 Conklin, Osborn and Davenport, declared in a state- 
 ment that “the theory of evolution is one of the most 
 potent of the great influences for good that have thus 
 far entered into human experience.” It would have 
 done more to allay popular agitation if these experts 
 could have stated authoritatively that evolution was 
 not anti-theistic in its tendency and was not opposed 
 to the full acceptance of the doctrines of Christianity. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CAN BELIEF IN GOD AND EVOLUTION 
 LIVE TOGETHER? 
 
»“T£ there be a personality behind the universe, what sort of 
 ‘personality is it? Let us think his thoughts after him for a 
 moment: We see this creation moving up from low to higher 
 forms, from a chaos of star dust to an ordered universe of stars 
 and planets; on the earth, from inorganic to organic, from 
 . crystal to vegetable, from vegetable to animal, from animal to 
 human, until at last there comes the consummation of it all— 
 personality. If this evolving universe has been headed toward 
 anything, it has been headed toward personality. Can we sup- 
 pose that, having finished this agonizing task, having completed 
 at last His purpose—personality—God would toss it on the scrap 
 heap as though He did not care for it at all, as though what He 
 had wrought by the agony of a million years was but the caprice 
 of a careless, passing whim?”—Harry Emerson Fospick, 
 
 “The doctrine of evolution, rightly understood and interpreted, 
 is today one of the most powerful aids to religious faith. It has 
 delivered thousands from perplexity amounting to despair. It 
 has supplanted the old paralyzing conception of a “world-ma- 
 chine,’ a world mechanical and lifeless, grinding out human 
 destiny without end. In place of that soulless mechanism we now 
 have a growing organism. Science has shown us a universe alive, 
 progressing, climbing with many backward steps toward “one 
 far-off divine event.” ‘The doctrine of development has cleared 
 away most of the difficulties in Old Testament ethics, and en- 
 abled us to reconcile teachings which, given in different centuries, 
 are yet united in one book. It has furnished the church with a 
 
 powerful apologetic, which many of our leaders are now using.” 
 —wW, Ei, yt FAUNCE 
 
Til 
 
 CAN BELIEF IN GOD AND EVOLUTION 
 LIVE TOGETHER? 
 
 ARWIN, in the most striking and original 
 aspects of his teaching, took God out of nature 
 and put men into nature. He took God out 
 
 of nature in two ways, by denying special creation 
 of the different species and by denying that the vari- 
 ous organs useful to the life of organic beings were 
 the work of design. When he included man within 
 the bounds of nature—now thought of as having no 
 direct connection with the will and wisdom of God— 
 he gave, it seemed, the coup de grace to the theistic 
 view of the world. Whether man, “nature’s rebel,” 
 would prove to be a disturbing element in his theory 
 remained to be seen. 
 
 It is a proof of the inherent vitality of theism that 
 it has been retained and defended even by some of 
 those who have accepted evolution in its Darwinian 
 form. A brief review of the attempts which have 
 been made to harmonize evolution and theism may be 
 conveniently arranged under the familiar captions of 
 Genesis and Geology, Darwinism and Design, and the 
 ethics of evolution and Christian ethics. Various at- 
 tempts have been made to reconcile the early chapters 
 of Genesis with the biology of Darwin and the geol- 
 ogy of Lyell. Many theologians and scientists have 
 
 29 
 
 een 
 
30 THE CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 taken the Biblical account of creation as teaching 
 moral and religious truth but under the form of ori- 
 ental imagery, popular allegory, folklore myth, or 
 frankly myth, perhaps borrowed from the Babylonians 
 but purged of its polytheistic elements. When these 
 chapters are so regarded, the conflict between Genesis 
 and geology or biology is avoided, although to the dis- 
 paragement of the Genesis narrative. Others have 
 pointed out that the idea of succession and progress 
 in the forms of life is found in Genesis and science 
 alike, that the appearance of man is the culminating 
 event in both, and that the order of events in Genesis 
 is strikingly similar to that given by evolutionary sci- 
 ence. Even Heckel said that “two great and funda- 
 mental ideas, common also to the non-miraculous 
 theory of development, meet us in the Mosaic hy- 
 pothesis of creation with surprising clearness and 
 simplicity—the idea of separation or differentiation 
 and the idea of progressive development or perfecting. 
 . . . We can therefore bestow our just and sincere 
 admiration on the Jewish law-giver’s grand insight 
 into nature’ (“History of Creation,” I, pp. 37, 38). 
 Many Biblical students locate the geological ages 
 before the six creative days began, that is between the 
 first and second verses of Genesis 1. Thus C. I. Sco- 
 field in his Reference Bible says: “The first creative 
 act refers to the dateless past, and gives scope for all 
 the geologic ages. Jeremiah 4: 23-26, Isa. 24:1 and 
 45:18, clearly indicate that the earth had undergone 
 a cataclysmic change as the result of a divine judg- 
 ment. The face of the earth bears everywhere the 
 
BELIEF IN Gop AND EvoLuTION ial 
 
 marks of such a catastrophe. There are not wanting 
 intimations which connect it with a previous testing 
 and fall of angels’ (p. 3). Dr. Scofield thinks the 
 day in Genesis may mean a period. Vegetable germs 
 may have been preserved in this catastrophe but ani- 
 mal life perished. ‘“‘Relegate fossils to the primitive 
 creation, and no conflict of science with the Genesis 
 cosmogony remains” (p. 4). 
 
 Similarly L. T. Townsend, D.D., gives the render- 
 ing, “And the earth had become [past perfect tense] 
 tohu, a wreck, and bohu, without inhabitant” (“Adam 
 and Eve: History or Myth?” Boston, 1904, p. 81). 
 There were no men before the ice age, which is prac- 
 tically described by the words tohw and bohu, and 
 after this the earth was rapidly prepared in the six 
 creative days of twenty-four hours each for the habi- 
 tation of man. This scheme of interpretation is that 
 of John Bloore in his “Modernism and Its Re-State- 
 ment of Christian Doctrine,’ 1923, and of S. D. 
 Gordon in his “Quiet Talks About Simple Essentials,” 
 1924. The latter declares that “there is no scientific 
 difficulty in understanding such things being done in 
 six common consecutive days, with God at work” (p. 
 DO!) 3 
 
 Another form of catastrophism is that defended by 
 G. McC. Price in his “New Geology,” 1923. Price 
 
 -with Howorth denies that there was any ice age or 
 that large parts of America and northern Europe were 
 at one time covered with an ice-cap. He refers the 
 changes usually ascribed to glacial action to the action 
 
 3 
 
32 Tuer CHRISTIAN AND EvoLUTION 
 
 of the Flood, and thus believes that man was upon 
 the earth before these changes took place. 
 
 The Genesis and Geology debate has raised and still 
 raises serious exegetical difficulties, but it may be 
 maintained that these will be dispelled by increasing 
 light from the sides of science and of Biblical inter- 
 pretation. Professor Fairhurst remarks in speaking 
 of the elaborate attempts which have been made to 
 place the cosmogonies of Genesis and Geology side by 
 side in detail: “I regard such efforts as a waste of 
 labor. The one record is so general, and the other so 
 imperfect, that we have no certain basis for detailed 
 comparisons. If we cannot see that they perfectly 
 harmonize, still, as shown above, we are not justified 
 in asserting that they conflict” (‘Organic Evolution 
 Considered,” 1913, p. 348). 
 
 If there is no exact and detailed correspondence 
 this may not be altogether a disadvantage, for if the 
 Genesis account agreed exactly with the science of 
 today it would be sure to disagree with the science of 
 tomorrow. 
 
 More serious for Christian theism was the Dar- 
 winian attack upon the design argument. Darwin’s 
 leading expounders were agreed that the design argu- 
 ment had been demolished and Darwin really shared 
 this opinion, although he confessed that his mind was 
 in a muddle on the subject. That the Darwinism of 
 today is still hostile to the admission of design in 
 nature is shown by the statement of a latter-day Dar- 
 winian, Julian Huxley, in his ‘Essays of a Biologist,” 
 1923: “Darwin gave the deathblow to teleology by 
 
Beier in Gop AND EvoLuTIon 33 
 
 showing that apparently purposive structures could 
 arise by means of a non-purposive mechanism” (p. 
 41). , 
 
 The feature of Darwinism that was hostile or fatal 
 to design was the assumption that chance could mimic 
 design, that the fortuitous could evolve the fit, that, 
 to quote again from Julian Huxley, “in pre-human 
 evolution, the blind chances of variation and the blind 
 sifting of natural selection have directed the course of 
 evolution and progress” (op. cit., p. 11). 
 
 A notable attempt to construct an argument for de- 
 sign from Darwinian premises was made by John 
 Fiske in his ‘Destiny of Man,” 1884. His.argument, 
 carried on with marked literary skill, is that if man 
 has come so far from origins so lowly it is reasonable 
 to suppose that he will go further. Immortality, in 
 fact, is but evolution at the end of its journey. If the 
 long process ending in man has no meaning we are 
 put to permanent intellectual confusion, and it can 
 have a meaning only if the long chapters which tell 
 of struggle have a fitting dénouement in a future 
 existence in which man’s powers can be developed and 
 his hopes and aspirations realized. ‘So far from de- 
 grading humanity or putting it on a level with the 
 animal world in general, the Darwinian theory shows 
 us distinctly for the first time how the creation and 
 the perfecting of man is the goal toward which 
 Nature’s work has all the while been tending” (p. 25). 
 
 For Henry Drummond and A. R. Wallace, as well 
 as for Fiske, man was a standing argument for design 
 in nature. “Ask the zoologist,” said Drummond in 
 
34 THe CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 his “Ascent of Man,” 1894, “what, judging from sci- 
 ence alone, Nature aspired to from the first, he could 
 but answer Mammalia—Mothers. In as real a sense 
 as a factory is meant to turn out locomotives or clocks, 
 the machinery of Nature is designed in the last resort 
 to turn out Mothers” (p. 268). Drummond’s special 
 place in the apologetic of evolution is that he strove 
 to correct what he deemed the one-sided emphasis 
 upon the struggle for existence as a factor in progress. 
 He admitted that the first chapter or two of evolution 
 might be headed the Struggle for Life, but the book 
 as a whole was really a love story (p. 218). The 
 struggle for life is only the villain of the drama, which 
 is really a moral drama, and its hero is the struggle 
 for the life of others. ‘The moral order, he insists, is 
 a continuous line from the beginning (p. 26), and in 
 the struggle of the plant to produce seeds and of the 
 animal to beget offspring, and even perhaps in attrac- 
 tion and chemical affinity we see the beginnings of that 
 process which in the light of its outcome we see as the 
 evolution of love. Purpose and a loving purpose take 
 the place of a blind and cruel chance. 
 
 The arguments of Fiske and Drummond, so far as 
 they affect the place of man in nature, have been fol- 
 lowed substantially by later evolutionary apologists. 
 The essence of this apologetic is a principle as old as 
 Aristotle that a thing or process is to be judged by its 
 end, not its beginning—by the fruit, not by the root. 
 The fact that the lily springs from the mud does not 
 destroy the beauty of the flower. The lowly origin 
 of man should not blind us to his essential nature. A 
 
Beier rin Gop AND EvoLuTION 35: 
 
 man’s a man for a’ that (whatever his origin), with 
 the capacities, the spiritual nature and the mighty 
 hopes that make us men. The genetic continuity and 
 connection of man with nature therefore, it is held, 
 should exalt our views of nature rather than lower our 
 estimate of man. As Pringle-Pattison has expressed 
 it: “Man is organic to nature, and nature is organic 
 foaman ldeq. of ,God,"\ p. 91/7) i+ Nature, out or 
 which man arose, should be judged from the stand- 
 point of man, not vice versa, and when so judged 
 there is nothing in man’s natural or brute origin which 
 shadows his title to his spiritual inheritance. Man in 
 this view is not brutalized, but nature is spiritualized, 
 and “the Nature of Darwin and Huxley and Mill be- 
 comes the Nature of Wordsworth and Emerson” (D. 
 S. Cairns, ‘‘Reasonableness of the Christian Faith,” 
 acved: p.7-90)), 
 
 In his later writings A. R. Wallace, co-advocate 
 with Darwin of natural selection, finds design at three 
 ‘points in the evolutionary process. With Henderson 
 after him and indeed with Paley before him, he finds 
 teleology in “the existence of a special group of ele- 
 ments possessing such exceptional and altogether 
 extraordinary properties as to render possible the ex- 
 istence of vegetable and animal life-forms’ (‘The 
 World of Life,” 1911, p. 416). The Mind that 
 caused these elements to exist must be millions of 
 times greater than that which conceived and executed 
 the steam engine. He further assumes that the most 
 rational explanation of the world of life is the view 
 that its end is “the development of intellectual, moral, 
 
36 Tus CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 and spiritual beings” (p. 341). Wallace would even 
 reinstate design in the field of natural selection, hold- 
 ing that the vast life world of variety, use and beauty 
 “does absolutely require some non-mechanical mind 
 and power as its efficient cause’ (‘World of Life,” p. 
 423). 
 
 Our three apologists saw an increasing purpose run- 
 ning through organic nature and running up to man. 
 Wallace frankly assumed special creation to account 
 for man on the spiritual side; Drummond less defi- 
 nitely brings in the action of Environment (with a 
 capital E)) in producing man and he says that “in- 
 stead of abolishing a creative Hand, Evolution de- 
 mands it” (op. cit., p. 329); while Fiske says that 
 man dichotomizes the whole universe—man on one 
 side and the whole universe on the other. 
 
 It must be acknowledged, however, that there has 
 always been a tension between evolution and theism, 
 and that as evolution has “evolved” the tension has be- 
 come greater rather than less. No scientific evolutionist 
 of note, so far as observed, now advocates the Wallace 
 theory of a spiritual influx or special creation at the 
 appearance of man. On the other hand, in the class- 
 ical exposition of theistic evolution, Le Conte’s “E;vo- 
 lution and Its Relation to Religious Thought,” (2d 
 ed., rev., 1916), the author while claiming to be and 
 intending to be a theist, acknowledges that by the line 
 of thought he follows “we are carried strongly in the 
 direction of pantheism” (p. 336). In whatever field 
 he covers, the consistent evolutionist will not admit 
 any intrusion, or influx of spiritual forces into the 
 
BELIEF 1N Gop AND EvoLuTION 37 
 
 stream of natural events. God may be postulated as 
 a distant Originator in a deistic sense of the natural 
 process or as a sort of spiritual underpinning of all 
 existence in a pantheistic sense, but God is not allowed 
 to act effectively and directly either in nature or 
 human history. If in the beginning, He is only in the 
 beginning; if in all things, He is in all things indis- 
 criminately and so in nothing particularly. The in- 
 evitable tendency is uniformly to sacrifice the tran- 
 scendence which theism requires to immanence. From 
 biology and equally from anthropology and psychol~ 
 ogy and religious history the supernatural must be 
 banished. What theism loses in this process is pre- 
 cisely what distinguishes it from competing systems of 
 thought. 
 
 To link up with evolution a system of Christian 
 ethics is equally difficult. ‘Tennyson can sing in classic 
 
 phrase,— 
 Move upward, working out the beast, 
 And let the ape and tiger die. 
 But he can say in another mood, 
 
 If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain, or a fable, 
 ‘Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning shines? 
 
 And Alfred Noyes can sing, 
 
 Down with Reticence, down with Reverence—forward—naked— 
 let them stare. 
 
 Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men; 
 Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again? 
 
 If evolution has any ethical imperative it may well 
 be one that is suggested by Darwin's rule for the ad- 
 vancement of all organic beings, “Multiply, vary, let 
 
38 THe CHRISTIAN AND EwoLuTIon 
 
 39 
 
 the strongest live and the weakest die.” Nature may 
 indeed say, “Be good,” but with Sir Leslie Stephen 
 we may hear her say in an emphatic aside, “Be not 
 too good.” ‘Those groups of men who reverence and 
 obey what W. James calls “the ethics of infinite and 
 mysterious obligation from high” may indeed have 
 an advantage in the struggle for existence, but no way 
 has yet been shown how such an ethics can spring 
 from evolutionary soil. 
 
 Evolution, as we shall see more fully later, natu- 
 rally gravitates toward that monistic naturalism which 
 is proving to be the home of leading evolutionists in 
 the twentieth as it was in the nineteenth century. 
 When the philosophy of evolution is by pious and 
 well-meaning hands introduced into the citadel of 
 Christianity, it proves to be a Trojan horse which has 
 within it forces that are destructive alike to ‘Christian 
 theism and Christian morals. 
 
 The recent sensational advances in physical science 
 have pointed to a conception of matter as energy, and 
 ultimately even as will, which is in harmony with a 
 spiritual interpretation of the universe. In the mean- 
 time it cannot be said that twentieth century biology 
 is making any positive contribution to religious 
 thought. It is not likely to do so until biological 
 science shakes itself loose from the philosophical dog- 
 matism of the nineteenth century. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 GOD IN THE GAPS—THE ORIGIN 
 OF LIFE 
 
“If God is only to be left to the gaps in our knowledge, where 
 shall we be when these gaps are filled up? And if they are 
 never to be filled up, is God only to be found in the disorders of 
 the world? ‘Those who yield to the temptation to reserve a point 
 here and there for special divine interposition are apt to forget 
 that this virtually excludes God from the rest of the process. 
 If God appears periodically, He disappears periodically. If He 
 comes upon the scene at special crises He is absent from the 
 scene at intervals. Whether is all-God or occasional-God the 
 nobler theory? Positively, the idea of an immanent God, which 
 is the God of evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional 
 wonder-worker who is the God of an old theology.”—Hznry 
 DRUMMOND. 
 
 “Whoever claims to have succeeded in making living matter 
 from inanimate will have to prove that he has succeeded in pro- 
 ducing nuclein material which acts as a ferment for its own 
 synthesis and thus reproduces itself. Nobody has thus far suc~ 
 ceeded in this, although nothing warrants us in taking it for 
 granted that this task is beyond the power of science.”—JAcguxEs 
 Lors. 
 
 “With regard to the dawn of life it does not follow, as has 
 often been pointed out, that although biogenesis is the only known 
 law of reproduction today, the conditions requisite for abiogen- 
 esis have never occurred. We cannot say definitely what these 
 conditions were, yet we can be tolerably certain that the lands 
 and, particularly for this purpose, the seas of late Archzean times 
 were very different from any modern conditions, terrestrial or 
 marine. ‘They are conditions that will never return, and are not 
 humanly reproducible. The belief in such a natural origin of life 
 is an exigency of thought.”"—JAmrEs Y. SIMPSON, 
 
IV 
 
 GOD IN THE GAPS—THE ORIGIN 
 OF LIFE 
 
 -@ STRANGE place to find God. “As if God lived 
 A in gaps,” as Drummond exclaims. As if God 
 
 who fills all things is to be looked for in dis- 
 continuities and exceptions rather than in the majestic 
 sweep of His laws operative throughout the universe. 
 Does not the very title of our chapter place theism in 
 a humiliating and precarious position? If God is to 
 be looked for in the exceptions, the implication is that 
 He is not to be found in the ordinary ongoings of 
 nature, and the danger always is that the gaps will 
 be filled up and thus no place will be left for God at 
 all. Certainly the theism that looks for God in the 
 gaps alone is in a dangerous position while the sci- 
 entists are busily attempting to fill up the gaps, and 
 the philosophers are minimizing their importance, and 
 even sober theologians like Bishop Gore are telling us 
 that “we shall not, if we are wise, lay stress on the 
 gaps in the scientific story of creation, or build on the 
 conviction that living matter could not have evoived 
 out of what had no life, or rationality out of animal 
 mind” (“Belief in God,” 1923, p. 58). 
 
 Before dismissing as trivial and unworthy of atten- 
 tion the argument that stresses the gaps or breaks in 
 nature, let us look a little closer at the state of the 
 
 41 
 
42 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvvoLUTION 
 
 question. We may remind ourselves that evolution 
 in its modern form was at first a scientific hypothesis 
 to account for resemblances between species, but that 
 the idea of genetic relationship was rapidly extended 
 downward into the inorganic sphere and upward into 
 that of human life and history. The theory of evo- 
 lution itself thus quickly “evolved.” It was readily 
 transformed from a scientific hypothesis into a philo- 
 sophical dogma, as it passed from the realm of em- 
 pirical science into that of speculative philosophy. 
 Evolution thus easily and perhaps logically became 
 identified with a monistic view of the universe, or 
 with a theory of divine immanence which looked 
 askance at all breaks, gaps, interventions or intrusions, 
 whether in nature or in the origin, life and history 
 of man. 
 
 The question of the gaps in natural and human his- 
 tory is, as a matter of fact, important both to the 
 scientist and the theologian. Evolutionists of stand- 
 ing are free to confess that they have compunctions 
 of conscience when they use the word evolution in a 
 broad and vague sense to cover the inorganic, the liv- 
 ing, and the consciously purposive. As T. H. Morgan 
 says: “What has the evolution of the stars, of the 
 horse and of human inventions in common? Only 
 this, that in each case from a simple beginning through 
 a series of changes something more complex, or at 
 least different, has come into being. To lump all 
 these kinds of changes into one and call them evolu- 
 tion is no more than asserting that you believe in 
 consecutive series of events (which is history) caus- 
 
THE OricIn oF LIFE «43 
 
 ally connected (which is science)” (“A Critique of 
 the Theory of Evolution,” 1916, p. 6). 
 
 Unfortunately for clearness of thought and preci- 
 sion of language it has become not unusual to apply 
 the word evolution to all three realms—to the Domain 
 of the Inorganic, the Realm of Organisms and the 
 Kingdom of Man—indiscriminately and to the con- 
 nection between them, so that we even meet with the 
 statement that “evolution demands” that life was 
 evolved from the inorganic by a natural process. The 
 only way in which the same word can with propriety 
 be used of the three distinct spheres is to deny their 
 distinctness, and reduce them all to the same level. 
 This can be done by a leveling down process in the 
 case of materialism, or by regarding all three spheres 
 indiscriminately as an expression of the divine life as 
 is done by pantheism. We cannot look for “God in 
 the gaps,” because in the one case there are no gaps 
 and no God, and in the other case God is to found 
 everywhere in such a sense that He is to be found no- 
 where in particular. 
 
 From the theistic standpoint again the question of 
 God in the gaps is not unimportant, in spite of the 
 fact that the word is so short and the problem is often 
 spoken of with disdain. It is indeed when it is broadly 
 considered the question whether God is active in His 
 world at all in any personal and preferential sense. 
 The question of God in the gaps is at bottom the ques- 
 tion of the supernatural. 
 
 The two most obvious gaps or breaks in the natu- 
 ral process are at the origin of life and the origin of 
 
44 THE CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 man. We speak of the solar “system,” but there is 
 no question here of a self-preservative and conative 
 organism stich as meets us in the simplest forms of 
 life. How did life originate in a lifeless world? 
 There are two possible answers: first, there were cer- 
 tain elements existing in the inorganic world whose 
 physical or chemical actions and interactions produced 
 life; or second, life was introduced into the inor- 
 ganic world by some power outside of that world. 
 Life was evolved; or life was created. ‘There is no 
 a priori reason for believing in one of these methods 
 rather than the other. Before the days of Pasteur, 
 spontaneous generation used to be accepted as an 
 axiom on the ground that decaying meat bred maggots 
 and dirty rags would soon swarm with life. ‘Today 
 we are more apt to hear that the natural evolution of 
 life from the lifeless is an exigency of thought. The 
 fact is that there is plenty of analogy in experience 
 for both methods—the method of the production of 
 new forms from preéxisting elements and the method 
 of new results from the insertion of a new element 
 into an existing complex. 
 
 In nature we have the unfolding of the seed—first 
 the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn on the 
 ear—but we have also the new put into the old, the 
 leaven hid in the three measures of meal, till the 
 whole is leavened. The bread will not rise unless the 
 leaven is put in. Is the inorganic world the seed of 
 the organic? Or is it the meal into which a principle 
 of life must be introduced before there can be growth? 
 There is plenty of analogy for both; and it is a ques- 
 
Tue Oricin oF Lifs 45 
 
 tion of evidence in the individual case. Results 
 reached by the slow and careful methods of science 
 will command more confidence than the impatient as- 
 sertion of a popular champion of evolution, Joseph 
 McCabe, who says: “E’very scientific authority in the 
 world now believes that life was naturally evolved 
 from the chemicals of the early earth. Everything 
 that we can satisfactorily study was evolved, etc.” 
 (“A’B C of Evolution,” 1921, p. 29). ‘The plea 
 made by Benjamin Moore (in his “Origin and Nature 
 of Life,” 1912) that the search for the natural origin 
 of life has had beneficent results and has led to the 
 greatest discovery in medical science will be dis- 
 counted when we reflect that as a matter of fact this 
 discovery—that of antiseptic surgery—was the out- 
 come of Pasteur’s experimental disproof of sponta- 
 neous generation. 
 
 Since the experiments of Pasteur the problem of 
 the origin of life has become acute. Evolutionary 
 scientists have become more and more monistic in 
 their philosophy. Heedless of Darwin’s admission of 
 the creation of primordial germs and Wallace’s as- 
 sumption of creative power to explain the higher en- 
 dowments of man, the modern evolutionist in regular 
 standing assumes as axiomatic that each stage of 
 existence passes continuously into another stage with- 
 out spiritual influx from without. On the experi- 
 mental side, however, the advocates of abiogenesis 
 have met with constant defeat. A sober statement is 
 that of L. L. Woodruff, in his “Evolution of the 
 Earth and Its Inhabitants”: “We thus reach the gen- 
 
46 THE CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 eral conclusion that, so far as human observation and 
 experimentation go, no form of life arises today except 
 from preéxisting life” (p. 93). Geddes and Thomson 
 say: “It is plain, therefore, that the doctrine of the or- 
 igin of the living from the non-living cannot be held at 
 present with a clear or easy mind” (‘Evolution,” 
 1911, p. 71). And J. S. Haldane says: “Evolution 
 or no evolution, there is not the remotest possibility 
 of deriving the organic from the inorganic” (‘‘Mech- 
 anism, Life and Personality,” 2d ed., 1921, p. 100). 
 One of the most interesting chapters in modern 
 science is furnished by the attempts which have been 
 made by evolutionary scientists to bridge the gap be- 
 tween the lifeless and the living and to bring the ori- 
 gin of life within the range of general law. With 
 commendable patience and industry they have tried 
 to make life in the laboratory—without success thus 
 far; they have tried to imagine the antecedents or 
 causes out of which life has sprung; they have sought 
 for a formula, such as the action, reaction and inter- 
 action of Energy, which will bridge the gap between 
 the living and the lifeless; they have spoken of a 
 Law of Complexity which will endow lifeless matter 
 with the attributes of life; they have fixed upon a 
 substance, imaginary or real, such as the ill-starred 
 Bathybius of Huxley or the modern colloid substance, 
 out of which life is supposed to have sprung; they 
 have referred the production of life to a series of 
 lucky accidents; they have sought to escape the prob- 
 lem by referring the origin of life to other planets 
 or by saying that life is eternal; they have declared 
 
THE Oricin’ oF Lire 47 
 
 the period in which life arose to be unique and the 
 conditions of its origin to be unreproducible; they 
 have even postulated a continual production of or- 
 ganisms below the range of microscopic vision from 
 the inorganic sphere today; they have explained the 
 unknown by the more unknown by saying that life is 
 brought forth in every mother-earth in the universe 
 in the maturity of its development. 
 
 These various attempts to bring the origin of life 
 within the domain of general law are not without 
 variety and ingenuity, but in general they are specu- 
 lative rather than scientific. They may be roughly 
 arranged in three classes: (1) Theories which hold 
 that life is being produced now from the non-living; 
 (2) theories which maintain that life is not produced 
 now but that it was formerly under conditions that 
 cannot be reproduced, and (3) theories that hold that 
 life was never spontaneously produced on the earth 
 but that it came from some other planet or that it is 
 eternal. The first theory, that of Scheffer in his 
 presidential address (See Science, Sept. 6, 1912, pp. 
 294ff.), is that instead of the eternity of life (Arrhe- 
 nius) or the spontaneous generation of life but once 
 under inaccessible conditions (K. Pearson and others) 
 or the meteoric conveyance of life to our planet (Lord 
 Kelvin), life is constantly being produced and has 
 always been produced from certain colloidal sub- 
 stances which he describes. He admits, however, that 
 these countless beginnings of life have left no trace 
 discoverable in the paleontological series or discern- 
 ible now to the most delicate instrument. “Life” of 
 
 4 
 
Ag Tor CHRISTIAN AND EvoLution 
 
 a certain kind may be constantly produced, but it is 
 not the kind that has, it is assumed, evolved into the 
 countless living forms which now clothe and people 
 the earth. 
 
 If it be said that there is now no thoroughfare be- 
 tween the lifeless and the living, but that the line was 
 crossed in the remote past under conditions which 
 cannot be reproduced or even with any certainty 
 imagined, we are again in the region of pure specula- 
 tion carefully removed from possible scientific proof 
 or disproof. In fact so slender a bridge that it could 
 be crossed but once—at one period or even in one 
 instance—lacks the required stability of a general law. 
 If the gate to life is so straight and narrow that it 
 could be passed but once under conditions impossible 
 to reproduce or imagine, the origin of life is removed 
 from the region of customary behavior or uniform 
 sequence of antecedents and consequents, and the 
 theory has no advantage for scientific purposes over 
 an agnostic theory or one of special creation. 
 
 To assume that life as we now know it had no be- 
 ginning or that it was brought to the earth by some 
 meteorite is directly opposed to the scientific prob- 
 abilities. Weismann, for instance, does not think that 
 a germ of life could be conveyed within the crevices 
 of a meteorite, because “it could neither endure the 
 excessive cold nor the absolute desiccation to which it 
 would be exposed in cosmic space, which contains 
 absolutely no water” (“The Evolution Theory,” II, 
 p. 365). 
 
 It is safe to say that these theories, aside from their 
 
THE Oricin oF Lire 49 
 
 being mutually destructive, have not bridged the gap 
 between the living and the lifeless. If life is made in 
 the laboratory we shall be curious to see of what sort 
 it is and whether it can maintain itself in the struggle 
 for existence. In the meanwhile the choice is between 
 creative power and a miracle of speculative ingenuity 
 or of rhetoric. 
 
 The problem is not simplified by altering the defini- 
 tion of life as is done by Luther Burbank when he 
 says that “Life really exists as an organized force in 
 all growing crystals; below even these we find in- 
 stead of the organized growth seen in crystals, an 
 amorphous life. Both crystals, the amebz and other 
 protozoan forms, respond definitely to some of the 
 forces of Nature, such as gravity, heat and light; in 
 other words, have the quality of positive and negative 
 reactions—a limited power of choice, and from such 
 faint prophecies of life, just emerging from the realm 
 of chemistry, have come during zons of time, all the 
 varied plant and animal life on this earth, including 
 man himself’ (Condensed from ‘Evolution and Va- 
 riation With the Fundamental Significance of Sex,” 
 Ppraly-2). 
 
 It is equally useless in solving the scientific problem 
 to have recourse to a metaphysical hylozoism, which 
 endows all matter with a form of life, or to adopt the 
 parallelism of Spinoza as is done by Lloyd Morgan 
 in his “Emergent Evolution” (1923). In the latter 
 case life is “an emergent chord and not merely due to 
 the summation, however complex, of constituent 
 notes,” i. e., could not have been predicted from the 
 
50 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 fullest possible knowledge of the physical-chemical 
 elements (p. 6). There is no “special insertion ab ex- 
 tra’ —no “‘alien influx into nature’; divine Activity is 
 omnipresent, for “God, if in any, is in all, without 
 distinction of entities’ (p. 13). Morgan would sub- 
 stitute the conception of “relatedness” for that of 
 agency or efficient cause, but no help is given in this 
 conception in explaining why life emerged at one time 
 rather than at another. 
 
 _The most pretentious attempt to account for the 
 origin of life on naturalistic principles is that of Pro- 
 fessor H. F. Osborn in his “The Origin and Evolu- 
 tion of Life” (1918). The lay reader will not see 
 what is gained by the formula of the action, reaction 
 and interaction (or the capture, storage and release) 
 of Energy. If the word Energy is used in a more 
 mystical sense, meaning the Infinite Energy of the 
 Universe or the Energy from which all things pro- 
 ceed and which wells up in consciousness, we are in 
 the realm of metaphysics, and the discarded idea of 
 special divine Activity might even be concealed within 
 the term. This of course is not Osborn’s meaning, 
 but it may still be objected that he uses the term 
 energy in an indefinite sense. He even speaks of “the 
 actions, reaction and interactions of living energy” 
 (p. 7), as if he would build the bridge between the 
 lifeless and the living out of the various meanings that 
 might be assigned to the word energy. He admits 
 that for the present the theory that accounts for the 
 origin of life from physical causes is speculative and 
 is philosophy rather than science. The question goes 
 
THE OricIn oF Lire 51 
 
 back to the more ultimate question of the nature of 
 life—“Whether it is solely physicochemical in its 
 energies, or whether it includes a plus energy or ele- 
 ment which may have distinguished LIFE from the 
 beginning” (p. 281). Professor L. T. More after a 
 lifetime spent in investigating the phenomena and 
 laws of physics confesses that he can find no meaning 
 in the statements of those who correlate biological 
 and psychological with physical phenomena. To make 
 out his case, it is maintained, even Professor Osborn 
 is guilty of a “reckless disregard of physical law,” 
 and “either willingly or through inability to compre- 
 hend the elementary laws of physics, invents his own 
 physics” (p. 269). 
 
 In spite of Osborn’s discussion the fact remains that 
 from all that we know of lifeless matter it does not 
 produce life, and from all that we know of living 
 organisms they are not produced by lifeless matter. 
 Recent researches into the nature of life, and the 
 structure of the cell and the phenomena of heredity, 
 have increased the difficulties of a doctrine of abio- 
 genesis. As E. B. Wilson says in his “The Cell in 
 Development and Inheritance” (2d ed., 1900): ‘“I‘he 
 study of the cell has on the whole seemed to widen 
 rather than to narrow the enormous gap that sepa- 
 rates even the lowest forms of life from the inorganic 
 world” (p. 434). 
 
 Recent investigation has further increased the dif- 
 ficulty of the doctrine of spontaneous generation by 
 bringing to light “the chemical complexity of the food 
 of even the simplest protozoa or bacteria.” Life must 
 
52 Tue CHRISTIAN AND EvoruTIon 
 
 apparently exist before the chemical elements neces- 
 sary to sustain life could be utilized. If mysteriously 
 one day a living cell floated on the face of the waters, 
 it would, without a sort of double miracle, have no 
 chance of living or of finding nourishment. 
 
 Modern research has exposed more and more the 
 mysteries of heredity but has made it increasingly 
 difficult for the physicochemical theorist to explain 
 them. ‘The real problem of life,’ says a physician 
 scientist, Dr. W. Hanna Thomson, in his ‘‘What is 
 Physical Life?’ “is how the microscopic single cell, 
 with which each individual among the metazoa begins, 
 should virtually contain not only all the structural 
 peculiarities of the body of its parent without varia- 
 tion from its hereditary pattern, but should also have 
 the power to determine where the untold millions of 
 cells to grow from it are to find their proper places in 
 the future adult body. What combination of physics 
 and chemistry could produce this thing, when the in- 
 conceivably complex internal makeup of such a micro- 
 cosm as that single primordial cell cannot be conceived 
 of even by metaphysicians?” (pp. 99, 100.) 
 
 J. S. Haldane, not a vitalist, argues strongly in his 
 “Mechanism, Life and Personality” (2d ed., 1921) 
 that the mechanistic theory makes “a gigantic leap in 
 the dark” in identifying stimulus and response with 
 physical or chemical cause or effect (p. 32), and he 
 concludes that “the phenomena of life are of such a 
 nature that no physical or chemical explanation of 
 them is remotely conceivable” (p. 64). Of the germ- 
 plasm or nuclear germinal substance he says: “We are 
 
THE Oricin oF Lire 53 
 
 thus forced to the admission that the germ-plasm is 
 not only a structure or mechanism of inconceivable 
 complexity, but that this structure is capable of divid- 
 ing itself to an absolutely indefinite extent and yet 
 retaining its original structure’ (pp. 56, 57). There 
 is no need to push the analysis further. “The mech- 
 anistic theory of heredity is not merely unproven, it 
 is impossible” (p. 58). 
 
 It is natural that philosophers who can admit no 
 real creation and no preéxistent Creator will find the 
 idea of a supernatural hiatus between the inorganic 
 and the organic “unphilosophical.’”’ How then is the 
 obvious gap to be filled in? <A. S. Pringle-Pattison, 
 in his “The Idea of God” (1917), has a way of evad- 
 ing the difficulty which is not open to the scientist. 
 The question of the origin of life is of no philosophi- 
 cal importance because the question of “sooner or 
 later in a particular time series” (p. 98) is indiffer- 
 ent to philosophy. Philosophy is concerned only with 
 the question of intrinsic nature or value, and ‘‘the 
 temporal view of things cannot be ultimate” (p. 383). 
 It is to be observed, however, that the author does 
 not regard the time-succession as irrevelent in evaluat- 
 ing the place of man in nature. He says that man is 
 “the last term in the series” (p. 110), and that “it is 
 the emergence of intelligence . . . which supplies the 
 final term, the goal or consummation of the evolution- 
 ary process” (p. 111). The fact is that temporal suc- 
 cession is of the very essence of the evolution theory, 
 which is often defined as the theory that the present 
 is the child of the past and the parent of the future. 
 
54 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 If time is an illusion the difficulties of evolution are 
 not solved, but the whole process collapses. 
 
 Our review of the problem of the origin of life 
 justifies us in accepting the opinion of a biologist, 
 Julian Huxley, that “of the first origins of life we 
 know nothing and guess little’ (“Essays of a Biolo- 
 gist,” 1923, p. 17), and the statement of an astrono- 
 mer, TI. C. Chamberlin, in closing his work on ‘The 
 Origin of the Earth’: “The emergence of what we 
 call the living from the inorganic, and the emergence 
 of what we call the psychic from the physiologic, 
 were at once the transcendent and the transcendental 
 features of the earth’s revolution.” It may be un- 
 wise to stake the fortunes of theism upon a special 
 theory of the beginnings of life on this planet, but 
 we are safe in saying that there are at present no 
 ascertained facts to prevent our referring the origin 
 of life directly to the creative power of God. A full- 
 orbed theism which believes in the transcendence of 
 God over nature and in His creative power will be 
 slow to believe that that power was exhausted in its 
 initial exercise. 
 
 If God is to be found only in the gaps He is an 
 absentee God conceived in a deistic fashion; if He 
 can only act through general laws, His action is never 
 free, personal and direct and He is conceived in a 
 pantheistic fashion. A theism which stresses the per- 
 sonality of God will look for God in general laws 
 which He has established in His providence for the 
 government of the world, but will look for Him as 
 well in those “big lifts” in nature by which He pre- 
 
THE OnriciIn oF LiFs 55 
 
 pares the way for the life of intelligent creatures, in 
 those special arrangements of His providence in ac- 
 cordance with which He makes all things work to- 
 gether for good for those who love Him, and, in a 
 sinful world, in those provisions of His grace in which 
 His own love for His children is specially revealed. 
 

 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
“These religions [Judaism and Christianity] have unnaturally 
 severed man from the animal world, to which he essentially be- 
 longs, and placed him on a pinnacle apart, treating all lower 
 creatures as mere things; whereas Brahminism and Buddhism 
 insist not only upon his kinship with all forms of animal life, 
 but also upon his vital connection with all animated Nature, bind- 
 ing him up into intimate relationship with them by metempsy- 
 chosis.”—-SCHOPENHAUER, 
 
 “For him [Darwin] the soul of man is no whit less the off- 
 spring of that of animals than is his body. Our psychic powers 
 are new dispensations of theirs. The ascending series of grada- 
 tions is no more broken for the psyche than for the soma. ‘The 
 gaps are no wider or more numerous from the lowest to the high- 
 est in the one than in the other. The affinities and analogies 
 are as close, and the soul inherits as much from our venerable, 
 brute forbears as does the body.”—G. Stanitey Hatt, 
 
 “Thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
 And crownest him with glory and honor. 
 Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; 
 Thou hast put all things under his feet; 
 All sheep and oxen, 
 Yea, and the beasts of the field, 
 The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, 
 Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.” 
 —Psaum 8. 
 
ti 
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 F THE evolution theory had not been extended 
 to cover the origin of man, it would have pos- 
 sessed merely an academic interest. When it 
 
 was made to include the genesis of man it was trans- 
 formed from a scientific hypothesis, such as the molec- 
 ular theory of gases or the wave-theory of light, 
 into a philosophy of the universe. 
 
 Such an extension of the theory became inevitable 
 when man was included within its scope. When man 
 is brought under the sway of evolution every product 
 of man’s thought is likewise included, and evolution, 
 a jealous mistress claiming all or nothing, becomes 
 the dominant category, and every theory of the uni- 
 verse which man has constructed is itself the product 
 of evolution. Darwin himself said that he ‘would 
 give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Se- 
 lection” if a difference in kind was admitted between 
 man and the animals so that man was excluded from 
 the sway of selection. The inclusion of man within 
 the compass of evolution—of man as a thinking, lov- 
 ing, worshipping being—brings within its compass all 
 of man’s arts, sciences, philosophies, morals and re- 
 ligions. Every achievement of art, every discovery 
 of science, every imperative of morality, every insight 
 of philosophy, every aspiration of religion—including 
 
 59 
 
60 Tue CHRISTIAN AND EvoLUTION 
 
 the framing of the evolution theory itselfi—was due to 
 forces resident in the animals below and before man, 
 and ultimately to the properties of the primordial liv- 
 ing germ; in fact were all latent in the last analysis 
 in “a fiery cloud.” 
 
 The method of evolution is to explain the more 
 evolved by the less evolved, the later and higher 
 phases of existence by the earlier and lower, the moral 
 by the non-moral, the conscious by the unconscious, 
 and at length the living by the lifeless. The logician 
 may object to the method of evolution as fallacious, 
 but as long as the method—the explanation of the 
 higher by the lower—is in vogue, the tendency of evo- 
 lution is to explain moral and religious phenomena 
 by the non-moral and non-religious, and evolution 
 logically eventuates in a materialistic or at least a 
 naturalistic philosophy of life. 
 
 In spite of this tendency it is sometimes said that 
 the question of man’s origin has no interest for the 
 moralist or theologian. The questions of origin and 
 nature, or origin and destiny, are different questions 
 and man is what he is, with his hopes, aspirations, re- 
 sponsibilities and endowments, whether his origin be, 
 in Lyell’s words, from “mud or monkey.” The lily 
 is pure and the rose beautiful even though they have 
 their roots in a damp and moldy soil. “A man’s a 
 man for a’ that,’ and if man is genetically related to 
 nature this should raise our conception of nature 
 rather than lower our estimate of man. 
 
 Those who are familiar with the logic of evolution 
 and the tendency of evolutionary writers know per- 
 
Tur OriciIn oF Man 61 
 
 fectly well that the evolutionary view of man has made 
 a difference and does make a difference in the answer 
 we give to the question, “What is man?” ‘The ques- 
 tion of pedigree or descent is important and very im- 
 portant to the heir presumptive to a throne or a for- 
 tune. Is man free? Has he kinship with the Divine? 
 Has he a personality which will outlast the stars? 
 The evolutionist inevitably throws the weight of his 
 theory into the scales in answering these questions. 
 He can account for man more easily if all of man’s 
 actions are determined by his physical environment. | 
 He can establish a descent from the brute more easily 
 if he assumes that man has a destiny in common with 
 the brute. If man on the other hand is a free being 
 in a world of moral responsibility, a child of God 
 (even if a prodigal child) and an heir to an immortal 
 destiny, he cannot in his essential being be assimilated 
 to the brute. He is different in kind as well as in 
 degree. Naturalistic evolution must here confess its 
 limitations or else be supplemented by principles which 
 transcend if they do not contradict it. Evolution can- 
 not account for the soul, and the only alternatives are 
 to deny the soul, or to deny evolution, or at least to 
 deny that the soul in its origin was subject to the oper- 
 ation of evolution. 
 
 It is not surprising that an evolutionist like Wal- 
 lace (who retained his religious faith) should confess 
 these limitations of evolution or natural selection: 
 that an evolutionist like Darwin (who lost his reli- 
 gious faith) should limit the mental powers of man, 
 holding that man with his lowly origin was incompe- 
 
62 Tuer CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTION 
 
 tent to judge high questions of the existence of God 
 and immortality; or that an evolutionist like Romanes 
 (who first lost and then regained his faith) should in 
 the middle period assimilate the mind of man to that 
 of the brute, and afterward confess that he had taken 
 too little account of human nature. Wallace held that 
 the mathematical, artistic, moral and spiritual endow- 
 ments of man “clearly point to the existence in man 
 of something which he has not derived from his ani- 
 mal progenitors—something which we may best refer 
 to as being of a spiritual essence or nature’ (‘“Dar- 
 winism,” 1891, p. 474). Wallace pointed to a “spir- 
 itual influx” —the béte noir of later evolutionists—as 
 the cause of these spiritual endowments. 
 
 The Wallace theory, it may be pointed out, has af- 
 finities which make it not unattractive to Christian 
 theism. It maintains at once the transcendence of 
 man over nature and the transcendence of God over 
 nature and man—two essential articles of the Chris- 
 tian creed. Again, as in the Incarnation there was a 
 union of the supernatural—the miraculous conception 
 —with the natural processes of pre-natal and post- 
 natal growth and birth, so in the origin of man there 
 may have been the cooperation of what we call natu- 
 ral and supernatural forces. The coming of the First 
 Adam and that of the Second Adam would thus be 
 strikingly assimilated. 
 
 But the Wallace compromise, while appealing to a 
 number of people, has proved to be difficult to hold in 
 the face of the fire it has drawn from both sides, It 
 is significant that the severest criticism has come from 
 
Tue OricIn oF Man 63 
 
 the evolutionary side. Ridicule has been poured upon 
 the Wallace view as teaching that “our brains are 
 made by God and our lungs by natural selection.” It 
 is not strange that a theory that is so frank in its ad- 
 mission of the supernatural in the origin of life and 
 of man and of the spiritual in the endowments of man 
 is anathema to the orthodox evolutionist. It is en- 
 tirely opposed to what are called “uniformitarian evo- 
 lutionary principles,’ and its adoption would threaten 
 the evolutional philosopher with the loss of his fairest 
 possessions. If the characteristics of man which are 
 essentially human, his powers of thought and speech, 
 his creative faculty in art, his moral and religious 
 sense—are not the product of a naturalistic evolution, 
 then evolution will no longer sit as queen of the sci- 
 ences claiming to dominate theology itself. ‘Then the 
 psychological and moral phenomena, and what man 
 has achieved in history and art and science and re- 
 ligion, can be studied independently according to their 
 own appropriate rubrics, and evolution will then have 
 to take a modest place. Then the tension between a 
 logic which tries to interpret evolution and test its 
 premises and its evidences, and a logic which is the 
 product or servant of evolution, will be at an end. 
 The evolutionist is tempted to minimize the differ- 
 ence between the minds of men and animals. We 
 may scale down the prerogatives of humanity nearer 
 to the level of the brute. We may say that the mind 
 of man is scarcely capable of dealing with the high 
 themes of God and immortality, or may even dismiss 
 the trinity of beliefs in God, freedom and immortality 
 5 ; 
 
64 THe CHRISTIAN AND EvoLUuTION 
 
 as superstitions happily dispelled by the light of sci- 
 ence. Man may thus be assimilated to nature, but it 
 is to be observed that the man so assimilated is first 
 carefully stripped of his distinctively human and spir- 
 itual inheritance, of those mighty hopes which make 
 us men. ‘The previous question is, What is man? 
 
 It is more usual to magnify the intelligence of ani- 
 mals. The animal mind when examined and experi- 
 mented with is seen to have remarkably human qual- 
 ities, the animal in fact must have some points of 
 contact and communion with man, or the animal could 
 not serve man in his work or delight him in his play. 
 
 Dumb animals, perhaps,—Who knows? 
 Are not as dumb as we suppose. 
 
 In the sphere of instinct, mysterious enough in it- 
 self, the animal seems to possess powers superior to 
 man. The bird after its winter flight returns exactly 
 to its summer nest in the far north; the homing pi- 
 geon carried for hundreds of miles it knows not 
 whither flies with unerring accuracy to its destination; 
 the eel travels even thousands of miles up the inland 
 river to return thence in order to spawn in the deep 
 waters of the ocean. Insects such as the ant and the 
 bee have an elaborate and highly specialized life and 
 supply examples of industry which man may well 
 follow. 
 
 You may “eulogize” the animals, as some compar- 
 ative psychologists are said to do, and may leave the 
 witness box to become attorney for the defense, but 
 the fact remains that there is a difference broad and 
 
Tue Oricin of Man 65 
 
 deep between the mind of man and the mind of the 
 animal. A man may be ignorant and degraded, “a 
 mere animal,” as we say, but homo alalus—the man 
 without speech—has never been found, and no race 
 of men has been discovered incapable of education. 
 The Terradelfuegans discovered by Darwin and at 
 first said by him to be incapable of civilization are a 
 classical instance. You may on the other hand edu- 
 cate a pig to play euchre, or a parrot to talk in parrot 
 fashion, or a walrus to play baseball, or a monkey to 
 eat with a knife and fork, or an elephant to dance, 
 but the limit of educability is quickly reached. In 
 spite of these polite accomplishments the fact remains 
 that no animal has language, or can to any extent use 
 abstract or conceptual thought, or, so far as we can 
 tell, has a moral sense, or a religion; while no race 
 of men has been found without language, without 
 powers of reasoning, without a moral code and some 
 belief in God and a future life. 
 
 Those who magnify the capacity of animals usually 
 narrow the gap between animals and man by certain 
 metaphysical or psychological assumptions. The 
 transition is easier for the behavioristic psychologist 
 because the behavior of animals and men are more 
 alike than their thoughts. Again if consciousness be 
 regarded as the effect of matter or the accompani- 
 ment of matter in a rigid parallelism, then the path ~ 
 leading from the animal to man is made smoother. 
 The soul of course is correspondingly discounted. 
 Again if the investigation assumes continuous de- 
 velopment, the phenomena will fit in with it more 
 
66 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTIon 
 
 readily. Thus in the well-known words of Lloyd 
 Morgan: “It is of course true that the laws of inor- 
 ganic development are not the same as the laws of 
 organic development: and equally true that the study 
 of mind introduces us to a new aspect of the develop- 
 ment process. Notwithstanding these obvious differ- 
 ences, the evolution that sweeps through nature is, I 
 believe, one and continuous” (“Introduction to Com- 
 parative Psychology,” p. 332). Here the monistic 
 evolution which is assumed is the thing to be proved 
 by the comparison of the minds of men and animals. 
 
 The difference between man and the animal, so 
 strongly emphasized on the intellectual side, becomes 
 even greater when we consider the spheres of morals 
 and religion. Here again the tendency of evolution- 
 ary writers is to make the way easy for evolution by 
 slicing off the characteristically human in man’s make- 
 up—his freedom and his sense of obligation, and to 
 reduce morality to social convention. We have seen 
 how Darwin treated the imperious word ought when 
 he reduced obligation to instinct. When we start with 
 “the ethics of infinite and mysterious obligation from 
 on high,” the evolutionist is at a standstill. It has 
 never been successfully shown how the tendency to 
 promote the health of social tissue can evolve moral- 
 ity, or how “the categorical imperative can be hatched 
 from evolutionary eggs.” A late writer on ethics 
 complains that “the typical philosophy of science, with 
 all its talk about evolution, has been in a real sense 
 anti-evolutionary. What it calls evolution is only the 
 shifting of unchanging elements in a more or less 
 
THE ORIGIN oF Man | 67 
 
 continuous direction; by no chance does genuine 
 novelty ever come into existence” (Arthur K. Rogers, 
 “The Theory of Ethics,” 1922, p. 101). 
 
 No more doughty champion of evolution ever lived 
 than Thomas Huxley, but he said of man that 
 “whether from them or not, he is assuredly not of 
 themy: (Man's Place in ‘Nature,’ p. 87) 3. and in 
 spite of his automatism in his theory of mind and 
 matter and his agnosticism in religion he declared in 
 ringing words that “the ethical progress of society 
 depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less 
 in running away from it, but in combatting it” (‘‘Evo- 
 lution and Ethics,” p. 34). Even Bishop Gore, who 
 would not insist on the gaps, makes the biggest kind 
 of a gap here when he contends throughout his book 
 for the reality of human freedom, and for the “frank 
 recognition of moral will as here directive of physical 
 force’ (“Belief in God,” p. 235), and links up the 
 question of freedom with that of miracle: “I think 
 we shall find that the question of the reality of freedom 
 ... and the question of the credibility of miracles are 
 at bottom one and the same question” (p. 234). 
 
 We come back inevitably to the question, What is 
 man? Is he a mere thing,:an object of nature among 
 other natural objects, a transient link in a natural 
 process, a raindrop between the clouds of birth and 
 the ocean of,death? Or is he above nature, a child of 
 God, an heir to an immortal destiny? If the latter, 
 then the roots of his enduring personality and of his 
 spiritual endowments must be sought in the eternal 
 world. They must have arisen not from the lair of 
 
68 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 the wild beast, but from the bosom of God. Man, 
 psyche as well as soma, can plausibly be made out to 
 be the offspring of the animal only when first despoiled 
 of his spiritual and distinctively human inheritance. 
 
 All evolutionists who believe in an immortal destiny 
 for man must bring in somewhere (even if they have 
 to smuggle it in somewhat shamefacedly) a sort of 
 spiritual influx or special creation supplementing their 
 naturalistic account of man’s genesis. If they insist 
 that “man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible 
 stamp of his lowly origin,” they are constrained to 
 admit that in the framework of his mind and moral 
 nature he bears the indelible stamp of his spiritual 
 origin which he cannot have received from the brute. 
 Thus Dr. Wm. W. Keen in his “I Believe in God and 
 Evolution,” 1922, speaks the language of naturalistic 
 evolution until the end of his book when he declares, 
 “Bodywise, man is an animal, but, thanks be to God, 
 his destiny is not the same as the beasts that perish” 
 (p. 98). And of the drama of human life he de- 
 clares: “In its dawn we see man groping his way to- 
 ward the light; then slowly, but surely developing his 
 intellectual life; and finally—how or when we know 
 not now, but doubtless shall know in the future, in the 
 immortal life—the engrafting by the Creator upon his 
 bodily life a moral and spiritual life, a soul with a de- 
 sire to worship, a faculty of adoration of communion 
 with his heavenly Father” (pp. 98, 99). 
 
 Professor L. M. Sweet, if we understand the argu- 
 ment of his ‘To Christ Through Evolution,” is charge- 
 able with a like inconsequence. He first rejects the 
 
Tus Oricin oF Man 69 
 
 Wallace theory because of its “vicious dualism” and 
 because it will not be acceptable to consistent evolu- 
 tionists (pp. 204, 205), but then virtually returns to 
 it in the conclusion that “man made his appearance 
 by an act of God, and by a sudden upward leap, de- 
 velopmental in the sense that it involved a directive syn- 
 thesis of processes already in operation throughout 
 the animal kingdom and an inherited organic basis, 
 but creative in the sense that it was not contained, 
 and therefore that it cannot be explained, by anything 
 which went before” (p. 274). 
 
 To spell Environment with a capital E, as is done 
 by Drummond and his successor, James Y. Simpson, 
 will not solve the problem. An animal cannot respond 
 to a spiritual Environment without a miracle. The 
 difficulties of the evolutionist at this point are well 
 shown in Simpson’s ‘“Man and the Attainment of Im- 
 mortality.” He attempts to make the transition be- 
 tween ‘“‘man-like ape” and “ape-like man” without any 
 breach of continuity, but Omnipotence (if we may say 
 so reverently) cannot make an immortal being out of 
 an animal without a miracle. Simpson in fact recog- 
 nizes this when he defends a theory of conditional 
 immortality. Man as the product of evolution is not 
 immortal, only “immortable.” 
 
 It is idle to explain the spiritual by the natural and 
 the attempt to do so leads necessarily to the denial 
 of the spiritual. Man as a spiritual being cannot be 
 forced into the mold of a naturalistic evolution with- 
 out first being subjected to a drastic paring down 
 process, “Nature” cannot produce a being that will 
 
70 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvWoLuTION 
 
 endure after nature has passed away. Man, body and’ 
 soul (or body, soul and spirit, if you adopt the Scrip- 
 tural distinction between the psychical and the spir- 
 itual) cannot at the same time be the offspring of the 
 beast by natural generation and the child of God and 
 the heir of immortality. If you believe that man is 
 made in the image of God and has an immortal des- 
 tiny you must bring in spiritual influx or special crea- 
 tion somewhere, even if you smuggle it in under cover 
 of evolutionary terms. If on the other hand you re- 
 gard the whole man as the result of a purely natural 
 process, you logically and inevitably lower your view 
 of man’s capacities and endowments. To deny the 
 supernatural in man’s origin is to deny the spiritual 
 in man’s nature. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE BONES AND THE STONES 
 
“The Old Testament opens with man made in the image of 
 God, and the New Testament opens with God in the image of 
 man.’’—Davin LIVINGSTONE. 
 
 “There is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth 
 them understanding.”—Jos. 
 
 “In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like 
 creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix 
 on any definite point when the term ‘man’ ought to be used. But 
 this is a matter of very little importance.’—DARwWIN, 
 
 “The question of the Descent of Man is in a realm somewhat 
 beyond exact science, and philosophical criticism should be wel- 
 come, especially in its scrutiny of the terms in which the scien- 
 tific verdict is stated.”—J, ArtnHur THOMSON. 
 
VI 
 THE BONES AND THE STONES 
 
 as that of the origin of man it is not surprising 
 that prejudice has played a part. On the one 
 hand there is the principle of continuity and unbroken 
 succession, the fundamental assumption of evolution- 
 ary philosophy; and on the other hand there is the 
 popular prejudice against relationship with the ape 
 or with any other animal. 
 It has been suggested that the prejudice against re- 
 lationship between man and the animal may not be 
 all on one side. Thus Faber, the hymn writer, says: 
 
 [* THE discussion of so momentous a question 
 
 I heard the wild beasts in the wood complain, 
 Man’s scent the untamed creature scarce can bear 
 As if his tainted blood defiled the air. 
 
 On the other hand John Kendrick Bangs voices a 
 popular sentiment when he sings: 
 Whate’er my forebears may have been, 
 Ape, insect, bird, flesh, fowl, or fin, 
 I am MYSELF, and, rain or shine, 
 Intend to fill the place that’s MINE. 
 Say what you will, prove what you can, 
 About the Origin of Man. 
 No line of monkey ancestry 
 Can make a monkey out of me. 
 
 The older evolutionists, such as Darwin and 
 Heckel, had no hesitation in tracing man’s descent to 
 73° 
 
74 Tur CHRISTIAN AND E,voLuUTION 
 
 a monkey or an ape, but the newer science is more 
 soothing to man’s amour propre and has relieved to 
 some extent the sentimental objections—in deference, 
 McCabe insists, to the “spiritual police’—to man’s 
 simian ancestry. Our poor relations do not trouble 
 us if they are far enough away, and there is senti- 
 mental relief in the view of most modern authorities 
 that man is not directly descended from any known 
 animal, simian or otherwise, and that even his hypo- 
 thetical ape-like ancestor lived hundreds of thousands 
 of years ago and that his whole species is now ex- 
 tinct. It is a comfort to know that our immediate 
 “poor relations” are now dead, and a half million of 
 years or more is surely enough to remove the bar 
 sinister and to establish beyond doubt man’s title to 
 his human dignity and his spiritual inheritance. 
 
 Is not this relief on the sentimental side purchased 
 by a weakening in the chain of evidence which con- 
 nects man with the brute? The evolutionist of today 
 is intent upon maintaining two theses, which may be 
 expressed in the words of Professor J. Y. Simpson: 
 “First, that man cannot possibly have ascended from 
 any of the living anthropoid apes; second, that the 
 only tenable explanation of the measure of commun- 
 ity of physical structure that exists between the two 
 groups is their origin by a process of natural evolu- 
 tion from a common ancestor’ (“Man and the At- 
 tainment of Immortality,” p. 45). 
 
 The evolutionist, it is apparent, has placed himself 
 in a difficult position logically. ‘The more evidence 
 there is for one of his theses, the less evidence there 
 
Tur Bones AND THE STONES 75 
 
 is for the other. If it is absolutely certain that man 
 is not descended from the ape, why can we be certain 
 that they are related at all? On the other hand if 
 genetic relationship is certain, why do we have to go 
 back of any known species of man or ape in order to 
 find it? : 
 
 But let us examine the objective evidence, from 
 human skeletal remains and artifacts, that man was 
 once ape-man or man-ape. The antiquity of man will 
 not help the evolutionist unless ancient man was more 
 ape-like than any race of men existing today. 
 
 Anthropologists know that some of the evidence 
 must be discounted because of the obvious tendency 
 to exaggerate the age of the bones or implements dis- 
 covered. Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, of the Smithsonian In- 
 stitute, has said that his division has repeatedly been 
 called upon to investigate discoveries of human re- 
 mains in America of supposed great antiquity, but 
 that they have been found to be the bones of children, 
 of animals, or of Indians of a modern type. On the 
 other hand when a skull of modern structure is found 
 in old formations there is a tendency to pass over the 
 evidence. The famous Calaveras skull and the Galley 
 Hill skeleton are cases in point. The Calaveras skull, 
 according to R. S. Lull, was found embedded in “‘gold- 
 bearing gravels of undoubtedly Pliocene age,” but the 
 man to whom it belonged “is not supposed to have 
 been contemporaneous with the gravels” (‘‘Evolution 
 of Man,” 1922, p. 9). So of the Galley Hill skull, 
 found in gravel which Keith thinks is 200,000 years 
 old, but so modern in its features that most anthro- 
 
76 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTION 
 
 pologists do not regard it as ancient. Keith thinks 
 that we might meet the Galley Hill man on the streets 
 of London today and pass him by unnoted (“Ancient 
 Types of Man,” 1911, p. 32). The search is for re- 
 mains with undoubtedly ape-like characteristics im- 
 bedded in undoubtedly ancient formations, and the 
 question is whether such evidence is really forthcom- 
 ing. 
 
 A careful review of the evidence adduced is called 
 for, and we can do no better than to accept the guid- 
 ance of a recognized authority, H. F. Osborn, who 
 summarizes the evidence in popular form in a recent 
 number of the Asia magazine. He says that the case 
 for human evolution today rests “upon the discovery 
 of numerous links in the long chain of ascent, which 
 are either in the direct path of our ancestry or in a 
 very nearly direct path. In the order of ascent, these 
 great discoveries of our forebears, the first five in the 
 list belonging to the Age of Man and the sixth to the 
 Age of Mammals, are as follows: Cro-Magnon man, 
 the last cave men found in western Europe; Neander- 
 thal man, the first of the cave men found in western 
 Europe; Heidleberg man, in the midst of the river- 
 drift period, found in western Europe; Piltdown 
 man, at the beginning of the river-drift period, found 
 in Sussex, England; Trinil half-man, also at the be- 
 ginning of the river-drift period, found in Java; Fox- 
 hall man, known only by his implements and his 
 fireplaces, found in Norfolk, England” (‘‘Where Did 
 Man Originate?” Asia magazine, June, 1924, p. 427). 
 The age he assigns to these—the estimates are given 
 
THE BonkEs AND THE STONES ri 
 
 as “only opinions, not facts’—are as follows: “Cro- 
 Magnon man, 25,000 to 40,000 years; Neanderthal 
 man, 30,000 to 60,000 years; Heidelberg man, 400,- 
 000 years; Piltdown man, 500,000 years; Foxhall 
 man, 600,000 years” (ibid., p. 430). 
 
 We are now concerned not with the antiquity of 
 man but with the evidence for genetic relationship 
 with the animal. If, as Keith supposes, a man similar 
 in form and faculties to a modern Londoner lived on 
 the banks of the Thames 200,000 years ago, this in 
 itself would carry us no nearer to animal ancestry. 
 Let us see how well Osborn’s six races (including the 
 Trinil ape-man) qualify as candidates for the posi- 
 tion of links in human evolution from the animal. 
 
 1. The Cro-Magnon race, “preceding our own race 
 by from ten to twenty thousand years” (p. 431), were 
 at least our equals and probably our superiors in brain 
 capacity and mental powers. “With a body like our 
 own,’ says Osborn, “and a brain at least as large as 
 ours, superior individuals of this race would have been 
 capable of becoming senior wranglers at any of our 
 modern universities’ (p. 431). In another place 
 Osborn says that the Cro-Magnon man was “our 
 equal, if not our superior in intelligence” (“Evolution 
 and Religion,” 1923, p. 20). The Cro-Magnon race, 
 in this case, whatever its age, carries us rather away 
 from the animal than toward the animal. 
 
 2. ‘The Neanderthal race is described by Osborn as 
 “low-browed men with many characters of the head 
 and jaw suggestive of the anthropoid apes” (p. 431). 
 We are now dealing, as in the case of the Cro-Magnon 
 
78 Tuer CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 man, with actual skulls and skeletons which, while 
 their age may be in dispute, were undoubtedly old, 
 and can be compared, without resorting to an imagin- 
 ative reconstruction, to the skulls of men living in our 
 time. The relation of the Neanderthal race to modern 
 man has been variously described. The Neanderthal 
 man has been said to be (1) of the same species as 
 modern man; (2) as the stock from which all modern 
 races have arisen; (3) as later in appearance than 
 the modern man (thus Keith reversing his former 
 opinion), in which case the Neanderthal man might 
 be degenerate; (4) as a separate species of men—a 
 side branch not on the line of descent of modern man, 
 and becoming extinct without leaving descendants. 
 In none of these cases, except the second, which is 
 now abandoned, can the Neanderthal man be regarded 
 as one of the “numerous links in the long chain of 
 ascent” of man. 
 
 The original Neanderthal skull, found in 1856, has 
 been variously estimated as to its brain capacity, but 
 the finding of a number of nearly complete skulls and 
 skeletons, belonging to the same type and classified 
 under the term Homo Neanderthalensis, show in their 
 structure and the conditions in which they were found 
 that they belonged undoubtedly to human beings and 
 not to any. intermediate form. In stature they were 
 about like the modern Japanese. In culture they were 
 like backward modern races: “The Tasmanians were 
 found in a stage of flint industry very similar to that 
 practised by the Neanderthals in Mousterian times” 
 (Osborn, “Men of the Old Stone Age,” 1916, p. 234). 
 
Tur BonES AND THE STONES 79 
 
 Their burial customs showed belief in a future life. 
 As Simpson says: ‘‘Mousterian man assuredly knew 
 the use of fire; he buried his dead; he believed in a 
 hereafter; he is, in short, not merely a reasonable, 
 but clearly a religious, being” (“Man and the Attain- 
 ment of Immortality,’ p. 114). And Osborn says of 
 the Neanderthal man that we have “evidence of his 
 belief in a future existence” (“Evolution and Re- 
 ligion,” 1923, p. 20). His physical characteristics are 
 paralleled among the Australians and Eskimos today. 
 His brain capacity on the average is equal to that of 
 the modern white races. It is even held by some 
 authorities, as by J. Elliot Smith, that the Neander- 
 thal man has lost some primitive characteristics which 
 still persist in modern man. Since there are plenty 
 of parallels both structurally and culturally to Nean- 
 derthal man, he has clearly proved an alibi; he can- 
 not be one of the “numerous links” in human ascent 
 from the brute. 
 
 When the next three links in Osborn’s chain of 
 ascent are studied we are struck by four facts: (1) 
 we are dealing with very fragmentary remains; (2) 
 in the reconstruction of these remains and the infer- 
 ences drawn from them (differing greatly with dif- 
 ferent authorities) imagination rather than the objec- 
 tive evidence plays a predominant part; (3) there is 
 an immense and unbridged interval—about 350,000 
 years if we take Osborn’s figures—between the latest 
 of these links and the Neanderthal race; and (4) 
 there is uncertainty about the age of the strata in 
 which the remains were found. 
 
 6 
 
80 Tue CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTIon 
 
 3. Of the Heidelberg race, which some place earlier 
 and some later than the Piltdown man, and some make 
 contemporary with him, there remains only a single 
 lower jaw bone found near Heidelberg in 1907. From 
 a single bone of known species the comparative anat- 
 omist may be able to reconstruct approximately the 
 entire skeleton, but it is different with a bone of what 
 is claimed to be a new species—Homo Heidelberg- 
 ensis. Osborn indulges in prophecy when he says that 
 “probably in all other characters of the skull, as they 
 become known, the Heidelberg race will be found to 
 be a Neanderthal in the making, that is, a primitive, 
 more powerful, and more ape-like form’ (“Men of 
 the Old Stone Age,” p. 100). His own photograph 
 of an Eskimo jaw (p. 100) is strikingly like the 
 Heidelberg jaw, and both are unlike the jaw of the 
 apes. It scarcely strengthens the evidence when 
 Osborn declares that “all agree that Schcetensack’s 
 discovery affords us one of the great missing links 
 or types in the chain of human development” (p. 101). 
 
 4. Going back, still with Osborn, another 100,000 
 years, we come to the Piltdown man, Eoanthropus 
 Dawsont. Professor A. L. Kroeber thinks that of the 
 fragments of brain, small portions of the face, nearly 
 half the lower jaw and some teeth found at different 
 times in 1911-13, the age, brain capacity and com- 
 patibility of the jaw and the teeth with the pieces of 
 the skull, are so uncertain that it is unsafe to build 
 large conclusions upon the discovery, and that “the 
 claim of the discoverers that the Piltdown form be- 
 longs to a genus distinct from that of man—Eoan- 
 
Tut BonkEs AND THE STONES 81 
 
 thropus—is to be viewed with reserve’ (“Three 
 Essays,’ pp. 15, 16). Similar doubts are expressed 
 by Sir E. Ray Lankester in Wells’ “Outline of His- 
 tory,” who says: “We must remember that this patch 
 of gravel at Piltdown, clearly and definitely, is a 
 wash-up of remains of various later tertiary and post- 
 tertiary deposits. . . . I think we are stumped and 
 baffled!) The most prudent way is to keep the jaw 
 and the cranium apart in all arguments about them” 
 (vol. 1, p. 46). That Osborn himself is quite at sea 
 as to the reconstruction of these Piltdown bones is 
 shown in the second edition of his work, “Men of the 
 Old Stone Age,” 1916, where he says that “we must 
 regard this as being the most primitive and ape-like 
 human brain so far recorded; one such as might 
 reasonably be associated with a jaw which presented 
 such distinctive ape characters” (pp. 140, 141). Yet 
 on page 144 he says that the jaw has been restudied 
 and referred with “considerable certainty” to an adult 
 chimpanzee; and on page 512 says that doubts about 
 the jaw have been “entirely confirmed” by the study 
 by Gerritt S. Miller, Jr..—a result which “deprives 
 the Piltdown specimen of its jaw and compels us to 
 refer the skull to the genus Homo rather than to the 
 supposed more ancient genus Foanthropus!’ Not- 
 withstanding all this the Piltdown man, jaw and all, re- 
 appears in his article in the Asia magazine in 1924, 
 duly authenticated by a photographic representation, 
 with no hint of these disagreements among scientific 
 men, and, singularly enough, with his age increased 
 
82 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 from an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 years in 1916, 
 to 500,000 years in 1924. 
 
 5. Even more tenuous is the evidence for an inter- 
 mediate race of beings between man and ape in the 
 case of the Trinil Ape-man, Pithecanthropus erectus. 
 At different times in 1891-92, Dubois found in a river 
 bed in Java a skull cap, two molar teeth and a femur, 
 from the study of which he concluded that (1) The 
 four skeletal pieces in question were contemporaneous ; 
 (2) they were of the age of the stratum in which 
 found; (3) they belonged to one skeleton; and (4) 
 they represented a transitional form of beings between 
 the anthropoid apes and man, belonging to the direct 
 line of the genealogy of the latter.” Dubois himself 
 said that “Pithecanthropus erectus is the transition 
 form between man and the anthropoids which the laws 
 of evolution teach us must have existed. He is the 
 ancestor of man’ (as quoted Osborn, of. cit., p. 75). 
 All the four conclusions drawn by Dubois have been 
 disputed by competent scientists, and the brain capac- 
 ity indicated by the skull-cap is also in dispute. It is 
 now usually given as 900 cc., less than that of all but 
 the lowest human races. While an “immense litera- 
 ture” has grown up around Pithecanthropus, the 
 strange thing is that the finder has concealed the bones 
 even from other scientists for over thirty years. 
 Hrdlicka speaks of it as regrettable that specimens so 
 valuable to science should not be made freely acces- 
 sible after twenty years had elapsed (See Smithsonian 
 Publication 2300, p. 10), and that “not only the study 
 but even a view of the originals are denied to scien- 
 
Tuer BonFs AND THE STONES 83 
 
 tific men,”’ It is to be noted that Osborn in his “Men 
 of the Old Stone Age,” 2d ed., 1916, and in his pop- 
 ular article in the Asia magazine makes no mention 
 of the fact that his large inferences to the existence 
 of a race of beings intermediate between ape and man 
 is founded upon concealed and inaccessible evidence. 
 _7 Now at length after thirty years as reported in the 
 | press (Literary Digest, Sept. 22, 1923) the specimens 
 have been examined by scientists, and Dr. Hrdlicka 
 reports: “None of the published illustrations or the 
 casts now in various institutions are accurate. Espe- 
 ‘ cially is this true of the teeth and thigh bone. ‘The 
 new brain-cast is very close to human. The femur 
 is without question human.” Most of the discussion 
 has plainly been conjecture based on inaccurate in- 
 formation. 
 
 In the press of December 28, 1925, Dr. W. B. Scott 
 of Princeton reports the reception from Dr. Dubois 
 of a plaster cast of the Pithecanthropus fragments 
 from which he concludes that they indicate too large 
 a brain capacity for any man-like ape, and belong to 
 a being who was “distinctively a human of a very 
 low grade.” If Pithecanthropus was a human being 
 he was not a link between man and ape, and if con- 
 fident assertions continue to be made about “the pre- 
 human Trinil race of Java” they will have to be » 
 discounted.* 
 
 6. Of the Foxhall man of 600,000 years ago there 
 are no skeletal remains but his existence is assumed 
 
 
 
 *The press of Sept. 29, 1926, reports that a complete skull of an_al- 
 leged ‘“‘missing link’’ has been found in Java by a tch scientist, Pro- 
 fessor Heberlein. Fuller information will be awaited with interest. 
 
84 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 from the chipped flints and fireplaces found in early 
 strata. The history of the paleolithic period in 
 Europe is usually divided into periods, named after 
 the localities in France where primitive flints were 
 found—Chellean, Acheulian, Mousterian, Aurigna- 
 cian, etc. Chipped and polished flints found in river- 
 drift deposits and in association with the bones of 
 extinct animals are undoubtedly ancient, while their 
 age is variously estimated; but they give no substan- 
 tial evidence of a subhuman or a prehuman race. 
 Traces of a stone age can be found all over the world 
 among both ancient and modern races. Australians 
 and New Zealanders were in the paleolithic stage of 
 culture when first discovered. The Tasmanians were 
 even lower in the scale. As Osborn says (as quoted 
 in the Yale volume, 1922, p. 3): “The native ‘Tas- 
 manians, of whom the last survivor died in 1877, were 
 in a stage of culture which some have called Eolithic 
 and others a rather early stage of the Paleolithic, per- 
 haps Mousterian.” It is the opinion of E. B. Tylor 
 in his “Early History of Mankind,” that a comparison 
 of stone implements ancient and modern “breaks down 
 any imaginary line of severance between the men of 
 the Drift and the rest of the human species.” 
 
 The question whether there is evidence for an 
 eolithic stage of culture earlier than the palzolithic 
 is still in dispute, but the tendency is to deny that the 
 eoliths are of human manufacture. The action of 
 cart wheels, of concrete mixers and of stone crushers 
 produce shapes similar to the eoliths, and in fact the 
 eoliths if regarded as of human manufacture prove 
 
Tur Bones AND THE STONES 85 
 
 too much about the antiquity of man. The eoliths are 
 not specially more plentiful just before the opening of 
 the palzeolithic period than they were earlier. “It was 
 found that eoliths occur in lower strata than the 
 earliest Pleistocene, namely in the Pliocene, in the Mio- 
 cene, and perhaps even earlier, in the Oligocene. Yet 
 these periods are divisions of the Tertiary, or Age of 
 Mammals—the age before man had evolved! In 
 short, the argument cuts too far’ (A. L. Kreeber, 
 “Three Essays,” 1922, p. 33). 
 
 A temperate statement by an evolutionist indicates 
 the present state of the question in scientific circles. 
 The expressions that indicate doubt or uncertainty are 
 italicized: “Jt is pretty well agreed that the anthropoid 
 apes and man came from a common ancestor, and he 
 in turn from some primitive, broad-nosed ape. Some 
 believe that the mammals were evolved from a primi- 
 tive reptilian form. Others say they came from the 
 amphibians, which in turn evolved from a fish form, 
 the latter from an invertebrate, and so on down to the 
 ‘protozoa. Evolution must likewise assume that under 
 some favorable condition the earliest living forms 
 \were evolved from the inorganic world. Whether 
 such a process is going on at the present no one knows. 
 However, the facts of man’s development, structure, 
 and variations, which have been given above, certainly 
 can be best explained on the basis of man’s descent 
 from lower forms, and human fossils, as far as they 
 go, as is clearly shown in the previous chapter, defi- 
 nitely lead back toward a form from which both apes 
 
86 THE CHRISTIAN AND E,vOLUTION 
 
 and man may have descended” (‘“The Evolution of 
 -Man,” Yale lectures, 1922, pp. 78, 79). 
 
 The evolutionist is on thin ice when he attempts to 
 tell us the actual process by which the anthropoid an- 
 cestor developed into man. This occurred, according 
 to Professor Simpson, in the western section of the 
 plateau of Thibet when the primitive, common ances- 
 tors of men and the apes were compelled by the dry- 
 ing up of the forests due to the uplift of the Himalayas 
 to descend to the ground—‘“that first fall to rise.” 
 Three possibilities were before these arboreal anthro- 
 poids: they must migrate, change their life habits, or 
 become extinct. The first method was adopted by the 
 anthropoid apes which moved southward to regions 
 of greater warmth and easier food supply. The sec- 
 ond method was that of seeking food upon the ground 
 -—‘a desperate and hazardous adventure for arboreal 
 forms during a period which was in many respects the 
 zenith of mammalian carnivorous life” (op. cit., p. 
 78). But this adventure and entrance into a new en- 
 vironment “with its challenging stimuli and beckon- 
 ings resulted in further mental advance.” The new 
 activities reacted upon the brain and “the steady 
 growth of the brain reacted upon the general shape 
 of the face and skull.” Given sufficient time for the 
 process and anthropoid becomes anthropos and man 
 has evolved. 
 
 In similar vein Joseph McCabe says in his “A B C 
 of Evolution,” 1921: “It has been suggested that per- 
 haps our ancestors lived in forests in certain parts of 
 Asia, and that, owing to the rise of the land and in- 
 
Tue BonkEs AND THE STONES 87 
 
 creasing dryness of the atmosphere, the forests disap- 
 peared. Many reasons could be imagined. In any 
 case, you will have no difficulty in seeing that such a 
 descent from the trees will sharpen the wits. On the 
 ground a sharper watch must be kept for enemies. 
 ...-Physiologists work out the effect on the brain 
 of all these changes.” He adds rather naively that 
 “if you allow at least half a million years to reach 
 the level of the lowest savages from the level of the 
 chimpanzee, you will realize that this suffices” (pp. 
 ei BS Bn is BA ; 
 
 Other scientists find the cause of human evolution 
 in the change from a vegetable to a meat diet, or in 
 the assumption of an upright posture and the free use 
 of the hands. ‘The latest theory finds the secret of the 
 growth of the cranial cavity in the pituitary gland. 
 Thus Dr. W. K. Gregory says: “It is safe to assume 
 that the action of glandular secretions in the humanoid 
 stock, particularly the pituitary gland, was responsible 
 for the rapid brain development and other structural 
 changes, the erect posture, shorter teeth, speech, and 
 other characteristics that distinguish man from the 
 ape” (see “The Dawn Man,” an authorized interview 
 with H. F. Osborn and W. K. Gregory in McClure’s 
 Magazine, March, 1923). 
 
 What discredits these hypotheses in the judgment 
 of common sense is not that they conflict with one 
 another or that they make large use of the imagination, 
 but that they are all hopelessly inadequate to bridge 
 the gulf between animal and man. The drying up of 
 the forests would explain the death of the monkeys 
 
88 THE CHRISTIAN AND E,VOLUTION 
 
 but not the birth of the human race, and at any rate 
 “the arboreal theory of man’s origin has been given 
 up” (Osborn, in Asia, p. 431); there is no possible 
 
 _proof that putting monkeys or apes on a low diet or 
 
 *, 
 
 on a meat diet has now or ever did have a tendency 
 
 ‘to turn them into men; the gorilla has had a semi- 
 
 erect posture for a million years or more, it is said, 
 with his hands free to make any use of them he 
 pleased, but it has never made a man of him; and as 
 
 _-to the glandular theory the question is, whence came 
 
 the glands which have had this marvelous effect? The 
 removal of the thyroid gland from a sheep or of the 
 pituitary gland from a dog will stunt the growth of 
 these animals, but the presence or absence of these 
 glands does not turn one species of animal into 
 another. ‘Time in itself has no creative power and 
 cannot turn fiction into fact. Indeed the naturalistic 
 theories of the method by which the transition was ef- 
 fected are more suggestive of the metamorphoses of 
 Ovid than of the sober speculation of the scientist. 
 Darwin was more cautious and said merely, in his 
 “Descent of Man,” “The free use of the arms and 
 hands, partly the cause and partly the result of man’s 
 erect posture, appears to have led in an indirect man- 
 ner to other modifications of structure.” And Geddes 
 and Thomson say that “it is possible that man arose 
 as a mutation, as an anthropoid genius in short, but 
 the factors that led to his emergence are all unknown” 
 (“Evolution,” 1911, p. 100). 
 
 ' The strict evolutionary view of man’s origin has in 
 fact become more difficult to hold as anthopological 
 
TuE BonkEs AND THE STONES 89 
 
 science has progressed. When evolution in its theory 
 ~of human descent was “a chain hanging by a missing 
 \link, ” it could be said that the link might be found 
 at any time. Now the number of links has been mul- 
 tiplied indefinitely. Inferences drawn from the scanty 
 skeletal and cultural remains—the bones and the 
 stones—are extremely precarious, and of the few links 
 in ascent of which traces are alleged to have been dis- 
 covered, the opinion on fuller investigation is that 
 Ahese (Pithecanthropus, Eoanthropus, etc.) are not on 
 | the direct line of ancestry of modern man. The chain 
 has been stretched out for one or two million years 
 and all traces of it in the direct line, it is commonly 
 admitted, are spurlos gesenkt. ‘This imaginary chain 
 reaching back into the unknown and distant past is 
 attached to an imaginary being, of whose existence 
 the only proof is the requirements of the hypothesis 
 to be proved. E,volutionists are no longer bold enough 
 to construct genealogical trees leading from nomad to 
 man. If the starting point of the development is un- 
 known, the course of the development is unknown 
 and the method of the development is unknown, the 
 fact of the development may well be doubted. No 
 known animal shows any tendency to evolve into 
 man, and it is a wholly gratuitous assumption, apart 
 from the exigencies of a theory, that any animal with 
 such a tendency ever existed. If no such general 
 tendency is assumed but man arose but once as a sport, 
 or discontinuous mutation, or by a spiritual influx, 
 or increment of being, or in theological language a 
 special creation, then the naturalistic theory that man 
 
90 Tre CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 arose from the brute by a continuous, natural and 
 knowable process is abandoned. If the line between 
 man and animal was crossed only by a single pair, 
 then we have a wholly unique event not covered by 
 any known or general law of science. We are back 
 in special creation—or chance which gives up the prob- 
 lem.. It is necessary, when we think of it, that there 
 should be a double miracle, for both the man and the 
 woman must be evolved at the same time and at the 
 same place, or there would be no continuation of the 
 race. 
 
 For the naturalistic philosopher, who like Heckel 
 has a low view of man and no belief in a personal 
 God, there can of course be no creation special or 
 otherwise at any point of the series. For the theist, 
 however, whether he be an evolutionist or not, it is 
 “unphilosophical” to admit creation only at the lowest 
 ranges of existence—in the case of the primitive atoms 
 or the primordial living germs—but to deny it at the 
 point which calls for the greatest exercise of creative 
 power, the production of man with his godlike capac- 
 ities and his immortal destiny. 
 
CHARTER iV IT 
 
 EVOLUTIONARY DOUBTS 
 
“We declare that every wise thought and every useful discovery 
 wherever it may come from, should be gladly and gratefully wel- 
 comed.”—Pore Leo XIII. 
 
 “God forbid that we should give out a dream of our imagination 
 for a pattern of the world: rather may He graciously grant us 
 to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footprints of the 
 Creator imprinted on His creatures.”"—Francis Bacon. 
 
 “We are utterly ignorant of the manner in which the idioplasm 
 of the germ cell can so respond to the influence of the environ- 
 ment as to call forth an adaptive variation.”"—EpMUND B. W1L,SoN. 
 
 “What may for the moment detain us is the curiously nearly 
 completely subjective character of the evidence for both the theory 
 of descent and that of natural selection. Biology has been until 
 now a science of observation; it is beginning to be one of obser- 
 vation plus experiment. The evidence for its principal theories 
 might be expected to be thoroughly objective in character, to be 
 of the nature of positively observed, and, perhaps, experimentally 
 proved fact. How is it actually? Speaking by and large, we only 
 tell the general truth when we declare that no indubitable cases of 
 species-forming or transforming, that is, of descent, have been 
 observed; and that no recognized case of natural selection really 
 selecting has been observed. I hasten to repeat the names of the 
 Ancon sheep, the Paraguay cattle, the Porto Santo rabbit, the 
 Artemias of Schmankewitch, and the de Vriesian evening prim- 
 roses to show that I know my list of classic possible exceptions 
 to this denial of observed species-forming; and to refer to Wel- 
 don’s broad-and-narrow-fronted crabs as a case of what may be 
 an observation of selection at work. But such a list, even if it 
 could be extended to a score, or to a hundred, of cases, is fudi- 
 crous as objective proof of that descent and selection under whose 
 domination the formation of millions of species is supposed to 
 have occurred,”—VERNON KELLOGG, 
 
VII 
 EVOLUTIONARY DOUBTS 
 A isa NYSON says that our little systems have 
 
 their day and cease to be, and a Biblical writer 
 
 indicates that the things that can be shaken 
 will pass away. Is the theory of evolution one of the 
 things that cannot be shaken, or one of those that will 
 pass away? : 
 
 There has been in recent years a terrible shaking 
 of theories which have been regarded as eternal and 
 immutable truth. The law of gravitation has been 
 shaken by Ejinstein’s theory of relativity. The prin- 
 ciple of the indestructibilty of matter has been called 
 in question by the phenomena of radioactivity. Atoms 
 described by Clerk-Maxwell in 1875 as “those foun- 
 dation stones of the universe, unbroken and unworn,” 
 are now imagined by Sir Oliver Lodge to have a nu- 
 clear motion of the velocity of light. It would be a 
 paradox of science if evolution, a theory of change, 
 should be like the laws of the Medes and Persians 
 which change not—if it alone should stand immovable 
 amid the flux which it describes. 
 
 Signs of the awakening of doubt in the scientific 
 mind are by no means absent. One of the most sig- 
 nificant of these is Bateson’s presidential address at 
 Toronto (see Science, Jan. 20, 1922), which has 
 _Proved to be something of a bombshell in its effect 
 93 
 
94. Tuer CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTION 
 
 alike on popular and scientific opinion. A few para- 
 graphs will furnish a text for the discussion of this 
 chapter. 
 
 “When students of other sciences ask us 
 what is now currently believed about the origin 
 of species we have no clear answer to give. Faith 
 has given place to agnosticism for reasons which 
 on such an occasion as this we may profitably 
 consider. ... We cannot see how the differentia- 
 tion into species came about. Variation of many 
 kinds, often considerable, we daily witness, but 
 
 ‘no origin of species” (p. 57). 
 ~ “In dim outline evolution is evident enough. 
 From the facts it is a conclusion which inevitably 
 follows. But that particular and essential bit of 
 the theory of evolution which is concerned with 
 the origin and nature of species remains utterly 
 mysterious. We no longer feel as we used to do, 
 that the process of variation, now contempora- 
 neously occurring, is the beginning of a work 
 which needs merely the element of time for its 
 completion; for even time cannot complete that 
 which has not yet begun. The conclusion in 
 which we were brought up, that species are a 
 product of a summation of variations, ignored 
 the chief attribute of species first pointed out by 
 John Ray that the product of their crosses is fre- 
 quently sterile in greater or less degree. Huxley, 
 very early in the debate, pointed out this grave 
 defect in the evidence, but before breeding re- 
 searches had been made on a large scale no one 
 
EVvoLuTIONARY Dousts 95 
 
 felt the objection to be serious. Extended work 
 might be trusted to supply the deficiency. It has 
 not done so, and the significance of the negative 
 evidence can no longer be denied” (p. 58). 
 
 “The production of an indubitably sterile 
 hybrid from completely fertile parents which 
 have arisen under critical observation from a 
 single common origin is the event for which we 
 wait. Until this event is witnessed, our knowl- 
 _ edge of evolution is incomplete in a vital respect. 
 From time to time a record of such an observa- 
 tion is published, but none has yet survived criti- 
 cism. Meanwhile, though our faith in evolution 
 stands unshaken, we have no acceptable account 
 of the origin of ‘species.’ . . . Analysis has re- 
 vealed hosts of transferable character. . . . Specific 
 difference, therefore, must be regarded as prob- 
 ably attaching to the base upon which these 
 transferables are implanted of which we know 
 absolutely nothing at all” (p. 59). 
 
 “We see novel forms appearing, but they are 
 no new species of Oenothera, nor are the parents 
 which produce them pure or homozygous forms” 
 (p. 60). 
 
 “I have put before you very frankly the con- 
 siderations which have made us agnostic as to 
 the actual mode and processes of evolution. When 
 such confessions are made the enemies of science 
 see their chance. If we cannot declare here and 
 now how species arose, they will obligingly offer 
 us the solutions with which obscurantism is sat- 
 7 
 
96 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 isfied. Let us then proclaim in precise and un- 
 mistakable language that our faith in evolution is 
 unshaken. Every available line of argument con- 
 ‘verges on this inevitable conclusion. ‘The obscur- 
 antist has nothing to suggest which is worth a 
 moment’s attention. The difficulties which weigh 
 upon the professional biologist need not trouble 
 the layman. Our doubts are not as to the reality 
 or truth of evolution, but as to the origin of 
 species, a technical, almost domestic, problem. 
 Any day that mystery may be solved. The dis- 
 coveries of the last twenty-five years enable us 
 for the first time to discuss these questions in- 
 telligently and on a basis of fact. That synthesis 
 will follow on an analysis, we do not and cannot 
 doubt” (p. 61). 
 
 Several points in his address are peculiarly signifi- 
 cant. (1) There are no intermediate species, or in- 
 termediate forms between species as would be expected 
 if the common theories of evolution are true (see p. 
 56). (2) There have been no observed or demon- 
 strated cases of a change from one species into 
 another. In the light of this careful statement of an 
 authority of the first rank, it appears that a professor 
 of zoology, H. H. Lane, permits his zeal to outrun 
 his discretion when he says that “it is no exaggeration 
 to say that now we have seen literally hundreds of 
 new species produced by experiment either in labora- 
 tory or field... . This is evolution; there is involved 
 no hypothesis or theory, in the ordinary acceptation 
 
EvoLutionARY Dousts 97 
 
 aa 
 
 of those terms” (“Evolution and Christian Faith,” 
 1923, p.47). (3) The missing link in Darwin’s argu- 
 ment for evolution, as Huxley saw in 1863, was the 
 sterility of hybrids. The objection instead of being 
 overcome by later research, as Huxley hoped, has now 
 become in Bateson’s opinion even more serious. ‘The 
 “stubborn mule” at least makes the knowledge of evo- 
 lution “incomplete in a vital respect.’’ The horse has 
 been eulogized as the cheval de bataille of evolution, 
 and if so as the matter stands it is a case of the horse 
 against the mule. 
 
 (4) After more than sixty years of intensive re- 
 search carried on by a host of the brightest minds in 
 the field of science, the verdict of science, as voiced 
 by an accepted leader, is that we are profoundly igno- 
 rant of the cause of the rise of new species. It is not 
 simply that evolutionists differ in their opinion but 
 that every theory thus far proposed is in Bateson’s 
 view untenable and unworkable. Numerous author- 
 ities of the first rank can be quoted agreeing with 
 Bateson’s agnosticism as to the causes of evolution. 
 T. H. Morgan, a Mendelian, says as we have seen that 
 “the causes of the variations that give rise to new 
 characters we do not know” (“A Critique of the 
 Theory of Evolution,” p. 194). In his remarkable ex- 
 periments with the wild fruit fly, Drosophila ampelo- 
 phila, he has produced 125 different types or races, 
 but says that no one could doubt that they all belong 
 to the same species (p. 13). 
 
 V. L. Kellogg, in his “Darwinism Today,” 1907, 
 Says that the “Great Cause” or “Great Desideratum” 
 
98 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTION 
 
 is still to seek, and remarks: ‘With Osborn let us join 
 the believers in the ‘unknown factors in evolution.’ 
 Let us begin with Ignoramus, but never follow it with 
 Ignorabimus” (pp. 377, 378). He adds: “We are 
 ignorant; terribly, immensely ignorant” (p. 387). 
 More recently in speaking of Lamarckism and Dar- 
 winism he says that “the recent great advance in the 
 knowledge of the mechanism and manner of heredity 
 has materially weakened the validity of each of these 
 classic causal explanations of evolution” (“Recent 
 Biology and Its Significance,’ North American Re- 
 view, June, 1923, p. 753). But Mendelism itself, he 
 admits, has very obvious limitations as an explanation 
 of adaptation or of species-forming. ‘The problem of 
 the causes of evolution is “no less large and no less 
 unsolved than in older days” (p. 754). 
 
 It is now quite commonly believed that new species 
 arose from “mutations” and not from the minute va- 
 riations or fluctuations of Darwin; but it is admitted 
 with R. C. Punnett that “beyond the fact that it is a 
 process initiated in the germ cells, almost nothing is 
 known at present of the conditions under which a 
 mutation arises. Until such knowledge is forthcom- 
 ing, that most important link in any theory of evolu- 
 tion—the problem of the nature of species—must 
 remain unsolved” (Art. “Evolution” in Hastings’ 
 “Encycl. of Religion and Ethics,” vol. v., p. 623). 
 The choice now lies, it is evident, between the theory 
 of natural selection and complete agnosticism as to the 
 process by which species originated. 
 
 (5) Bateson’s creed is summed up in two rather 
 
EvoLutTioNARY Doupts 99 
 
 paradoxical articles: Complete agnosticism as to the 
 effective factors of evolution, but practical certainty, 
 described however as faith rather than knowledge, as 
 to the fact of evolution. After sixty years of dis- 
 couragement in the search for the unknown factor in 
 evolution, after every sort of cause—we might almost 
 say every conceivable cause, whether external or in- 
 ternal or both—has been tried and found wanting, we 
 admire the optimism that can say, “Any day that 
 mystery may be solved.” If a business corporation 
 should put out a prospectus in the tone of Bateson’s 
 exposition, the public would expect an application for 
 a receiver rather than a declaration of dividends. To 
 admit frankly that no case of descent has ever been 
 observed, that the Darwinian method of descent is dis- 
 credited, and that no alternative hitherto proposed will 
 work, and that the standing argument against the 
 theory of descent—the sterility of hybrids—has never 
 been removed, all this is to repeat with high scientific 
 authority what the much-despised “obscurantist” has 
 been saying and, as Bateson realizes, cannot but con- 
 firm the anti-evolutionist in his convictions. 
 
 The embarrassing if not precarious position in 
 which the transformist is now placed is illustrated by 
 Professor Osborn. It was he, it will be remembered, 
 who was the original sponsor for the “unknown fac- 
 tors” in evolution. It was Osborn who said in “Fifty 
 Years of Darwinism” (1909) that in one aspect 
 paleontology “gives to Darwinism a most emphatic 
 negative” (p. 223); and who said in his “Origin and 
 Evolution of Life’ (1917) that “the causes of the 
 
100 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 evolution of life are as mysterious as the law of evo- 
 lution is certain” (p. 9). Shocked by the Bateson 
 “bombshell” and its reverberations, Osborn has now 
 in part at least reversed himself in his attitude toward 
 Darwinism. He now declares in his “Evolution and 
 Religion” (1923) that “Bateson is living the life of a 
 scientific specialist, out of the main current of bio- 
 logical discovery, and that his opinion that we have 
 failed to discover the origin of species is valueless and 
 directly contrary to the truth’ (pp. 3, 4); and fur- 
 ther he asserts: “I would like to state positively that 
 in my opinion Natural Selection is the only cause of 
 evolution which has thus far been discovered and dem- 
 onstrated” (p. 4). In the present state of opinion it 
 would seem doubtful strategy to tie up the fortunes 
 of evolution with those of natural selection. 
 
 The victory of evolution over the popular mind was 
 due to Darwin’s skillful defense of natural selection 
 as a vera causa (given variation and heredity). When, 
 however, natural selection is discarded, together with 
 all alternative theories, evolution becomes a plausible 
 hypothesis suggested by certain facts in nature, but 
 without proof in fact that it ever did take place as a 
 natural process, in view of the objections against 
 every method suggested. 
 
 We are back indeed in the pre-Darwinian position 
 of Robert Chambers in his ‘“‘Vestiges of the Natural 
 History of Creation” (1st ed., 1844), whose argu- 
 ments in favor of descent Darwin repeated and ampli- 
 fied. These arguments as summarized by Darwin are 
 geographical distribution, geological succession, homo- 
 
EvoLutTIONARY Dousts 101 
 
 logical structure, embryological development and rudi- 
 mentary organs, but all of them are mentioned in 
 Chambers’ earlier work. 
 
 It cannot be said that these arguments in general 
 have been materially strengthened since the time of 
 Darwin or even of Chambers. Of the argument from 
 embryology, for example, T. H. Morgan says that the 
 newer views of germinal variation (Weismann) and 
 of discontinuous variation (De Vries) have played 
 havoc with the biogenetic law (p. 19); and Adam 
 Sedgwick asserts that the explanation of embryonic 
 structures referred to is purely a deduction from the 
 evolution theory (Art. “Embryology,” Encycl. Brit., 
 pi d22). | 
 
 The plainest and most popular argument for evolu- 
 tion is that from comparative anatomy. When we see 
 the similarity in structure between the hand and arm 
 of the man and the ape, and the forefoot of rat, horse, 
 and elephant, and less strikingly of the wing of the 
 bird and the pectoral fin of the fish, it is natural to 
 account for the similarity by the theory of common 
 descent. A family resemblance points to family re- 
 lationship and ultimately to a common ancestry. But 
 there is another explanation, and an equally obvious 
 explanation of this resemblance in structure. It is 
 that of creation according to a common plan. We 
 should expect all living creatures, who are to live in 
 the same world and a world governed by the same 
 mechanical principles and the same chemical laws to 
 have numerous resemblances in anatomical structure 
 and physiclogical processes. In practice a series of 
 
102 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 forms arranged with reference to one or more char- 
 acters may not correspond to the chronological series. 
 Thus T. H. Morgan has shown that a number of 
 series can be arranged among the mutants of the 
 Drosophila fly, based on length of wings, color of eyes, 
 etc., but that these serial arrangements would give an 
 entirely false idea of the way in which the different 
 types arose, or of the order in which they appeared 
 (‘Critique of the Evolution Theory,” pp. 10-13). He 
 thinks that the evidence which is based on a continuous 
 series of the variants of any organ has little value. - 
 
 The paleontological argument is today one of the 
 main battle grounds of evolution. Current theories in 
 geology and in biology are inextricably bound up to- 
 gether and modifications in either science will cause 
 changes in the other. It was Lyell’s theory of the 
 succession of fossil forms in the rocks that ‘smoothed 
 the way’ for Darwin and Huxley, and it is admitted 
 that a decisive element in the classification of the 
 strata and the determination of their age is the char- 
 acter of the fossils they contain. Thus Le Conte says: 
 “There are, then, two tests of a formation and a cor- 
 responding geological period, viz., 1. Conformity of 
 the strata or rock-system, and, 2. General similarity 
 of the fossils, or life-system, . . . Of these two tests, 
 however, the life-system is usually considered the most 
 important, and in case of disagreement must control 
 classification” (“Elements of Geology,” 5th ed., rev., . 
 1907, pp. 203, 204). Again under the head of com- 
 parison of fossils, he says: ‘“This is by far the best, 
 and, in widely separated localities the only, method of 
 
EvoLutionary Doupts 103 
 
 determining the age of rocks” (p. 206). Sir A. 
 Geikie likewise says that “it is mainly by the remains 
 of plants and animals imbedded in the rocks that the 
 geologist is guided in unravelling the chronological 
 succession of geological changes” (Art. “Geology,” in 
 Encyl. Brit., 11th ed., p. 638). 
 
 Price in “The New Geology,” 1923, protests against 
 the biological onion-coat theory that successive strata 
 of rocks each containing a different kind of fossils 
 were universal around the world. Discussing the 
 problems of “deceptive conformity” where for ex- 
 ample the Cretaceous may rest upon the Devonian, the 
 whole of the intervening strata being wanting, and of 
 “thrust-faults’ in which an “older” formation rests 
 upon a “younger,” he draws the perhaps too sweeping 
 conclusion that “any kind of fossiliferous rock, ‘young’ 
 or ‘old,’ may be found conformably on any other kind 
 of fossiliferous rock, ‘older’ or ‘younger’” (p. 296). 
 He instances vast regions in Glacier National Park, in 
 New York, in the southern Appalachians, in Utah and 
 Idaho, in the Highlands of Scotland, in the Lepontine 
 Alps, in Scandinavia and in Northern China in which 
 “older” rock rests, sometimes conformably, upon 
 “younger” rock; and he finds incredible the theories 
 of folding or of lateral thrusts to account for all these 
 phenomena. With more extensive study of the earth’s 
 crust the problem becomes more acute. Professor 
 Price thinks that these cases of “thrust faults’ consti- 
 tute the crux of modern discussion of geological 
 theories, and indeed the crux of the discussion about 
 organic evolution. He complains that his book has 
 
104. Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLUTION 
 
 been treated by a “conspiracy of silence,” and a care- 
 ful review of his arguments by a competent evolu- 
 tionary geologist would seem to be in order. 
 
 The strongest evidence for evolution, Professor 
 More maintains in his “Dogma of Evolution,” is to be 
 found in the existence of fossil remains, but palz- 
 ontology cannot be translated into chronology, and 
 the study of the records emphasizes the breaks rather 
 than the continuity of development. For example, 
 “when the Silurian vertebrates appeared they did so 
 without any transitional form having been preserved”’ 
 (p. 154). Of the birds it is said that “the appearance 
 of feathers as an apparatus for flying is as nearly im- 
 possible a fact to explain by evolution as can be 
 imagined. By no known theory can a feather be ac- 
 counted for. .. . Evolutionists have wisely and per- 
 sistently avoided the solution of this problem’ (pp. 
 156, 157). The sudden and abrupt appearance of 
 the higher plants (angiosperms) is an analogous case 
 in the vegetable world. ‘“The more one studies pale- 
 ontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution 
 is based on faith alone. ... The evidence from pale- 
 ontology is for discontinuity; only by faith and 
 imagination is there continuity of variation” (pp. 160, 
 161). 
 
 The chapters of the geological evidence have empha- 
 sized another fact that is apt to be slighted by the 
 evolutionist, that of the fixity of organic forms. ‘The 
 microscope has revealed in regard to the world of 
 Protozoa and unicellular forms “that this once invis- 
 ible world is much the largest division of all the living 
 
EvoLurionARyY Dousts 105 
 
 kingdom, exceeding in actual bulk all visible plants 
 and animals put together.” Whole strata of rocks 
 are made up chiefly of the skeletons of diatoms (uni- 
 cellular alge); and of the Foraminifera it can be 
 said that “a great part of the crust of the globe has 
 been constructed by them in the form of massive strata 
 of limestone, chalk cliffs and deposits, great in thick- 
 ness and extent” (W. H. Thompson, “What is Phys- 
 ical Life?’ 1909, pp. 70, 80, and 81). Yet according 
 to current reckoning these forms still living today have 
 remained practically unchanged since the known dawn 
 of life. They have been subjected to the action of 
 selection, variation, struggle for existence, change of 
 climate and environment and the passage of time and 
 are practically the same now as at the dawn of life. 
 If, for a period computed at forty million years, like 
 has been producing like in the larger part of the or- 
 ganic world, the unavoidable inference is that fixity 
 of species is a basal law of nature. So long as we 
 have to reckon with what Darwin called “the undis- 
 covered and undiscoverable essence of species,” it 
 would be dogmatic to assert that one species has never 
 been changed into another by natural causes; but the 
 burden of proof rests heavily on the transformist to 
 show where exceptions to the law of the fixity of 
 species have actually occurred. 
 
 It is now sixty-five years since Darwin wrote, and 
 leading evolutionists are confessing that they walk by 
 faith, and that their faith is based on things hoped 
 for and unseen rather than upon observed facts. At 
 critical points the argument for evolution has not been 
 
106 THE CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 strengthened but rather weakened in the course of 
 time. No certainly established transformation of 
 species has come within the range of observation and 
 experiment. Huxley’s two difficulties, the infertility 
 of hybrids and the persistence of types, have been 
 emphasized, one by experimental breeding and the 
 other by fossil discoveries. Palzeontology has not re- 
 vealed the transition forms which by hypothesis must 
 once have existed. Proposed methods of transforma- 
 tion have proved to be of only limited application. 
 Selective breeding shows that Darwinian variation is 
 within rather narrow limits; Lamarckian use and dis- 
 use will not apply to the vegetable world and the in- 
 heritability of characters so acquired is in question; 
 Mendelian inheritance must assume differences in the 
 parent stocks before it can account for them in the off- 
 spring, and its range of variation is limited; the dis- 
 continuous variations of DeVries are not proved to 
 be significant enough to leap the barrier of species, 
 and if they are large enough they become almost in- 
 distinguishable from special creation; orthogenesis, 
 or an inherent tendency to vary in a given direction, 
 creative synthesis and creative evolution are all semi- 
 mystical conceptions which pay toll to the creationist 
 or introduce the ideas of creation surreptitiously. No 
 theory has shown, perhaps because no theory can 
 show, how within the arcana of the germ cells the 
 straight line of heredity is deflected into that of spe- 
 cific difference; the unknown factor in evolution re- 
 mains so long undiscovered because with great prob- 
 ability it is undiscoverable by the methods of science. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL REVIEW 
 
“Fvolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipa- 
 tion 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 trans- 
 formation.”—HERBERT SPENCER, 
 
 “Wallace apparently thought of the material universe being 
 underpinned throughout by a spiritual universe, and we have no 
 right to object to that, but what the scientific mind recoils from 
 is the suggestion that a spiritual influx occasionally operates 
 dramatically, helping the organism over difficult stiles.’—J. ArTHUR 
 THOMSON. 
 
 “T agree that the view of Nature which I have maintained in 
 these lectures is not a simple one. Nature appears as a complex 
 system whose factors are dimly discerned by us. But, I ask you, 
 is not this the very truth? Should we not distrust the jaunty 
 assurance with which every age prides itself that it at last has 
 hit upon the ultimate concepts in which all that happens can be 
 formulated? ‘The aim of science is to seek the simplest explana- 
 tions of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of 
 thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal 
 of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural 
 philosopher should be, Seek simplicity and distrust it.””—A. N. 
 WHITEHEAD, 
 
Vill 
 THE METAPHYSICAL REVIEW 
 
 r NHE remark has been made that “it is in the 
 field of metaphysics rather than that of biology 
 that the riddle of evolution will have to find its 
 
 final solution.” ‘The exposition of evolution is sure 
 to bring up such problems as those of cause, of the 
 ultimate nature of reality, of the connection between 
 mind and body, of the essential nature of man, and 
 of the relation of God to the world. To deal with 
 these problems would take a treatise on metaphysics, 
 but a few points brought up by the current discussion 
 may profitably be noticed. 
 
 It is often said that evolution has nothing to do 
 with cause, that is at least with efficient cause. ‘‘E,vo- 
 lution is the illustration of a method, not the exposi- 
 tion of a cause.” But when something new appears 
 the demand for a cause, given the constitution of 
 human reason, is insistent, and the evolutionist is in 
 danger of assuming a dog-in-the-manger attitude if 
 he will assign no cause himself and refuses to let 
 anyone else point it out. Again it is said that evolu- 
 tion deals only with proximate or second, not with 
 ultimate or first, causes. ‘This assumes, from a the- 
 istic standpoint, that the appearance of the new in the 
 world’s history belongs in the sphere of Providence 
 and not in that of Creation. But this is the whole 
 
 109 
 
110 THE CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 question at issue: whether the appearance of the new 
 —of life, or of consciousness, or of man, or of the 
 new species—can be accounted for by second causes, 
 and should not rather be construed under the category 
 of creation, mediate or immediate. 
 
 When the theistic evolutionist says that Science or 
 Evolution does not deal with the problems of ultimate 
 origins or of a First Cause, he is entirely correct, as 
 the field of science is self-restricted. When, however, 
 this statement is coupled with the assumption that 
 everything in the world since the beginning has come 
 about by “natural knowable” causes without “mirac- 
 ulous interferences and special creations,” he is prac- 
 tically abandoning his former position and is dealing 
 emphatically with the problem of a First Cause. He 
 is dealing with it by denying that such a Cause has 
 operated at all in any direct and effective way in 
 causal or creative action since the beginning. It may 
 be that there has been no leaven put into the meal 
 since the beginning and no thread added to the web, 
 and that there has been no new graft upon the tree of 
 life since the springing of the first seed, and that the 
 origin of life and all varieties of life and the origin 
 of the human race and of every individual were due 
 entirely to natural and knowable processes, but it is 
 difficult to reconcile such a position with belief in a 
 personal Creator. We cannot believe in a personal 
 «Creator whose creative activity was exhausted as soon 
 as it was exercised. 
 
 The creationist will find aid and comfort in the fact 
 that many evolutionary theories approach so near to 
 
Tue Metarnyysica, REVIEW tik 
 
 that of special creation that the difference is merely 
 verbal. Even theories of the origin of species have 
 difficulty in keeping aloof from the discredited special 
 creation. If it be conceded with Darwin that most spe- 
 cies are rigid and but few change (“Origin of Species,” 
 li, p. 272), and that in the latter only a few individuals 
 show a specific variation, then we are leaving the 
 ground of general law, and are dangerously near to 
 that of special creation or at least of special guidance. 
 This is equally true of other theories whether they 
 emphasize the internal or the environmental factor. 
 FE. B. Poulton, of Oxford, says of Nageli’s theory: 
 -“The idea of evolution under the compulsion of an 
 internal force residing in the individual is in essence 
 little removed from special creation” (“Fifty Years 
 of Darwinism,’ 1909, p. 25). ‘The same may be said 
 of Bergson’s mystical current of life, passing from 
 generation to generation and dividing itself among 
 species. Weismann’s theory that one identical ger- 
 minal substance can produce the most divergent forms 
 of life, in the opinion of Max Nordau, “hardly differs 
 from that of a new divine act of creation as the origin 
 of every single life’ (see Hibbert Journal, July, 1912, 
 p- 750). J. A. Thomson feels that there is not much 
 to choose “between a theory of Man’s origin by a 
 hypothetical mutation, which one could not understand 
 even if one knew that it occurred, and a theory of 
 Man’s origin by special creation in which one does not 
 believe” (“Bible of Nature,” p. 193). Darwin like- 
 wise thought that the sudden development of new and 
 widely different forms in an inexplicable manner has 
 8 
 
112 THe CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutION 
 
 little advantage over the old belief in the creation of 
 species from the dust of the earth. Bergson main- 
 tains that the production of the eye by minute varia- 
 tions on independent lines of development in mollusk 
 and vertebrate must be a “miracle” and the work of 
 “a good genius” (“Creative Evolution,” pp. 65, 68). 
 And J. A. Thomson again completes the circle when 
 he says of Bateson’s Mendelism that “it makes the 
 origin and nature of the primordial organisms too ut- 
 terly miraculous if we suppose them to have had such 
 a rich stock of initiatives and implications” (“System 
 of Animate Nature,” vol. ii, p. 364). 
 
 We see that each of the typical theories in the view 
 of its critics is no better than that of special creation. 
 Little relief can be found in the use of the expressions 
 “Epigenesis” or “Creative Synthesis,’ or even in the 
 now popular “Emergent Evolution,” for if the prefix 
 “epi” or the term “creative” is given its full meaning, 
 that is, if they mean genuine novelty, they call aloud 
 for some adequate cause to account for the appearance 
 of the new. If these criticisms made by competent 
 evolutionists are correct, then we have to choose be- 
 tween the alternatives of special creation or of some 
 theory differing only verbally from it. Special crea- 
 tion is a sort of mathematical limit to which evolution- 
 ists of all schools approach infinitely near but never 
 reach. 
 
 From the standpoint of causation there is no satis- 
 factory answer to the questions: How can the old 
 produce the new? How can like beget like, as it 
 demonstrably has done through countless ages, and 
 
Tue Merapryysica, REVIEW 113 
 
 yet beget the different? The alternatives, in what ap- 
 pears to be the most advanced evolutionary circles, 
 are complete agnosticism as to the process by which 
 the new or the different is brought into being (coupled 
 with the hope that the knowledge will some day be 
 forthcoming) and a supernatural factor creative or 
 directive. The Newton of biology is still needed to 
 solve the problem: Who (or what) made thee to 
 differ? and the problem is more serious when evolu- 
 tion is exalted into a comprehensive system of phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 When the evolutionist is emphasizing continuity he 
 insists that there are no gaps in nature, no intrusions, 
 no supernatural hiatus, no spiritual influx; everything 
 is the result of resident forces; “each stage in the 
 process with all that it contains must find its explana- 
 tion within the universe and not in something out- 
 side” (W. R. Sorley). When, however, the evo- 
 lutionist is emphasizing progress and the outcrop of 
 genuine novelties, then he speaks of epigenesis and of 
 creative synthesis. But creative synthesis, the theist 
 will insist in default of an explanation of why it is 
 creative, is, being interpreted, simply another expres- 
 sion for special creation. To waver between the view 
 that every phase of existence is a natural result of the 
 past phase and the view that there are new beginnings, 
 big lifts, and real increments of being, is to make evo- 
 lution mean little or nothing. 
 
 When evolution is defined in terms of continuity 
 alone, we hear of preformation and of the present 
 being the child of the past; but when it is defined, as 
 
114 THe CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTIoNn 
 
 it is just as frequently, in terms of progress, then we 
 hear of epigenesis and creative synthesis. It is per- 
 fectly clear that evolution will not work without the 
 use of both of these conceptions of continuity and 
 progress, and it is equally clear that the only way in 
 which these conceptions can be combined is in the 
 framework of a theistic view of the world. Evolu- 
 tion, in fact, will not work without theism, for the 
 operation of a supernatural factor alone provides the 
 possibility of progress. The evolutionist may contend 
 that given time enough the complexities of life and 
 mind will evolve. But time has no causative or crea- 
 tive power. He may again begin at the other end, 
 with the “highly evolved,” and argue that the steps 
 in the descent are so minute as to be negligible, and 
 thus seek to liquidate his debt to causation by infini- 
 tesimal repudiations. But after all there must be a 
 cause of the essentially new; something does not come 
 out of nothing either gradually or suddenly. 
 
 No one has pointed out the hopeless impasse of 
 naturalistic evolution and the fallacy of its regress 
 from the higher to the lower better than the poet, 
 Alfred Noyes, has done in verse and in prose. He 
 argues the point well in his poem on “The Origin of 
 Life” : 
 
 In the beginning ?—slowly grope we back 
 Along the narrowing track, 
 
 Back to the deserts of the world’s pale prime, 
 The mire, the clay, the slime; 
 
 And then—what then? Surely to something less; 
 Back, back, to Nothingness! 
 
Tue Merapyysica, REvIEw 115 
 
 This is not merely the old infinite regress of causes 
 which thinkers have always sought to avoid,—Ex 
 infinito ne causam causa sequatur (Lucr. ii, 255)— 
 but it is a regress to causes less adequate at each step 
 to produce the final result. The evolutionary regress 
 —always to something less—demands more insistently 
 the theistic postulate than did the old endless regress 
 of finite causes. As Alfred Noyes says again, this 
 time in prose: “We explain man by something less, 
 and that again by something less, until we have whit- 
 tled away all things visible and invisible. We have 
 deliberately taught ourselves to look downward into 
 nothingness, though true science and true reason and 
 every natural instinct of religion would teach us to 
 look upward to the ever-expanding heavens and the 
 infinite power of God” (‘Civilization Imperiled,” 
 Saturday Evening Post, April 12, 1919, p. 22). No 
 discoveries in science can do away with the law of 
 causation, which is the foundation of all science. 
 
 No one appreciates more fully or has stated more 
 frankly these logical difficulties of evolution than has 
 J. Arthur Thomson in his “System of Animate Na- 
 ture,” 1920. Professor Thomson stands high as a com- 
 prehensive thinker, a careful scientist, a graceful and 
 popular writer and a reverent student of nature. He 
 is not ignorant of the pitfalls of evolutionary logic, 
 or of the devices used to escape from them. No anti- 
 evolutionist has found more unerringly the weak spots 
 of the evolutionary armor. Evolution is vague in 
 meaning. “The study of organic evolution has been 
 hampered by a plethora of words and a dearth of 
 
116 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTION 
 
 facts” (ii, p. 353). The term evolution is loosely used 
 and its use “begs several questions” (ii, p. 355) when 
 it covers the dissimilar fields of (1) the Domain of the 
 Inorganic, (2) the Realm of Organisms, and (3) the 
 Kingdom of Man. The fallacy of the generatio equi- 
 voca should be guarded against. “How watchful we 
 have to be lest we get entangled in the vicious circle 
 of inventing a past from its continued life in the 
 present, and then interpreting the present in terms of 
 the past” (1, p. 16). The word evolution is not a 
 sacred or magic charm. ‘Some people talk as if they 
 had only to mutter the word ‘Evolution’ for difficulties 
 to disappear” (ii, p..370). Evolution will not work 
 logical miracles. “In no case can we think of con- 
 sciousness arising out of motion” (1, p. 252). “No 
 one can conjure ‘mind’ out of ‘matter,’ even if he in- 
 voke ‘Evolution’ many times” (ii, p. 385). “We can- 
 not derive mind from anything else of a different 
 kind” (ii, p. 507). 
 
 If, in spite of these warnings, we find so clear a 
 thinker, so gifted a rhetorician and so persuasive an 
 advocate as Professor Thomson falling into these very 
 pitfalls which he himself has pointed out, it must be 
 because of the weakness of the cause which he is de- 
 fending. Two paragraphs are so important that they 
 may be transcribed: “It is certain, from centuries of 
 failures, that by no jugglery of words can we account 
 for thinking in terms of matter and motion. ‘There- 
 fore the alternatives (1) to regard the scientific belief 
 in evolution as in part at least an illusion, since what 
 comes later, e. g., thinking, is distinct in kind from 
 
Tue MetapuHysicar REVIEW 117 
 
 what comes earlier; or (2) to suppose that the low- 
 est animals are potentially psychical; with, as Sir 
 Francis Darwin puts it... ‘faint copy of all we know 
 as consciousness in ourselves.’ The first position is 
 not easy, for the evolutionary explanation is prac- 
 tically proved along anatomical and physiological 
 lines; the second position is not easy, for the ‘faint 
 copy’ becomes faint indeed when we pass to the 
 simplest organisms” (ii, p. 374). Professor Thom- 
 son here falls into the pitfall of the vicious circle: 
 consciousness is postulated where there is no evidence 
 for it to account for consciousness later in the series. 
 But the author again wilfully disregards his own 
 warnings when he says: “Without losing sight of real 
 differences we may believe in a continuity of evolu- 
 tionary process from inorganic genesis to human his- 
 tory, but it must be confessed that there is a good 
 deal of scientific faith implied” (ii, p. 377). And 
 again he hints that living creatures were born “‘of the 
 dust of the earth and the dew of heaven, with the sun 
 shining on both” (1i, p. 385)—without indicating 
 how often this happened; and he says even more 
 plainly that “it seems very likely that organisms arose 
 upon this earth from non-living materials, in a man- 
 ner at present obscure”’ (i, p. 252). Professor Thom- 
 son—in order to avoid the dreaded “spiritual influx” — 
 is led, gracefully but inevitably, into the pitfalls 
 against which he had warned his fellow evolutionists. 
 He must assume continuity of process in the three 
 realms which he had so carefully distinguished. He 
 must use the word evolution in its popular generality 
 
118 Tue CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTION 
 
 and vagueness. He must assume “mind” in the in- 
 organic sphere where there is no evidence even of life 
 and every reason to believe that conditions of the 
 planet made life impossible. He must even, it 
 appears, stake the fortunes of evolution upon the 
 questionable metaphysics of the “identity” or double- 
 aspect theory, endowing even lifeless matter with the 
 attributes of consciousness. “The desire for conti- 
 nuity impels us to the speculation that even the inor- 
 ganic raw materials were psycho-physical’” (i, p. 252). 
 
 Thomson, as we have seen, can save the doctrine 
 of continuity and can prevent evolution in a broad 
 sense from becoming an illusion only by invoking the 
 aid of a lame logic, the vicious circle, and a dubious 
 metaphysic, the identity or double-aspect hypothesis. 
 By this strategy the flank of evolution’s position is 
 left dangerously exposed. In order to bridge the 
 chasms, matter, contrary to common sense and scien- 
 tific evidence, is endowed with life and consciousness; 
 while man, contrary to religious faith, loses his soul 
 as an enduring or independent entity. With char- 
 acteristic and commendable frankness Thomson con- 
 fesses that animism (the theory of the interaction of 
 soul and body), while not favored by many scientists, 
 “may be true for all that” (i, p. 240), and that if 
 Bergson is right when he holds that “the mind over- 
 flows the brain on all sides, and cerebral activity re- 
 sponds only to a very small part of mental activity,” 
 that “then personality is not permanently tethered to 
 protoplasm” (1, p. 242). If there is a future life then 
 the soul can exist apart from the body and the identity 
 
Tue Metapnysica, REvIEW 119 
 
 theory must be given up. In his later work Thomson 
 says, alluding to Wallace’s theory of a spiritual influx 
 at the creation of man, “The idea of a divine inbreath- 
 ing which made a mammal man, or an animate body, 
 in St. Paul’s phrase, a spiritual body, seems to us to 
 be counter to the idea of continuity in evolution, as 
 if there were two worlds and not only one. But we do 
 not urge this either, since the upholders of the crea- 
 tionist view frankly prefer their transcendental con- 
 tinuity to our empirical one” (“What is Man?” 1924, 
 p33)). 
 
 The evolutionist is in desperate straits when he 
 chooses the sphere of metaphysics rather than that of 
 science as his battlefield, and when he joins his for- 
 tunes with those of a theory as vague and as vulner- 
 able as the double-aspect theory. If common sense 
 is right in believing that “dead matter” is without life 
 and consciousness, or in believing that mind acts on 
 body; if the religions of all time are right in believing 
 that there is something for the dead and something 
 better for the good than for the evil; if a religious 
 thinker, Bishop Gore, is right when he contends that 
 moral will is directive of physical force; if such sci- 
 entific philosophers as Bergson in his ‘““Mind-Energy”’ 
 (E. T., 1920), W. McDougald in his “Body and 
 Mind” (1911), and J. B. Pratt in his “Matter and 
 Spirit” (1922) are right in their elaborate and powér- 
 ful defense of interactionism—in any of these cases 
 the theory of evolution must be given up as being “in 
 part’ (that is, in the philosophical part and at its 
 crucial points) an illusion. 
 
120 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTIoNn 
 
 It may be conceded that Professor Thomson is not 
 happy in his excursion into metaphysics, but surely 
 he is on firm ground so long as he remains in the field 
 of biology. Let us ask then, what is his theory of the 
 origin of species. He says that the heart of the matter 
 is “that living creatures with a will to live, with an 
 insurgent self-assertiveness, with a spirit of adven- 
 ture, with an endeavor after well-being . . . do trade 
 with time and have commerce with circumstances, as 
 genuine agents, sharing in their own evolution’”’ (ii, p. 
 456). We seem to be back in Lamarckism, but Thom- 
 son, it is to be noted, does not believe in the in- 
 heritance of acquired characters (see 11, pp. 482, 483). 
 All the self-assertiveness and endeavor after well- 
 being in the world on the part of the organism will 
 not be handed down to the offspring and so cannot 
 be a factor after all in the rise of new species. Thom- 
 son is thus compelled, curiously enough, to transfer 
 all this striving and self-assertion to the germ cells 
 in order to make it effective in causing specific modi- 
 fication. “They too [the germ cells] make essays in 
 self-expression” (ii, p. 431). “They make essays in 
 self-expression which we call variations” (ii, p. 435). 
 It was said earlier that evolution means that all the 
 present fauna and flora arose “in a natural knowable 
 way’ (ii, p. 361) from somewhat simpler forms; but 
 how can the self-expression of a germ cell be a know- 
 able process? The transfer of Lamarckism to what 
 goes on within the arcana of the germ cell is a novel 
 hypothesis, but it is impossible to see how it has any 
 scientific advantage over that of special creation. 
 
Tue Merrapyysica, REvIEw 121 
 
 Professor Thomson’s elaborate and informing ex- 
 position of evolution may prove to be as significant 
 in the present controversy as was Bateson’s presiden- 
 tial address of the next year. Mill has said that by 
 means of hypotheses we arrive at truths which are not 
 hypothetical, but a scientific hypothesis is one that is 
 capable of verification by objective facts. The hy- 
 pothesis of descent with modification, or transformism, 
 still remains, sixty-five years after Darwin wrote, in 
 the hypothetical category. The case for the natural 
 origin of species is not strengthened when evolution 
 is erected into a pretentious philosophical dogma, but- 
 tressed on one side by a faulty logic and on the other 
 by a dubious metaphysic. A theory in science, as was 
 said by Sir J. J. Thomson in his recent lectures in 
 this country, is “a tool, not a dogma.” When the tool 
 is exalted into a dogma it is no longer a very useful 
 tool. 
 
gt oe , 
 neh he 
 
 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 EVOLUTION AND THE FALL 
 
“As a matter of fact the higher man of today is not worrying 
 about his sins at all, still less about their punishment.”—Sm 
 Oxiver Lopce. 
 
 “The evolutionist sees in the story of the Fall merely a sym- 
 bolical description of the gradual passing of primitive mankind 
 from an original state of ignorance to the attainment of moral 
 consciousness.”—REGINALD S$. Moxon. 
 
 “To the evolutionist sin is not an innovation, but is the sur- 
 vival or misuse of habits and tendencies that were incidental to 
 an earlier stage of development and whose sinfulness lies in their 
 anachronism.”’—Canon J. M. WILSON. 
 
 “No view of the human state is so inexpressibly sad as that 
 which leaves out the Fall. The existence of evil in its many 
 forms, as self-will and suffering and vice and crime, cannot be 
 gainsaid, and, if this evil belongs to the essence of man as created, 
 then there can be no prospect of relief here or hereafter. Sin 
 will propagate sin in inevitable succession, as the greatest of 
 ancient poets sang. Misery will be as the shadow which man casts 
 when the sun is brightest. There can be nothing in him to drive 
 out that which is part of his true self. The stream as it flows 
 will always fall below its source. And this awful and inexorable 
 rule knows in nature no reversal or repeal. Endless retribution 
 is the plain teaching of the invariable sequence which we call 
 natural law. Effectual forgiveness is the revelation of the Gospel.” 
 —BisHorp WEsTcort, 
 
IX 
 EVOLUTION AND THE FALL 
 ‘ VICTOR HUGO has said that the popularity of 
 
 pantheism is due to the fact that man is unwill- 
 
 ing to admit that there is any other being in the 
 universe higher than himself. Modernism, so-called, 
 is another illustration of this tendency in human 
 nature. ‘To the modernist of an extreme type there 
 is no revelation except the record of religious experi- 
 ences; no authority higher than that whose source 
 and seat is in the religious consciousness. There is 
 no personal creative power greater than that of man— 
 
 A man stood up in Panama, 
 And the mountains stood aside. 
 
 There is no inspiration higher than that of poet and 
 artist. There is no Incarnation except that found in all 
 the sons of men; no divinity except the manifestation 
 of the divine in all men. There is no atoning sac- 
 rifice except as illustrating the general law of progress 
 through suffering. There is no Holy Spirit except 
 the spirit of Jesus in the lives of His followers. There 
 _is no salvation except through character; no regenera- 
 tion except the realization by an individual of his 
 highest capacities. Our very conception of God must 
 be profoundly modified. God must be democratized. 
 He is not a Creator and Sovereign, but is a member 
 125 3 
 
126 THE CHRISTIAN AND EVvoLUutTION 
 
 of a community of which we also are members. 
 Heaven—as well as this world—must be “made safe 
 for democracy.” A Soviet publication called the 
 Bezbozhnik, or “Godless,” says: “We have finished 
 with the earthly Czars; now we shall deal with the 
 heavenly Czars.” In more polite phrase, “Monotheism 
 must pass, and some form of view consistent with a 
 cosmic evolutional democracy must take its place.”’ 
 
 Whether such pride is praised or deprecated, it must 
 be admitted that the pride of man makes him reluctant 
 to accept the superior, the unique, the transcendent, 
 or in short the supernatural. He prefers to think that 
 God is altogether such a one as himself, or at least 
 different only in degree. The pride of man is humbled 
 not only by the acknowledgment of the infinite at- 
 tributes of God and of the transcendence of God in 
 His holiness and the majesty of His power, but by the 
 confession that man himself is not what he ought to 
 be, that he is a sinful and fallen creature. However 
 great may be the achievements of the human intellect 
 or however complete may be its mastery over the 
 forces of nature, the presence and blight of sin in 
 human life makes unrestrained self-congratulation im- 
 possible. It is here that the evolution theory—the 
 great achievement of man’s intellect of which he is 
 justly proud—comes to the rescue of man’s self- 
 esteem. Man, it tells him, is not fallen but rising, and 
 the Fall and the Biblical story which enshrines it are 
 frankly mythical. 
 
 In proportion as the evolutionist delights in the 
 apotheosis of man he minimizes God and deprecates 
 
EvoLUTION AND THE Fay 127 
 
 any special interposition of God or display of His 
 power in the world’s history. Instead of saying, Have 
 not Thy hands made all this? How wonderful are 
 Thy works! the evolutionist can say, Has not my 
 mind conceived this grand and all-comprehending 
 system of cosmic evolution? Has not my intellect 
 grasped at last the meaning of the universe and dis- 
 covered the universal law which covers all the proc- 
 esses of existence from the primitive electrons to the 
 grand dénouement of human history? As Themis- 
 tocles among the Greeks erected a temple to All-Coun- 
 seling Artemis and there worshiped at the shrine of 
 his own genius, so the modern intellect in its devotion 
 to the formula of evolution is practically worshiping 
 itself. 
 
 To the modern mind, shaped upon the philosophy 
 of naturalistic evolution, the supernatural elements of 
 the Christian history and the evangelical doctrines of 
 sin and redemption are equally unacceptable. It is 
 plain that these doctrinal and historical elements of 
 Christianity will stand or fall together, and the his- 
 tory and the doctrine afford each other mutual sup- 
 port. Apart from the supernatural there is no power 
 that can save from sin, and if there is no transcend- 
 ence of God in any sense, there is no holiness of God 
 against the background of which sin will appear ex- 
 ceeding sinful. The supernatural in the New Testa- 
 ment is inseparably connected with the fact of sin and 
 the purpose of redemption. The Son of man came to 
 seek and to save that which was lost; the Son of man 
 came to minister and to give His life a ransom for 
 
 9 
 
128 Tue CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuvtIoN 
 
 many. ‘The historical facts of the Incarnation and 
 the Resurrection have no raison d’ étre apart from the 
 doctrines of sin and redemption, and it is clear that 
 these doctrines lie at the heart of the Christian re- 
 ligion—of the Gospel. The situation is serious and 
 even critical when we are told from both sides that 
 the doctrines of original sin and of redemption are in- 
 compatible with the scientific doctrine of evolution. 
 
 For fifteen hundred years—to go no further back 
 than the time of Augustine—the doctrine of the Fall 
 has furnished the base for the structure of Christian 
 theology. Without the Fall, Catholic and Protestant 
 theologians have united in declaring, there could be 
 and need be no Redemption. A tradition or myth of 
 a Fall has found its way into most of the ethnic faiths. 
 Leading philosophers from Plato down have paid 
 tribute to it. Kant speaks of the “radical evil of 
 human nature” and of a “corrupt propensity rooted in 
 men.” An acute American thinker thus paraphrases 
 the words of the Prayer Book: 
 
 “My life has been, if not an active rejection of the 
 good, yet a long acquiescence in something less than 
 good. I have failed to shake myself awake to the 
 conditions of my own welfare. I have accepted with- 
 out protest enjoyments I have not earned. I have 
 not enquired into the right of my own ease. Back 
 of all my passivity was an awareness that life has, 
 after all, its conditions; and I have failed to force 
 myself up to the exertion or hardship of learning 
 them. .. . I have not known in detail what I ought 
 to do, and I cannot be judged for what I have not 
 
EvoLUTION AND THE FALy, 129 
 
 known, but I judge myself for living in an ignorance 
 which my will knew could be overcome” (W. E. 
 Hocking in “Human Nature and Its Remaking’’). 
 With deeper insight into moral experience Bishop 
 Moule, scholar and saint, has declared that the Apos- 
 tle’s statement in Romans 5: 12-21 is the Scriptural 
 expression of a consciousness deep as the awakened 
 soul of man: 
 
 “That I have not only sinned, but have been a sin- 
 ful being from my first personal beginning; and that 
 I ought not to be so, and ought never to have been so. 
 It is my calamity, but it is also my accusation. This 
 I cannot explain; but this I know. And to know this, 
 with a knowledge not merely speculative but moral, 
 is to be ‘shut up unto Christ,’ in a self-despair which 
 can go nowhere else than to Him for acceptance, for 
 peace, for holiness, for power.” 
 
 The doctrine of the Fall has become the storm center 
 of the present controversy between evolution and the- 
 ology. Here is where the shoe pinches. To believe 
 in the Fall is to believe in the transcendence of God 
 in His holiness and in the transcendence of man over 
 nature, coordinate truths which “‘iave both been ob- 
 scured by the theory of evolution, and is to accept as 
 well a supernatural scheme for man’s redemption. To 
 deny the Fall is to take a different view of God and of 
 man, of man’s present condition and of God’s pro- 
 vision for man’s spiritual needs. The question is 
 between anthropology as a branch of science, and an- 
 thropology as a department of theology, and the con- 
 troversy may be as prolonged and as serious in its is- 
 
130 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTIon 
 
 sues for the church as the historic debate between 
 Augustine and Pelagius. It will be convenient to no- 
 tice the five possible relations which the theory of evo- 
 lution may bear to the doctrine of the Fall. 
 
 1. It is held that evolution excludes the Fall. We 
 must exclude man from the operation of evolution or 
 take the doctrine of the Fall out of our theology. To 
 do the former would be to rob evolution of most of 
 its interest for human beings, for a theory of descent 
 which reached only from amceba to ape would excite 
 very little public interest, and to do the latter would 
 be to cut very deep into the scheme of evangelical 
 Christianity. 
 
 If the mental and moral as well as the physical en- 
 dowments of man were the result of a gradual advance 
 from an animal ancestry, there would be no place in 
 this ascent in which to locate a Fall in the sense of a 
 moral crisis of momentous importance to the race. 
 Sin in its early stages would be merely immaturity or 
 ignorance, and the first sin would be the most venial. 
 A fault committed in the dawning of the moral con- 
 sciousness and by a creature midway between homo- 
 simius and pithecanthropus could never have had the 
 moral consequences for all the race and for all time 
 that are attributed to the historic Fall. The only Fall 
 possible in this case was, in language ascribed to Theo- 
 dore Parker, a “fall upward.” There was no height 
 from which man could fall, unless the first “fall to 
 rise’ was, as has been suggested, when man’s simian 
 ancestor descended from the trees and stood on his 
 hind legs. The issue is sharply drawn by an evolution- 
 
a 
 
 EvoLUTION AND THE FALY 131 
 
 ist who has lately said: ‘“‘We cannot accept the story 
 of Eden and the Fall as history. ... And let us re- 
 member that if this account of Eden and the Fall is 
 not history, the current creeds of Christendom, not 
 yet disavowed or revised, the theology still assumed, 
 even where it is not directly preached—these have no 
 footing in fact, they are but ‘such stuff as dreams are 
 made of,’ they but cumber the ground of the church 
 and the world and should no longer be allowed to 
 impose upon the human understanding’ (Marion 
 Shutter. See World’s Work, Oct., 1923, pp. 606, 607). 
 
 It is not surprising that, yielding to the spirit of 
 the age and to the logic of the situation, many have 
 discarded the doctrine of the Fall, some with reluc- 
 tance and others with alacrity. A number of theolo- 
 gians of the liberal school have rejected the doctrine 
 of the Fall at the behest of evolution. Thus Canon 
 FE. W. Barnes, of Westminster Abbey, thinks that 
 belief in the Fall is “not vital to Christianity,” and 
 
 that the inevitable acceptance of evolution means the 
 giving up of belief in the Fall and in the superstruc- 
 
 ture of theological doctrine built upon it. Canon 
 Barnes’ pronouncement was hailed as “a famous vic- 
 tory—for the Freethinkers,”’ by the London Free- 
 thinker; while a Catholic paper of Boston, The Pilot, 
 said that “the decision of the highest tribunal of the 
 Church on Biblical matters does not leave this matter 
 open to discussion. .. . The doctrine of the Fall of 
 man can never be expunged from the Bible. It is the 
 word of Eternal Truth” (see The Literary Digest, 
 Noy. 20, 1920). 
 
132 THE CHRISTIAN AND Evolution 
 
 The doctrine of the Fall is an austere doctrine, un- 
 popular in an age when “people are not worrying 
 about their sins,” and uncomplimentary to human 
 nature. Rather than confess daily that we are miser- 
 able and fallen sinners, it is more flattering to human 
 pride to acknowledge with complacency that we have 
 come very far already, that every day we are getting 
 better and better, and that, while there may be room 
 for improvement, we have done on the whole remark- 
 ably well. The Fall has naturally become with evo- 
 lutionists “a principal subject of mirth and ridicule.” 
 Says Willard L. Sperry: 
 
 “The modern man feels that Adam has been a 
 badly overworked character in human history 
 and that he deserves now some eternal Sabbath 
 of respite from the obloquy which our thankless 
 predecessors cast on him... . It was, of course, the 
 advent of the modern sciences which issued Adam 
 his indeterminate ticket of moral leave in history 
 and wrecked the whole grim system which has 
 been built up around him. He remained a person to 
 conjure with ethically until he was confronted by 
 Darwin, Lyell, Spencer and Co. Since then he 
 has been superseded by a half-erect biped with a 
 sharply recessive forehead, somewhere along the 
 line between Pithecanthropus erectus and Nean- 
 derthal savage whose background is the nebular 
 hypothesis and the primeval ooze; nebula, ooze 
 and biped all alike simply non-moral (“The Dis- 
 ciplines of Liberty,” 1921, p. 64). 
 
EVOLUTION AND THE FALL, 133 
 
 Within the bounds of theology the Fall can be more 
 easily dispensed with by the Jewish than by the Chris- 
 tian theologian. The Jewish Encyclopedia declares 
 that “Judaism, having never taught the doctrine of the 
 Fall of Man, is not obliged to reject the evolutional 
 theory on the ground that it conflicts with the dogma 
 which demands the assumption of man’s original per- 
 fections, and which thus inverts the process and se- 
 quence posited by the evolutionists” (Art. “Evolu- 
 tion,” vol. v, p. 282). The Christian theologian cannot 
 dispose of the Fall without rejecting explicitly the 
 Pauline doctrine taught in Romans 5, and much more 
 of the Apostle’s system. There can be no doubt that 
 on a fair exegesis of the passage mentioned the Apos- 
 tle teaches that the sin of the first man brought an en- 
 tail of sin and death upon the whole of humanity. 
 The emphatic contrast repeated so many times in this 
 passage between the sin of the one and its conse- 
 quences incurred by the many leaves no doubt of the 
 meaning on this point. 
 
 2. Less summary in their dismissal of the Fall are 
 those who hold that evolution interprets the Fall. The 
 vocabulary of evolution has often been employed to 
 describe the phenomena of sin. Sin in the individual 
 and the race may be called reversion to type, arrested 
 development, partially evolved conduct, want of con- 
 formity to environment, transgression of the law of 
 progress, refusal to evolve, resistance to the vital im- 
 pulse. But in the transition from the animal to the 
 human can there be found any place for a Fall or any 
 explanation of the origin of sin? 
 
134 Tre CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 F. R. Tennant in his “Origin and Propagation of 
 Sin’ (2d ed., 1908) has made the most notable at- 
 tempt to answer these questions, giving up, indeed, 
 the historic Fall, but trying on evolutionary principles 
 to account for sinfulness and the universality of sin. 
 Men are universally and inevitably sinners, according 
 to Tennant, because they are descended from animals 
 by ordinary generation. The clamorous self-assertive 
 passions inherited from the animals become strongly 
 intrenched, in primitive man and in every man, before 
 the dawning of moral intelligence or conscience. Ten- 
 nant is attempting to trace the evolution of sin, not 
 the rise of the moral sense which makes sin possible. 
 His theory is that at the beginnings of moral history 
 (in the individual and the race) there is a chaos of 
 instincts as yet unmoralized, rather than a fall from 
 a previous higher condition. Amid this chaos of in- 
 stincts the will stands neutral, without bias toward 
 those which are condemned by the awakening moral 
 sense. Yet sin—the choice of the lower impulses or 
 the failure to obey the higher impulses—while it is 
 not theoretically “‘an absolute necessity,” is yet “some- 
 thing empirically inevitable for every man” (p. 113). 
 There is thus a kind of racial Fall because of the over- 
 powering strength of the animal or selfish impulses. 
 When conscience at length demands the restraint of 
 these impulses or passions it speaks with too weak a 
 voice to secure obedience. Our evolutionary Hercules 
 at the forks of the road is but a moral pigmy, and so 
 inevitably chooses the wrong path, the line of least 
 resistance. Instead of saying with the old theology, 
 
EvoLUTIoN AND THE FALt, 135 
 
 that the old Adam is too strong for the young 
 Melanchthon, we should say that the “old animal,” 
 the ape and tiger passions, is too strong for the later 
 appearing and less mature moral sentiments. 
 
 The criticism is pertinent, that, if all men actually 
 and inevitably sin, then sin is made inevitable by the 
 constitution of their nature, and that, in the last anal- 
 ysis, God is the author of sin. Again it is scarcely 
 just to our animal “cousins” to hold them responsible 
 for human sin. It is admitted that the impulses which 
 make for the preservation and propagation of the 
 species have no moral quality in the animals, and the 
 sharing of these impulses by men does not account 
 for human sin. The animal impulses are not the cause 
 of sin, but sin is the cause of the perversion of these 
 instincts in themselves innocent. The disorder or 
 chaos in human nature is not the cause but the result 
 of sin. 
 
 It will be remembered that Hegel in his “Philosophy 
 of History” says that the condition of innocence is 
 the condition of animals only, that Paradise is a park 
 where only animals and not man can live, and that the 
 Fall is the eternal mythus of the way in which man 
 became man. ‘There is at least this truth in Hegel’s 
 exposition, that sin is not accounted for by what men 
 share with or inherit from the animals, but by what 
 men are in themselves as distinct from the animals. A 
 healthy impulse of the early church led it to repudiate 
 the Gnostic dualism which placed the locus of evil in 
 matter, and the moral sentiment of the church of to- 
 
136 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 day will reject the theory, that the sin of man is due 
 to his assumed genetic relation to the animals. 
 
 As R. J. Campbell, who previously in his “New 
 Theology” ridiculed the idea of a Fall, now says in 
 “A Spiritual Pilgrimage,’ “By speaking of it [sin] 
 as the remains of the ape and tiger qualities in our 
 ascending humanity we belittle its tragedy, its terrible- 
 ness, its ever-present menace.” ‘Tennant’s critics are 
 agreed that his theory leaves no room for that cry of 
 the contrite heart which not only confesses to separate 
 acts of sin but declares: “I was shapen in iniquity; 
 there is a law of sin and death in my members.” 
 
 Utilizing the insights and the vocabulary of Berg- 
 son’s philosophy, S. A. McDowall, in his “Evolution 
 and the Need of Atonement,’ comes nearer than does 
 Tennant to the traditional view of sin and the Fall. 
 Sin with McDowall is not merely a failure to moralize 
 the animal passions, but is a conscious resistance to 
 the vital impulse which runs through all organic 
 nature. It is the voluntary checking of the evolution- 
 ary process which is the divine plan of human prog- 
 ress. There is in every individual the realization that 
 life has a purpose, and the feeling of a duty to pro- 
 mote that purpose. When the individual opposes this 
 movement of progress he allies himself with the forces 
 of katabolism and destruction and thus checks the 
 progress of the community and the nation. ‘The soli- 
 darity of the race in sin is emphasized. ‘Tennant, as 
 we have seen, could only admit a kind of racial Fall 
 due to the overpowering strength of the animal or sel- 
 fish passions. McDowall locates sin more definitely 
 
EvoLUTION AND THE FALL 137, 
 
 in the conscious will, and the first sin might, in his 
 construction, be called a Fall because it weakened the 
 will to progress and made it harder for humanity to 
 achieve its God-appointed goal. 
 
 The difficulty in naturalistic schemes of evolution is 
 the difficulty of accounting for man as a moral and 
 spiritual being. Both sin and virtue lose their true 
 character when interpreted by man’s relationship to 
 the animals. We may speak of sin as failure to 
 moralize the self-assertive animal passions, as refusal 
 to cooperate with the vital impulse, as failure to pro- 
 mote the health of social tissue, or with W. E.. Hock- 
 ing, as “refusal to interpret crude impulses in terms 
 of the individual’s most intelligent will to power’ 
 (‘Human Nature and Its Remaking,” p. 116). The 
 question however is unanswered: Why am I under 
 any obligation to repress the animal passions, or to 
 cooperate with the vital impulse, or to seek the well- 
 being of society, or to interpret and exercise the will 
 to power,—in case I do not wish to do any of these 
 things? The possession by man of certain natural 
 impulses supposed to be derived from the animals fur- 
 nishes no reason. why these impulses should be re- 
 pressed. An aggressive school of psychologists (the 
 Freudian school), indeed, would say that the disorder 
 in man’s nature consists precisely in the unnatural 
 suppression of these impulses. If sin is defined with 
 Bishop Gore as “the refusal of allegiance to God and 
 rebellion against the law of our true being” (‘‘Belief 
 in Christ,” 1923, p. 270), then we have an adequate 
 definition of sin because sin is defined from our rela- 
 

 
 138 THE CHRISTIAN AND EVoLutTIon 
 
 tion to God and not from our relation to the lower pis 
 
 animals. 
 
 3. We may next consider the mediating theory that 
 evolution while not explaining the Fall leaves room 
 for the Fall, or at least in some way for its moral 
 equivalent. If we accept the view of A. R. Wallace 
 that man on his physical side is related genetically to 
 the brutes, but that in his moral and spiritual nature 
 he is the product of a spiritual influx or special crea- 
 tion, the origin of man would then technically belong 
 to the category of what the older theologians called 
 “mediate creation,” that is, not creation ex mhilo, but 
 the insertion into the complex of nature of something 
 new, which what was previously existent in nature 
 was not adequate to produce. The older doctrine of 
 the Fall could thus be retained in spite of evolution. 
 Man would be made in the image of God, there would 
 be nothing in his relationship to the brute to necessi- 
 tate or make inevitable the supremacy of his lower 
 passions, his sin would indeed be a mystery (as it is on 
 any theory), but the effect of his sin on his descend- 
 ants would be open to discussion as it was in the day 
 of Augustine and Pelagius. 
 
 Drs. James Denney, Charles Gore and James Orr 
 represent a school of theologians who are evangelical 
 in their view of the seriousness and sinfulness of sin, 
 but accept, with reservations, the evolutional account 
 of man’s origin. Denney thinks that the origin of sin 
 even with the Old and New Testaments before us can- 
 not be explained. He regards the story of Genesis 3 
 as frankly an etiological myth to explain human 
 
EVvoLUTION AND THE FAL, 139 
 
 
 
 “misery. “This chapter does not contain history or 
 dogma, but ethical experience expressed in mythical 
 language. It is not the story of the first man, but of 
 every man; and, if the key to its form is to be sought 
 in comparative mythology, the key to its content can 
 be found only in the soul.” 
 
 Bishop Gore, as we have seen, is not concerned to 
 remove the soul from the operation of evolution, and 
 he is not specially interested in the question of the 
 antiquity of man or in that of the single or multiple 
 origin of the race. He believes, however, that “the 
 emergence of the distinctively human faculties, and 
 the place and manner of such emergence, are still in- 
 volved in impenetrable obscurity” (‘Belief in Christ,” 
 p. 274). He attaches the highest value to the early 
 chapters of Genesis, taking them as symbols, not his- 
 tory. “We see in them the clearest traces of divine 
 inspiration. We see there true ideas about God and 
 His mind—about the world and man’s relation to the 
 world and his relation to God, about the origin of and 
 nature of sin and its consequences, and about God’s 
 dealings with man both in judgment and mercy—all 
 so vividly expressed that a child can understand them 
 and the imagination of mankind can never get rid of 
 them” (p. 275). And, again, we can hold to the sub- 
 stance of the Pauline doctrine, “if we take the Old 
 Adam, not as an historical person, but as the symbol 
 of our race as it has made itself by sin, to which by 
 our birth and natural tradition we belong” (p. 278). 
 
 Dr. Orr speaks of the narratives of Genesis as being 
 clothed in “allegorical or figurative dress,” but as be- 
 
140 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 ing “the oldest and most precious traditions of our 
 race, worthy in their intrinsic merit of standing where 
 they do at the commencement of the Word of God, 
 and capable of vindicating their right to be there: not 
 merely, as most would allow, vehicles of great ideas, 
 but presenting in their archaic way the memory of 
 great historic truths. The story of the Fall, thus re- 
 garded, is not a myth, but enshrines the shuddering 
 memory of an actual moral catastrophe in the begin- 
 ning of the race, which brought death into the world 
 and all our woe” (‘Sin as a Problem of Today,” 1911, 
 pp. 165, 166). 
 
 Theologians who accept evolution but find an his- 
 toric basis for the doctrine of the Fall in the Genesis 
 narrative and the Pauline exposition must consider 
 three points in the evolutionary scheme: (1) It is said 
 that the sin of Adam could not affect his descendants 
 _ because acquired characters are not transmitted. It 
 is obvious, though, that the theory can be turned the 
 other way, as is done by Giddings, who says that re- 
 generation “does not reach or affect the germplasm, 
 it cannot be biologically transmitted to subsequent 
 generations; to this extent the Old Adam survives, but 
 each generation, after it is born, can be morally re- 
 generated in some degree” (as quoted by Lane, of. 
 cit., p. 195). A distinguished evolutionist, Dr. Paul 
 Kammerer of Vienna, has lately been in America 
 claiming that he has proved by experiments that 
 acquired characters can be inherited. In the present 
 state of the debate it would be premature to draw im- 
 portant inferences. 
 
EvoLUTION AND THE Fay 141 
 
 (2) It is said that belief in the Fall is incompatible 
 with belief in the extreme antiquity of man. It was 
 the opinion of Dr. B. B. Warfield that “the question 
 of the antiquity of man has of itself no theological 
 significance,’ and that the question is “a purely scien- 
 tific one, in which the theologian as such has no con- 
 cern” (Princeton Theol. Rev., Jan., 1911, pp. 1 and 
 11). The Bible he claims does not assign a brief span 
 to human existence, and some ten to twenty thousand 
 years is the limit to human existence according to 
 sober scientists. The genealogies in Genesis are re- 
 garded as compressed with numerous missing links 
 and so as supplying no grounds for chronological in- 
 ference. On this view it would take the life span of 
 only a few Methuselahs to fill out the measure of the 
 fifteen or even twenty-five thousand years usually re- 
 quired for the beginnings of the Cro-Magnon race, or 
 homo sapiens. It would be more difficult to find any 
 historic residuum in the antediluvian narratives of 
 Genesis if the origin of the human race is placed, as 
 has been suggested, nearer 400,004 B. C. than 4,004. 
 In all the discussion it must be remembered that geo- 
 logical chronology is still in an unsettled state. 
 
 (3) On the question of the unity of the human race 
 Dr. Warfield asserts in the article alluded to that “the 
 whole structure of the Bible’s teaching, including all 
 that we know as its doctrine of salvation, rests on it 
 and implicates it” (pp. 18, 19). ‘The unity of the 
 old man in Adam is the postulate of the unity of the 
 new man in Christ” (p. 25). Darwin, in his “Descent 
 of Man,” said, that ‘‘those naturalists who admit the 
 
142 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 principle of evolution . . . will feel, no doubt, that ail 
 the races of men are descended from a single primi- 
 tive stock” (2d ed., p. 176). To admit multiple origin 
 in the case of the races of men might lead to the hy- 
 pothesis of multiple origins, as advocated by E. Was- 
 mann, to account for the broader differences in the 
 organic world, and this view would be looked upon 
 with suspicion by orthodox evolutionists. Dr. F. G. 
 Crookshank, in his “The Mongol in Our Midst,” has 
 proposed the novel theory, based on the evidence of 
 posture, palmistry and other correspondences, that the 
 three human groups of Mongols, Negroes and Whites 
 have each a separate origin, being derived respectively 
 from the orang-utan, the gorilla and the chimpanzee. 
 On Crookshank’s theory the line of descent from 
 known animal forms to the human, which most evo- 
 lutionists believe has never been crossed, proves to 
 have been crossed three times at three different points. 
 It would be strange if evolution, unifying nature, 
 should break up the unity of the human race. As 
 Edward Caird has said, ““The divisions between men 
 are as nothing in comparison with the fundamental 
 fact of self-consciousness which unites them all to 
 each other” (“The Evolution of Religion,” 1, p. 15). 
 The evolutionist, it appears, is in something of a di- 
 lemma. If mankind sprang from a single pair, the 
 origin of this pair becomes a unique or even miracu- 
 lous event not to be accounted for by natural law; but 
 if multiple origin be assumed for the races of men, 
 then the multiple origin of widely different species 
 and genera may also be postulated. 
 
EvoLUtTION AND THE FALL, 143 
 
 4, It is sometimes maintained that the Fall inter- 
 prets evolution. ‘The tables are turned when the at- 
 tempt is made to solve the problems of evolution by 
 assuming a pre-mundane or pre-organic Fall. C. W. 
 Formby, in his “Unveiling of the Fall” (1923), claims 
 that his theory of a pre-organic Fall gives “a clearer 
 and more complete explanation of evolution than any 
 existing” (p. 181), while Canon Peter Green, in 
 “The Problem of Evil” (1920), is convinced “of the 
 need for the acceptance of a pre-mundane fall, as 
 absolutely necessary for any adequate view of physical 
 and moral evil’ (p. 133). 
 
 Formby holds that a being made in the image of 
 God originally existed in a state of holiness before 
 life began on the earth; that this being, in some way 
 combining in himself all the individual wills now 
 known as men, rebelled against God, and that thus his 
 sin became the sin of all; that the vital impulse, in 
 some way identified with the being who fell, then 
 started upon the career of evolution which was in part 
 a cruel and destructive process, because the vital im- 
 pulse had become sin-stricken and vitiated at its root, 
 and was also in part a redemptive and restorative 
 process which was completed in the work of Christ. 
 It is held that this theory is the hidden meaning be- 
 neath the allegory of Genesis, that it may be read be- 
 tween the lines in Paul, who spoke wisdom among the 
 perfect, that it does justice to the universality and the 
 guilt of sin in man and sheds light upon the pain and 
 strife in the whole evolutionary process, and that in 
 
 10 
 
144. Tas CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 short it satisfies the demands of both science and 
 theology. 
 
 Both Formby and Green, whose exposition is some- 
 what similar, as we see turn the tables on Tennant 
 and McDowall. Immaturity of the moral instincts is 
 not the cause of sin, but sin is the cause of the im- 
 maturity; resistance to the vital impulse is not the 
 cause of sin, for the vital impulse is itself vitiated at 
 its source. ‘This bold and highly speculative doctrine 
 —this “hazardous and desperate guess’—of the extra- 
 temporal or pre-organic origin of sin will scarcely 
 commend itself either to scientific or to theological 
 orthodoxy. It cuts the Gordian knot of the problem 
 of evolution and the Fall, but only to raise more seri- 
 ous difficulties, exegetical and philosophical, of its 
 own. ; 
 5. We come to the final possibility that the Fall ex- 
 cludes evolution. ‘This attitude is often taken by those 
 who have reacted against the theory of evolution be- 
 cause of its alleged anti-Christian teaching, extrava- 
 gant claims, faulty logic or lack of convincing proof. 
 They insist that wide-ranging inferences need to be 
 carefully distinguished from experimental facts, and 
 that the theory of evolution in the judgment of lead- 
 ing scientists is in so transitional a state as to afford 
 no secure basis for metaphysical inference or theolog- 
 ical construction. If it be insisted that belief in evo- 
 lution and belief in the Fall exclude each other, the 
 advocate of the Biblical view will not be slow in the 
 present state of the discussion to accept the challenge, 
 believing that no proved fact of science disproves the 
 
EVOLUTION AND THE Farr, 145 
 
 Fall, and that the evidence for the Fall in the Bible, 
 in conscience and in the condition of human society 
 is stronger and more convincing than the evidence of 
 descent from brute ancestors, No line of descent and 
 no natural method of descent has yet been discovered 
 leading from the beasts that perish to man as an im- 
 mortal being. ‘To quote again from Professor More: 
 “In spite of the speculations of centuries we have not 
 advanced a step beyond the noble and dignified de- 
 scription of the creation as imagined by the Hebrew 
 prophet in the book of Genesis. We can dismiss his 
 story of the Garden of Eden as an allegory, but when 
 he stated that man was created out of the dust and 
 that God breathed into him the breath of Life, all 
 was said of that supreme mystery, as an eminent phi- 
 losopher pointed out to me, which can be said” 
 (“Dogma of Evolution,” pp. 242, 243). The predic- 
 tion may be ventured that for the most reliable infor- 
 mation about human origins and the moral history of 
 mankind the thoughts of men will continue to turn to 
 the majestic opening chapters of the Bible long after 
 the hypothetical ape-man has been forgotten, 
 
wu, 
 Led rit ue 
 
 > 
 
 Able 
 
 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 
 
“The very fact that all the nations (except the Jews) have 
 traveled along a line leading to polytheism, and that all have failed 
 to get beyond it, constitutes a presumption that monotheism is 
 not to be reached by the route that leads to polytheism.” FRANK 
 Byron JEVONS. 
 
 “Superstition and magic could not have arisen if the idea of 
 another world than this world of nature had not been deeply im- 
 printed on man’s self-consciousness. ‘They themselves are of a 
 later origin, but they presuppose religion, which is inherent in 
 human nature, having its foundation and principle in the creation 
 of man in the image of God. Hence religion is, not only with 
 reference to its origin and essence, but also with reference to its 
 truth and validity, founded in revelation. Without revelation re- 
 ligion sinks back into a pernicious superstition.”—HERMAN 
 BAVINCK. 
 
 =~ 
 
 “For my own part, having studied the prophets and the Gospels 
 all my life long and asked myself this crucial question more 
 times than I could enumerate, I can give but one answer. I be- 
 lieve their claim is true. It is a momentous decision morally, and 
 it is momentous no less intellectually, because, if I mistake not, 
 it dominates the intellectual situation.’"—CHaries Gore, 
 
x 
 EVOLUTION AND REVELATION 
 
 ELIGIOUS people of all schools are commonly 
 R agreed in regarding two propositions as axio- 
 
 matic: first, that Jesus was the greatest of re- 
 ligious teachers, and second, that God is love. ‘The 
 two propositions practically merge into one, for if 
 Jesus is the greatest of teachers His teaching is to be 
 followed and believed; and in every word and act of 
 His life He taught that God is love. 
 
 The evolutionist who believes in the love of God is 
 placed in a peculiar dilemma. He must, in taking a 
 broad view which includes religious history as well 
 as natural history, either give up his favorite maxim 
 that there are “no gaps and no intrusions,” “no alien 
 influxes,”’ and ‘no insertions ab extra,’ or else he 
 must give up his belief in a God of love with its in- 
 evitable corollary that He has broken the silence of 
 eternity and revealed His love in some direct and un- 
 mistakable manner to His children. In the latter case 
 the highest conception of God that has been enter- 
 tained by the human mind will have to be abandoned 
 and declension in religion will be the result. Natural- 
 istic evolution, the evolution of no gaps and no intru- 
 sions, means the silence of God. He is as helpless as 
 the Tithonus of ancient fable who lost his voice, and, 
 if indeed He exists at all, He is not specially inter- 
 ested in us nor can we be in Him. 
 
 149 
 
150 Tue CHRISTIAN AND EvoLurIon 
 
 If God is personal and if God is love, then the prob- 
 ability that He has spoken to man amounts to prac- 
 tical certainty. On the analogy of human relationships 
 —the only analogy that is applicable to the case—it is 
 incredible that one person should be supremely inter- 
 ested in another and yet never give or attempt to give 
 direct and unmistakable expression of his love by voice 
 or message or gift or sign. If God is love and cannot 
 reveal His love it is a strange inability, and if He does 
 not express His love it is an equally strange indiffer- 
 ence. If love is an essential or the most essential at- 
 tribute of God, how will that love most naturally and 
 fully reveal itself? A noted astronomer, Professor 
 Charles Young, in an eloquent lecture on ‘‘God’s 
 Glory in the Heavens,’ used to say that he saw in 
 the heavens evidence of the wisdom, power and 
 majesty of God, but that he found there no evidence 
 of His love. Nor is the love of God unmistakably 
 exhibited in history or general providence. ‘To say 
 that God is love is to say, as Josiah Royce has re- 
 marked, that He is, or has been or will be incarnate. 
 The logic of the argument of John, the Apostle of 
 love, cannot be escaped (1 John 4:8-12): “God is 
 love. Herein was the love of God manifested in us, 
 that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the 
 world that we might live through him.” If God is 
 love at all, there must be at the very least some per- 
 sonal revelation of the heart of God given to meet the 
 deepest needs of the heart of man. The New Testa- 
 ment teaches that His love was revealed through the 
 life and death of the Word that was made flesh. 
 
EvoLution AND REVELATION 151 
 
 The reality of revelation can be denied in two ways: 
 by an agnostic theory of knowledge and by an evo- 
 lutionary account of the origin of theism which shows 
 it to be an illusion. Herbert Spencer, the philosopher 
 of evolution, as Huxley was its apologist, exemplifies 
 both of these methods. He first proclaimed that God 
 was unknowable and then was compelled to give an 
 account of the way in which a supposed knowledge 
 of God arose. ‘There is, of course, the wise and rev- 
 erent agnosticism of the book of Job: ‘“‘Canst thou 
 by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the 
 Almighty unto perfection? It is high as heaven; 
 what canst thou do? Deeper than Sheol; what canst 
 thou know?” But the agnosticism of Spencer was 
 of a different kind. Under the guise of humility it 
 covered an overweening intellectual pride. The criti- 
 cism has been made a hundred times that Spencer had 
 to know a great deal about God before he could pro- 
 claim Him to be unknowable. He must, for instance, 
 find out that God was not personal before he could be 
 sure that He could not reveal Himself to man. J. G. 
 Schurman, not too severely, speaks of the “farce of 
 nescience playing at omniscience in setting the bounds 
 of science” (‘‘Agnosticism and Religion,’ 1896, p. 
 100). Agnosticism is a polite way of saying that God 
 cannot speak in the works of nature, or in the mind 
 and conscience of man, or more directly and clearly 
 in the prophets and in His Son. 
 
 Many theists today hold that ethical monotheism is 
 a development from lower and less pure forms of be- 
 lief. If astronomy developed from astrology why 
 
152 Tue CHRISTIAN AND Evolution 
 
 could not the highest and purest conception of God 
 and the surest knowledge of God have arisen from 
 magic or ancestor worship or belief in ghosts, or ani- 
 mism or from social taboos? It is significant, how- 
 ever, that the leading, and perhaps the most logical, 
 thinkers who give an evolutionary account of religion 
 treat it as a delusion. It is natural to suppose that if 
 belief in God is evolved out of something lower it 
 will in turn develop into something higher which will 
 supercede it. From the earliest to the latest popular 
 exponents of the evolution of religion, we see the same 
 principle at work. Belief in God is regarded as an 
 illusion, the only question being as to just how the il- 
 -lusion arose. Comte, tracing religion through the 
 stages of fetishism, polytheism and monotheism, 
 teaches that it is superceded by the metaphysical and 
 finally by the positive phases of thought. Sir J. G. 
 Frazer in “The Golden Bough” would show how man- 
 kind progresses from magic to religion and then from 
 religion to science. According to Spencer, the first 
 stage in the development of religion is ancestor wor- | 
 hip, while the final stage is the worship of the Un- 
 knowable. Durkheim would merge the religious in 
 the social, while Reinach regards religion as “a sum 
 of scruples which impede the free exercise of our 
 faculties” (“Orpheus,” E. T., p. 3). 
 
 When Andrew Lang in his “Making of Religion” 
 maintained that savages of the most “primitive” type 
 of culture have a clear idea of a High God or Supreme 
 Spirit who demanded righteous conduct, he was a voice 
 crying in the wilderness. The theory that held the 
 
EvoLutIion AND REVELATION 153 
 
 field was that all higher forms of religion are derived 
 from lower forms, and that truly primitive religion 
 was the lowest of all. Early man, whose religion was 
 supposed to be nearest to that of the lowest savages, 
 could have had no conception of God, for this was 
 the result of a long development. As Darwin said: 
 “The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does 
 not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has 
 been elevated by long-continued culture” (“Descent of 
 Man,” p. 613). 
 
 In recent years evidence has been coming in from 
 historians of religion, from anthropologists, from psy- 
 chologists, from missionaries and travelers which has 
 shaken the evolutionary view and has even turned the 
 scales in favor of the opposite theory. Thus W. 
 Warde Fowler in his “Roman Ideas of Deity,” 1914, 
 refers to the “evidence for the idea of one great deity 
 surviving among uncultured or half-cultivated peo- 
 ples.” Speaking of F. B. Jevons, he says: “If I 
 understand him rightly, all these later systems (poly- 
 demonism and fetishism) which I have called the 
 growth that chokes the idea of the Supreme, imply a 
 belief in some divine personality. Flinders Petrie 
 again, fresh from the enormous polytheism of ancient 
 Egypt, insists that monotheism is the first stage trace- 
 able in theology, and uses almost the same language 
 as Lang about it. So, too, Count Goblet d’ Alviella, 
 whose knowledge of religions is vast, seems in his 
 Hibbert Lectures disposed to trace the Indian and 
 Greek religious philosophy which developed the later 
 ideas of monotheism, back to an age before the full 
 development of polytheism” (pp. 30 and 35). 
 
154 Tue CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 Similarly J. H. Leuba in his “A Psychological 
 Study of Religion,’ 1912, maintains that “the idea 
 of a mighty maker of things may safely be attributed 
 to men as low in intelligence as are the lowest tribes 
 now extant, for it appears very early in the child” (p. 
 96). Of the old opinion that “even the lowest savage 
 entertains a belief in a Supreme Being, however dimly 
 conceived and little reverenced,”’ he says that “recent 
 anthropological researches furnish sufficient evidence 
 to warrant a return to this view. It seems now estab- 
 lished that in every part of Australia, except perhaps 
 among the Arunta, a tribe in the central regions, there 
 is a belief in an All-Father, who perhaps is always 
 regarded as a creator. In Africa there also exists, it 
 seems, a general belief in a great God conceived as 
 creator” (p. 100). 
 
 Travelers and missionaries, as well as scientific 
 observers, vouch for a belief among savages in a 
 higher power with the simultaneous worship of lower 
 powers. In the hearing of the present writer reputable 
 missionaries have testified to such an underlying the- 
 istic belief among uncivilized people. A missionary 
 from Africa said that the natives confessed that they 
 believed in a Supreme Spirit, but when asked why 
 they did not worship Him declared that He had left 
 them and was the white man’s God. A missionary 
 from Alaska told how the natives said that they heard 
 the voice of the Great Spirit in the wind and storm 
 but that He was far off and they could not see Him 
 and so worshiped their totem poles. 
 
 A scientifically trained missionary who has had a 
 
EvoLutTioN AND REVELATION 155 
 
 rich experience among savages, J. Warneck, was led 
 by the observed facts to overcome a previous preju- 
 dice, and as quoted by Chamberlain he writes: ‘That 
 this pure idea of God could be the result of a long 
 development in the sense that the peoples begin with 
 animistic conceptions, under the impulses of fear and 
 the worship of animals and ancestors and from that 
 advance to nature-worship from which the gods arise, 
 and that thereupon through a rich polytheism the 
 gradually refined conception of One God is elaborated 
 (so runs the well-known orthodox doctrine)—this 
 hypothesis contradicts the pictures which every one 
 who is intimate with actual heathenism and does not 
 see it through spectacles, wins from it. The idea of 
 God does not lie on the road of development from the 
 worship of spirits, it contradicts this development. It 
 is an alien element in the world of animistic concep- 
 tions. It stands in opposition to the nature deities” 
 (Quoted from Die Lebenskrafte des Evangeliums, in 
 Mensch und Gott, 1921, p. 25). 
 Travelers tell the same story. “I was informed by 
 a great traveler who has done much scientific work 
 in the islands of the Pacific and of the Indian Ocean, 
 that he had never come across a tribe which did not 
 entertain a belief in some Big God or Great Spirit 
 _. who made the whole world, even though they rarely 
 | worshiped Him, because He seemed so far away, and 
 hespectalty because He was the God of other tribes as 
 well, while their own gods were very near and wanted 
 constant attention, and moreover were more likely to 
 help them in war” (Stewart A. McDowall, “Evolution 
 
156 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTIONn 
 
 and the Need of the Atonement,” 1912, p. 68). As to 
 the reason why the high God, among rude peoples, is 
 not more often the object of worship, Leuba’s ex- 
 planation does not differ in essence from that of 
 writers like Andrew Lang and Sir W. M. Ramsay, or 
 even from that of Paul in the first chapter of Romans: 
 “Because His very greatness and remoteness stand as 
 an obstacle in the way of practical relations, while 
 ordinary spirits and great ancestors, more familiar 
 and closer to man than a Maker, call forth more read- 
 ily those methods of propitiation and worship consti- 
 tuting the lowest religious expression” (op. cit., p. 
 106). If the higher idea had been derived from the 
 ‘lower, the proportionate importance of the two in wor- 
 | ship would naturally be reversed. 
 
 While the matter is still under discussion, the evo- 
 lutionists are becoming less dogmatic and advocates 
 of a primitive endowment in man leading him to belief 
 in God are becoming more bold. A comparison of 
 two recent writers will show the present state of the 
 question. A fair and temperate statement by an evo- 
 lutionist, E. Washburn Hopkins, in his “Origin and 
 Fyvolution of Religion,’ 1923, shows the inadequacy 
 of the current evolutional theories in accounting for 
 ‘the origin of religion. He criticizes the English 
 theory of animism (Tylor and Spencer) because in 
 fact not every natural object is regarded as being alive 
 and having a spirit within it. He rejects the German 
 theory of naturalism (Max Miiller) because not every 
 object is personified. Frazer’s theory that man tries 
 to control nature by magic and then moves from magic 
 
EvoLuTIoN AND REVELATION 157 
 
 to prayer is said to be open to Durkheim’s objection 
 that magic is the child of religion and not vice versa. 
 Durkheim’s own theory—the French theory—of 
 totemism, the totem being a symbol of the group and 
 religion being social in origin, is criticized because 
 this would make the mind of the group “overwhelm- 
 ingly coercive.” “The French theory does not hesi- 
 tate to insist that man does not think at all as an 
 individual; there is no such thing as an individual 
 mentality and consequently all religious thought is 
 social” (p. 7). Hopkins himself emphasizes the com- 
 plexity of human nature and the influence of great 
 personalities in accounting for the varieties of religion. 
 He admits that “the psychological processes of prim- 
 itive man cannot be known” (p. 2), but clings to the 
 evolutional view, more, it seems, as a deduction from 
 the general theory of evolution than as an induction 
 . from observed facts: “Since man has developed from 
 a state even lower than savagery and was once intel- 
 lectually a mere animal, it is reasonable to attribute 
 to him in that state no more religious consciousness 
 than is possessed by an animal” (p. 1). 
 
 The other side of the question is maintained by 
 Houston Stewart Chamberlain in his Mensch und 
 Gott, 1921. He says that “the researches of the last 
 half century—contrary to the hitherto almost uni- 
 versal supposition—have shown beyond question that 
 the conception of a Deity, and even of One who is 
 unitary, conceivable (monotheistic), invisible, omni- 
 present, is lacking in no tribe of the earth... . All 
 
 developments of polytheism, all over-subtle elaboration 
 
158 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 of confessions (dogmas), all ritualistic aberrations 
 are evidence of later culture and at most leave the 
 conception of one original God untouched, even though 
 this be pushed back behind the crowd of later con- 
 ceptions” (p. 2). Referring to the works of Andrew 
 Lang (“The Making of Religion’), P. W. Schmidt 
 (Der Ursprung der Gottesidee) and of Leopold van 
 Schroeder (Arische Religion, Band I), Chamberlain 
 says: “Under every sky, in North and South as on 
 the equator, in Asia and America as in Australia, 
 Oceania and Africa, everywhere, where the human 
 race exists, there can be found the conception of a 
 supreme Being—the conception of God—likened, in 
 Lang’s phrase, to ‘a magnified, supernatural man.’ 
 Significant for this supreme Being is it that He is al- 
 ways represented as good, often as the guardian of 
 virtue who teaches (so for example among the admit- 
 tedly degraded Australian Negroes) chastity, sym- 
 pathy, unselfishness, and fidelity to one’s plighted 
 word. Not less significant is, however, the small place 
 which this Being receives in the public worship, since 
 He always remains in the dark background of con- 
 sciousness, while apparitions of spirits and demons 
 and even.of gods display themselves in the foreground 
 OLMITeHCp.Za). 
 
 The fact of this all-pervading conception of God 
 was late in being discovered by ethnologists and mis- 
 sionaries “because uncivilized men allowed it to re- 
 main unmentioned, partly from reserve, partly from 
 dull indifference” (p. 2). It was slow in gaining rec- 
 ognition in scientific circles, Chamberlain thinks, be- 
 
EvoLuTIoN AND REVELATION 159 
 
 cause of the prejudices of our scientists and dogmatic 
 evolutionists—with Herbert Spencer at their head. 
 
 In its application to the field of the science and his- 
 tory of religion, we find that evolution is a dogma 
 unsupported by the facts and in the judgment of those 
 who are most familiar at first hand with “primitive” 
 religion at variance with them. Religious history in 
 general is quite susceptible of the Pauline interpre- 
 tation in the first chapter of Romans (vs. 18 to 25): 
 that there has been a self-disclosure of God through 
 nature to the mind and conscience of men—‘‘God 
 manifested it unto them’; and that men, instead of 
 responding by gratitude and obedience to the natural 
 revelation, have by pride and self-will turned away 
 from the light and “exchanged the truth of God fora 
 lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than 
 the Creator.” 
 
 We can only glance at the application of evolution 
 to the field of “revealed” religion in the Old Testa- 
 ment. The monotheism of the Old Testament comes 
 to a climax in the opening words of Genesis, in 
 Deuteronomy and in the later chapters of Isaiah. “In 
 the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 
 .. . And God said, Let there be light: and there was 
 light” (Gen. 1:1, 3); “See now that I, even I, am he, 
 and there is no god with me:.I kill, and I make alive; 
 I wound, and I heal; and there is none that can de- 
 liver out of my hand” (Deut. 32:39); ‘Thus saith 
 Jehovah that created the heavens, the God that formed 
 the earth and made it, that established it and created 
 it not a waste, that formed it to be inhabited: I am 
 
 11 
 
160 THe CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 Jehovah; and there is none else” (Isa. 45: 18, and cf. 
 vs. 5, 6, 12, 14, 21 and 22). The first chapter of 
 Genesis has well been called “the magna charta of eth- 
 ical monotheism, a bulwark against the polytheism and 
 the pantheism of the ancient world.” Alluding to the 
 repeated assertions of the sole and transcendent exist- 
 ence of God scattered through the later chapters of 
 Isaiah, George Adam Smith says we have here a 
 Monotheism so absolute that ‘modern critical phi- 
 losophy, in surveying the history of religion, can find 
 for it no rival among the faiths of the world. ... It 
 is already as lofty an idea of the unity and sovereignty 
 of God, as the thoughts of man can follow” 
 (visaiah,’)vohai ip, 230). 
 
 What then is the source of this high monotheism 
 of the prophets? The source in the opinion of the 
 prophets themselves was the direct and personal reve- 
 lation made by God, it may be in various ways, to 
 their own spirits. The evolutionary view is that it 
 was the result of a gradual attainment by man of a 
 higher and purer religious faith, only reached after 
 _ the stages of animism and polytheism had been tra- 
 versed. In the evolutionary view man reaches up to 
 God, perhaps only to find Him a delusion; in the 
 Biblical view God reaches down to man. 
 
 The progress of revelation in the Old ‘Testament 
 or the Bible as a whole is often pointed out as a proof 
 or striking illustration of evolution. ‘There is a form 
 of teaching adapted to the childhood of the race, and 
 then in the fullness of time God sends forth His Son. 
 In divers portions and manners God spoke to the fa- 
 
EvoLution AND REVELATION 161 
 
 thers in the prophets, but at last speaks through His 
 Son. There is doubtless a progressive revelation in 
 the Old and New Testaments, but as the initiative in 
 both cases comes from God, if we are to believe the 
 Biblical writers, we are in the sphere of education 
 from without rather than of evolution from within. 
 
 The attempt is sometimes made to account for the 
 Prophetic monotheism by the genius of the Jewish 
 people, by the general movement of religious thought 
 of the time, or by the influence of the unconscious. 
 The statement of Renan that the Semitic people had 
 a genius for monotheism is now discredited. The rec- 
 ords that we have all show that the people as a whole 
 - had rather a genius for the worship of Baal and other 
 heathen deities and for idolatry. In fact it took the 
 forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the cen- 
 turies of divine judgments and then the captivity in 
 Babylon before the people were cured of idolatry. 
 Often in Israel’s history we have examples of mono- 
 theism degenerating into polytheism, but really no 
 example in the history of Israel or of other peoples 
 of polytheism developing naturally into monotheism. 
 The natural development is into a pantheism of the 
 Stoic sort. As Bavinck has pointed out: “We have 
 no historical testimony to the development of poly- 
 theism into pure monotheism; when polytheism comes 
 no longer to satisfy the intellectual circles, it is re- 
 modelled into pantheism, which has in common with 
 polytheism the ‘nature-character’ of the godhead, and 
 dissolves the multitude of nature-gods into one nature- 
 godhead” (‘““The Philosophy of Revelation,” 1909, p. 
 185). 
 
162 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 In his “Outline of History,’ H. G. Wells speaks of 
 the prophetic teaching of a God who lived in a temple 
 not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, and 
 adds: “There can be little doubt of a great body of 
 such thought and utterance in Babylonia, Egypt, and 
 throughout the Semitic east. The prophetic books of 
 the Bible can be but specimens of the prophesyings 
 of that time” (3d ed., 1923, p. 234). That mono- 
 theism was “in the air’ at that special time and that 
 there was a development in this direction in other 
 nations parallel to that in Israel is an assumption in 
 support of which no facts are adduced. 
 
 The evolutionary critic of the Graf-Wellhausen 
 school reconstructs both the history and the religion 
 of the Jews. He must assume in order to reconstruct 
 the history that the writings which teach a high mono- 
 theism, such as the Pentateuch, and the Psalms, must 
 have been later than the time of Amos and Hosea; 
 but he must assume also, in order to support the evo- 
 lution theory that these writings contain in themselves 
 survivals of a primitive animism and traces of a gross 
 polytheism. ‘The transition to monotheism must not 
 be too abrupt and so it is held that the polemic against 
 idolatry found in numerous passages in Amos and 
 Hosea (such as “Ephraim is joined to idols,’ Hosea 
 4:17) has been injected later into the writings of 
 these prophets (see “Journal of Biblical Literature,” 
 vol. xliii, 1924, p. 232). 
 
 In no other literature except the Hebrew has this 
 elaborate process of decomposing into minute frag- 
 ments and then putting together again been carried 
 
Evo,ution AND REVELATION 163 
 
 out. The histories of Herodotus, who has been called 
 “the father of lies,’ have never been subjected to so 
 drastic a treatment in the effort to separate truth from 
 falsehood. The tendency today in Homeric criticism 
 is to attribute the substance of the Iliad and that of 
 the Odyssey each to a single mind, or both to a single 
 mind. So little is known of the personality of 
 Shakespeare that his dramas would furnish a fertile 
 field for the divisive critic, who would assign different 
 plays or portions of plays to different authors, but the 
 only serious attempt to overthrow tradition is the 
 Baconian hypothesis which attributes the Shakes- 
 pearean dramas and the Novum Organum and Essays 
 to the single mind of Francis Bacon. 
 
 Of the attempt to explain the teaching of the 
 prophets psychologically and to derive them from 
 purely human sources in the subliminal or unconscious 
 mind, Bishop Gore well says that we find in this region 
 no materials for the spiritual content of the prophetic 
 teaching. The origin of the prophet’s message is not 
 to be sought in an uprush from the subconscious but 
 rather in “a downrush from the superconscious” 
 (“Belief in God,” p. 106). The prophetic monotheism 
 remains a unique thing in the history of religion. 
 There is nothing like it even in the religious history 
 of Greece, although gifted spirits like Plato and the 
 Neo-Platonists caught glimpses of a lofty monotheism. 
 Plato in his Republic condemns the grossness of the 
 popular polytheism, but the Socrates both of Plato 
 and of Xenophon uses the terms “God” and “Gods” 
 almost interchangeably, and there is no indignant re- 
 
164 THE CHRISTIAN AND EVoLUtTION 
 
 pudiation of idolatry as degrading to man and as in- 
 sulting to God. Harnack has a high opinion of the 
 lofty spirituality of the Neo-Platonists but he admits 
 that “Christianity really did away with polytheism, 
 whereas the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Porphyry did 
 not possess the courage for that: herein lay the great- 
 est difference. ‘This religious philosophy lacked the 
 power of exclusiveness, and of that lack it died” 
 (‘Hibbert Journal,” Oct., 1911, p. 81). 
 
 The victory of evolution in the field of religion ap- 
 peared at one time to be complete and easily won, but 
 the victory has been short-lived. The evolution of re- 
 ligion, if it means anything more than the history of 
 its multiple forms and changes, breaks down at the 
 two crucial points of the origin of religion and its 
 climax in the ethical monotheism of the prophets. 
 Neither the history of “natural religion” nor that of 
 revealed religion can be forced into the evolutionary 
 mold. There is a growing body of evidence to show 
 that belief in a Supreme Spirit who demands right 
 conduct is the prius and presupposition of nature- 
 worship and polytheism rather than their result. The 
 most significant feature of the history of religion, the 
 teaching of the prophets and of Jesus, is without ex- 
 planation on evolutionary grounds, and requires the 
 explanation which the prophets themselves, followed 
 by the New Testament writers, have given, that God 
 has revealed Himself in direct and preferential action, 
 that God spoke to the fathers through the prophets, 
 and that holy men of old spoke as they were moved 
 by the Holy Spirit. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 EVOLUTION AND MIRACLE 
 
“It is not upon any @ priort considerations that objections either 
 to the supposed efficacy of prayer or to the supposed occurrences 
 of miracles can be based, and to my mind the fatal objection to 
 both these suppositions is the inadequacy of the evidence to prove 
 any given case of such occurrence which has been adduced.’”— 
 T, H. Huxtey. 
 
 “Historical records tells us of a Divine Incarnation. We may 
 consider it freely on historical grounds. We are not debarred 
 from contemplating such a thing by anything that science has to 
 say to the contrary. Science does not speak directly on the sub- 
 ject.’—Sir Oxiver Lonce. 
 
 “If the aversion to miracles is simply an expression of belief 
 in a purely mechanical self-contained world, then the human 
 spirit must hail them in defence of its own liberty. For if God 
 be so bound by His laws that initiative is no longer His, much 
 more are we. And if He cannot intervene in the physical realm, 
 still less can He do so in the spiritual, for the two stand in close 
 relationship. The miracle is the sign of the Divine freedom.”— 
 James Y, SIMPSON, 
 
XI 
 EVOLUTION AND MIRACLE 
 
 HE, intrusion of the supernatural—if the more 
 
 direct and personal activity of God in His own 
 
 world be called an intrusion—is made neces- 
 sary by the fact of sin. Miracle is the intervention of 
 God in His own world to counteract by His saving 
 activity the destructive effects of sin. 
 
 Evolution in one of its aspects is an attempt to keep 
 God at a distance. In so far as it presumes to teach 
 metaphysical and religious doctrine, it may be called 
 an intellectual Tower of Babel, the product of human 
 pride, erected in the attempt of the human mind to 
 get along in its theorizing activities without God. If 
 God is admitted at all, He is relegated to an unimpor- 
 tant position, remote in time and impotent in influ- 
 ence, so that He becomes practically, so far as the 
 course of events is concerned, a negligible quantity. 
 If admitted into the scheme of nature at all, He is 
 limited in His activity to the remotest past. It has 
 been said that “by grace of the evolutionist the AI- 
 mighty is allowed to come forth, create, give life, set 
 in motion, and look on the scene, but then He must 
 retire, and leave the whole to nature and its laws.” 
 If by courtesy He is allowed to assume the role of a 
 spiritual underpinning, this underpinning is never by 
 any possibility permitted to break through or appear 
 
 : 167 
 
168 Tre CHRISTIAN AND Evolution 
 
 on the surface. The philosophy of evolution, operat- 
 ing with the concept of continuity, eventuates in a 
 deistic or pantheistic naturalism, and as has been truly 
 said, “Deism banishes God from the universe, but all 
 forms of Pantheism imprison Him in it” (A. B. 
 Davidson). 
 
 The immediate action of God is never allowed to 
 appear in the world of time and sense—that is in the 
 actual world. God is a partner with nature (if not 
 identical with it) but He is a sleeping partner. He 
 lives, but as Carlyle complained to Froude in a 
 moment of pessimism, ‘He does nothing.” God may 
 indeed be allowed to act everywhere provided always 
 that He act nowhere in any way that would make a 
 difference at that point. He is excluded from acting 
 in any direct way in the field of history. Even in the 
 field of religious experience the evolutionist would 
 place God in a straight-jacket. “In the psychology of 
 religious experience creative miracles do not occur.” 
 God is not to be thought of, much less worshiped 
 apart from the world. “Of God in isolation from the 
 world,” says Lloyd Morgan in his “Emergent Evolu- 
 tion,’ 1923, “I can form no adequate conception” (p. 
 299). What is really admired or worshiped is the All, 
 the absolute inclusion or unity, with the consequent 
 blurring of ethical distinctions. As Bosanquet says: 
 “The universe is the magnificent theater of all the 
 wealth of life, and good and evil are within it” (“The 
 Value and Destiny of the Individual,” 1913, p. 312). 
 To a monistic type of thought the idea of a transcend- 
 ent Creator or moral Governor, or of a hearer and 
 
Evolution AND MirAcLE 169 
 
 answerer of prayer, or of a God who can raise the 
 dead, or even the Kantian postulate of a God who 
 will equate happiness and goodness, is of course un- 
 acceptable. -As Bosanquet says again: “For our 
 straightforward reason and humanity today, the sheer 
 existence of this external: person has but little interest. 
 What we care for is the religious consciousness” (p. 
 22). 
 
 A distinguished evolutionist has tried to equate 
 Christianity with the religion of evolution, but Chris- 
 tianity shorn of its miraculous element loses much in 
 the process. It must contract its horizon so as to limit 
 its view to the present life. ‘The religion of evolu- 
 tion deals with this world rather than with the next. 
 It prays “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on 
 earth.’ It seeks to build here and now “The City of 
 God’” (E. G. Conklin, “The Direction of Human 
 Evolution,” new ed., 1923, p. 246). Christianity re- 
 duced to the meager dimensions of the religion of evo- 
 lution must eliminate the supernatural all along the 
 line. ‘Almost every religion claims to have had a 
 supernatural origin, to have been made known to men 
 by supernatural revelation, to be attested by super- 
 natural miracles, to influence the lives of men in a 
 supernatural manner and to lead to supernatural re- 
 wards or punishments in a future supernatural life” 
 (p. 185). 
 
 But what has evolution to do with miracles, any- 
 way? Why not say with Professor Lane: ‘With 
 miracles, therefore, evolution has nothing to do’? 
 (“Evolution and Christian Faith,” p. 198.) It is be- 
 
170 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTIon 
 
 cause evolution as set forth by its leading exponents 
 has already passed from the field of biological theory 
 and has become a philosophy and a religion. This 
 Professor Conklin very frankly shows when he speaks 
 of the ‘religion of evolution” and contrasts it with 
 supernatural Christianity. Professor Conklin as an 
 evolutionist has entered the field of religious polemic. 
 He has become in fact an opponent of historic Chris- 
 tianity, and he uses the prestige of his scientific repu- 
 tation and the resources of his rhetoric to discredit 
 the trustworthiness of the Gospels and the historic 
 facts upon which, in the judgment of the devout 
 Christian, the hope of the world rests. He can scarcely 
 complain therefore when the Christian apologist ques- 
 tions the philosophy of naturalism which he presup- 
 poses and examines the scientific basis of his ambitious 
 religion of evolution. If the evolutionist can give 
 reasons for doubting the miracles, the theologian cer- 
 tainly can give reasons for doubting evolution. If 
 Professor Conklin is competent to discuss miracles, 
 and to say that “more and more the religious world 
 is turning away from the supernatural aspects of the 
 miracles to the moral lessons which they convey” (op. 
 cit., p. 201), the theologian is competent to discuss 
 evolution, and to say that more and more intelligent 
 people are turning away from evolution as a preten- 
 tious assumption unsupported by facts. 
 
 Evolution as set forth in its authoritative docu- 
 ments and Christianity as set forth in its authoritative 
 documents, the Gospels, inevitably clash over the ques- 
 tion of miracle. It is no longer a conflict in the 
 
EvoLuTION AND MIRACLE 171 
 
 sphere of the relation between religion and science. 
 Both parties are teaching a religion and the two re- 
 ligions, the religion of evolution and the religion of 
 Christianity, confront each other, and both cannot 
 hold the field. One party contends that there is an 
 impersonal order of nature which, whether beneficent 
 or not, cannot be broken. Miracles do not happen 
 and have not happened. The other party sees the es- 
 sence of religion in the belief in a God who made 
 heaven and earth, who delivered His people histori- 
 cally by a mighty hand and a stretched out arm, who 
 creates in the sinner a clean heart and a right spirit, 
 who is the hearer and answerer of prayer, and watches 
 over His children by a special providence, and who 
 has based the salvation of the world upon a super- 
 natural historical process in the incarnation, atoning 
 death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Miracle, in 
 this view, is not only a proof of revelation but an 
 integral part of redemption. Miraculous power and 
 redemptive power are inseparable. Only a God who 
 can raise the dead can save men from the death of 
 trespasses and sins. Christianity without miracle is 
 Christianity with religion left out. 
 
 It has often been said, and is said by Professor 
 Conklin, that the supernatural has become a “stum- 
 bling-block” (p. 198) to religion. As Rousseau said: 
 “Otez les miracles de lEvangile, et toute la terre est 
 aux pieds de Jésus Christ.” Christianity has always 
 been tempted to surrender its distinctive character in 
 deference to the spirit of the age from the time when 
 the scribes and elders said, “Let him come down from 
 
172 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutTION 
 
 the cross, and we will believe on him.” From the 
 very conception of miracles they are, if they happened, 
 at least an exception to the general laws of nature 
 (not necessarily a transgression of them). ‘They be- 
 long to the field of history rather than to that of 
 natural science. It is the evolutionary scientists who 
 have forced the question of miracle again to the fore- 
 front of discussion. If evolution, as expounded by 
 leading authorities, is true, the miracles are mythical; 
 while if the Christianity of the Gospels is true, evo- 
 lution of the popular type is disproved. We see again 
 that the question of the miracles remains one of the 
 great watersheds of human thought. 
 
 Take, for example, one miracle related in three of 
 our Gospels, the stilling of the tempest. We recall 
 the well-known words of a liberal theologian, Har- 
 nack: “We are firmly convinced that what happens in 
 space and time is subject to the general laws of nature, 
 and that in this sense, as an interruption-of the order 
 of Nature, there can be no such thing as miracle. .. . 
 Miracles, it is true, do not happen; but of the mar- 
 velous and the inexplicable there is plenty. ... That a 
 storm was quieted by a word, we do not believe, and 
 we shall never again believe” (“What is Christianity,” 
 2d ed. rev., pp. 28, 29, 30). If we adopt a pantheizing 
 or semi-deistic naturalism, we must reject the truth 
 of the narrative of the stilling of the tempest. On 
 the other hand if we accept the truth of the narrative 
 on historical grounds, the question of an absolutely 
 continuous and uniformitarian evolution is settled in 
 the negative, If the storm was quieted by the word 
 
EvoLuTION AND MrrRAcLE 173 
 
 and command of Jesus, then there has been at least at 
 this point a break, intrusion, intervention, spiritual 
 influx, or interruption of the order of nature, chang- 
 ing what would have been otherwise, without a super- 
 natural occurrence, the course of events. The question 
 is crucial for the evolutionist because if there has been 
 such an intervention at one point in the course of 
 things there could be similar influxes of creative or 
 controlling power, outside of the operation of the gen- 
 eral laws of nature, at other points, say at the begin- 
 nings of life, of man, or of species, the question at 
 each point being decided by the evidence and not by 
 an a priori philosophy of continuity. 
 
 If Jesus rebuked the winds and the waves and they 
 obeyed Him, He rebuked also all anti-theistic theories 
 of the universe, and rebuked as well an evolutionism 
 which allies itself with these theories. He rebuked 
 materialism, showing that personality, purpose and in- 
 telligence, or in short mind is in control of the world 
 of matter. Mind can no longer be regarded, as it is 
 by the materialist or mechanist, as a sort of dead- 
 head tramp stealing a ride on the freight train of 
 mechanism. He rebuked the view of the world which 
 relegates the activity of God to the remote past alone; 
 and rebuked as well the theory which regards God as 
 immanent only in the general laws of nature. 
 
 It is often said that the world of description with 
 which science deals and the world of interpretation 
 or values with which religion deals are incommensu- 
 rate, but the two meet in the question of miracle, de- 
 fined as an event in the physical world due to the 
 
174 THE CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTtIon 
 
 immediate power of God, and historically attested in 
 the Gospel narratives. The question of miracle comes 
 to a head in the resurrection of Christ. According to 
 Eucken the acceptance of this event “would mean an 
 overthrow of the total order of nature” (‘““The Truth 
 of Religion,’ E. T., 1913, p. 528), and according to 
 the Apostle Paul its rejection would mean the over- 
 throw of the total order of grace (1 Cor. 15: 13-19). 
 As recorded in the Gospels, it was an event that oc- 
 curred not in the imagination of the disciples but on 
 the broad field of history, under definite historical 
 conditions, with abundant historical attestation and 
 with definite and world-wide historical effects. This 
 is not the place to discuss the credibility of the Gospel 
 miracles but it must be pointed out that if evolution 
 means mechanism with Weismann, or materialism 
 with Heckel, or an identity of mind and body with 
 Thomson, or naturalism with Conklin, the issue is 
 sharply joined in the historical accounts of the mir- 
 acles and resurrection of Christ. 
 
 Perhaps Christology is inseparably bound up with 
 belief in miracles but theism can get along just as well 
 or better without them. Is not the universe, the liv- 
 ing garment of God, the one great miracle? And are 
 not exceptional miracles, such as those recorded in the 
 Gospels, a burden to faith in a scientific age, and a 
 burden too grievous to be borne? The question is 
 brought to the foreground by an able defender of 
 theistic faith, himself an evolutionist, Bishop Gore. 
 In a powerful argument, Bishop Gore, in his “Belief 
 in God,” reviews the spirit of continental criticism 
 
EvoL,uTion aND MirRAcLE 175 
 
 which not only discards the miracles “but the whole 
 conception of a supernatural incoming of God into 
 human life which had sought to extrude Him, and 
 into nature where men had sought to forget Him” 
 (p. 221). The miracles of the Gospels are vital not 
 only to our thought of Christ but to our conception 
 of God. “Our thoughts are in the main directed to 
 the nature of God as transcendent Creator, under 
 whose hands nature is plastic and must fulfill all His 
 will” (p. 245). He regards the question of miracle 
 as practically that of the freedom of God in His world, 
 and so brings it into closest connection with the prob- 
 lem of human free-will. He thinks that “the ques- 
 tion of the reality of moral freedom... and the ques- 
 tion of the credibility of miracles are at bottom one 
 and the same question” (p. 234). In miracle God does 
 not violate the deeper order of nature but “He inno- 
 vates it is true, upon the normal physical order, but 
 solely in the interest of the deeper order and purpose 
 of the world. Miracle is, from this point of view, 
 God’s protest against the monstrous disorder of sin. 
 It is God the Creator recreating what man has de- 
 faced” (p. 239). Bishop Gore seems to be warning 
 us that the interests of belief in miracles and of belief 
 in a sovereign and holy God are bound up together; 
 and that to give up miracles is inevitably not only to 
 loosen our hold upon the freedom of God in His 
 world and to that extent upon His personality, but 
 also to obscure our vision of His holiness. Miracle 
 is the reaction of the righteous and loving will of God 
 to the perversion of the freedom of man by sin. To 
 12 
 
176 Tre CHRISTIAN AND EvoLutIon 
 
 deny miracles is to deny transcendence in the sense of 
 both power and holiness, and theism will gravitate to 
 the higher pantheism, and this in turn to the lower 
 pantheism, which can see no dominant righteous order 
 in the universe. 
 
 One criticism might be made upon Bishop Gore’s 
 exposition. The conception of free-will is funda- 
 mental in his thinking. Upon it is based his view of 
 the independence of man over against nature, and of 
 God’s transcendence over the universe. “If I am not 
 certain of free choice,” he says, “I am certain of noth- 
 ing” (pp. 141, 142). His thought seems to be that 
 the certainty of moral freedom is greater than can be 
 the certainty that attaches to any theory in science, 
 such as mechanism or evolution. But whence comes 
 this moral freedom? Prevailingly and in numerous 
 passages Bishop Gore speaks the language of creation- 
 ism, that God created free beings, that He created 
 finite personalities, that the Creator of all “has made 
 man a free being, destined for personal immortality” 
 (p. 145). In one passage, however, he yields to the 
 current evolutionism so far as to say: “We shall not, 
 if we are wise, lay stress on the gaps in the scientific 
 story of creation, or build on the conviction that living 
 matter could not have been evolved out of what had 
 no life, or rationality out of the animal mind” (p. 58). 
 But how without gaps or special creation could a free 
 and immortal being, made in the image of God, have 
 been evolved from the animal? “Creative evolution” 
 might accomplish the miracle, because owing to the 
 ambiguity of the terms it might mean creation one 
 
Evolution AND Mrracie 177 
 
 minute and evolution the next; but the transition 
 would be impossible for the current theory which sees 
 in morality a development from animal impulse and 
 holds that man differs from the animal in his endow- 
 ments only in degree. Descartes speaks of three tre- 
 mendous miracles—rem ex nihilo, liberum arbtiirium, 
 et hominem Deum. ‘The freedom of man, according 
 to Bishop Gore, comes from God, and its extension to 
 God “opens the door to the possibility of miraculous 
 action” (p. 288). The tension between this view of 
 freedom and that which derives it from the animal 
 without gaps and by ordinary generation is apparent. 
 If miracle and freedom, as Gore would have it, stand 
 or fall together, the one cannot be supernatural and 
 the other merely “natural” in origin. 
 
 The miracles of the Gospels attested by abundant 
 historical evidence continue to witness to a personal 
 God and to His transcendence, His power, His holi- 
 ness, and His grace. The Gospel miracles stand as a 
 bulwark against the irreligion of a mechanical uni- 
 verse from which God is excluded and against the 
 moral indifference of a pantheistic universe with which 
 God is identified; and they are a bulwark as well 
 against that popular form of naturalism which now 
 goes under the name of the religion of evolution. 
 

 
CHAPTER GXil 
 
 CHRIST AND EVOLUTION 
 
“Science has nothing to do with Christ.”—Darwin. 
 
 “All things are under One. One Spirit, His 
 Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows, 
 Rules universal Nature.” —COoOwWPER. 
 
 “Morality He identified with obedience to Himself. Men’s ac- 
 ceptance by God He made dependent on their acceptance of His 
 claims and gifts. He announced the forgiveness of sins abso- 
 lutely, yet connected it with His own death. He has given the 
 world its highest idea of God, yet He made Himself one with 
 God.”—GrorcE ADAM SMITH, 
 
 “Tf the divinity of Christ be admitted, both He and His origin 
 are at once removed entirely from the field of operation for evo- 
 lution. Evolution is a law of nature; on the hypothesis of His 
 relationship to the Godhead as set forth in the New Testament 
 Scriptures, the Christ could not, in the usual sense of the term, 
 be a part of nature. The Creator must have existed before the 
 thing created, and in the Gospel according to John we are ex- 
 pressly told: ‘All things were made by him; and without him 
 was not anything made that was made.’ Evolution therefore could 
 have had no part in the production of a divine Christ. There is 
 no precedent in nature, so far as we know, for the incarnation; it 
 can only be accepted by the believer as a unique event; it is not 
 to the discredit of the doctrine of evolution that it cannot account 
 for Him,”—H, H, Langs, 
 
XII 
 CHRIST AND EVOLUTION 
 
 HE apparent conflict between science and re- 
 
 ligion is due to the fact that science postulates 
 
 a reign of law while religion postulates a reign 
 of love. Science says that all things work together 
 while religion says that all things work together for 
 good to them that love God. Science can only deal 
 with the general, the routine, the customary, the 
 mechanical, while religion deals with the unique, the 
 exceptional, the preferential and the personal. Ex- 
 perience includes both realms so that the standpoint 
 of both science and religion is partial and not com- 
 prehensive. The temptation of the scientist is to 
 stretch all experience upon the Procrustean bed of the 
 general and the mechanical, thus giving us an im- 
 poverished and distorted view of existence, while the 
 temptation of the religious thinker is to regard as ex- 
 ceptional and unique even those phenomena which may 
 properly be referred to general law. 
 
 Those aspects of existence with which science and 
 religion respectively deal are not conflicting but com- 
 plementary. The majestic sweep of general law is 
 not an ultimate and self-existent or self-explanatory 
 fact. Whence these laws, such as that of gravitation 
 pervading all knowable space? They cannot be the 
 result of a chance clash of atoms, or a “molecular 
 
 | 181 
 
182 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 plebiscite.” Unless we accept them as “given,” that 
 is, stop thinking about them, they can only be referred 
 to the enactment or decree of a personal will. The 
 personal aspect of existence is deeper and therefore 
 more ultimate than the mechanical. But on the other 
 hand the personal or spiritual-moral aspect of the 
 universe requires the mechanical as the theater of its 
 activity. Personal freedom can live and breathe only 
 in a fixed or determined atmosphere. The moral 
 drama of human life must have a stage-setting that is 
 fixed and can be counted on, and it can only be enacted 
 in the environment of a mechanical world. 
 
 If the story that evolution attempts to tell be taken 
 at its face value, man, the final term of the age-long 
 process, is also the intended term (if the process 
 means anything) and as,such is the key to the inter- 
 pretation of the whole. We find then in personality, 
 whether we start with general law, with the evolu- 
 tionary process, or with the convictions of religion, 
 the category which is most inclusive and luminous in 
 the explanation of the world. The evidence of the 
 personal and preferential becomes more and more 
 prominent as the process develops. ‘There is first the 
 inorganic realm, the home of the mechanical and the 
 uniform. Then rising out of the inorganic there is the 
 differentiation and infinite variety of the vegetable 
 and animal worlds; and as we have seen there is no 
 accepted or acceptable explanation of specific variety 
 —no answer to the question, Who made thee to differ? 
 —unless this be found in theistic terms of Purpose 
 and Power. At last in the appearance of man the 
 
Curist AND EvoLUTION 183 
 
 greatest gap is opened up, and the universe is dichot- 
 omized into the human and the sub-human. No com- 
 parison of man with animal, no juggling with the 
 terms of ape-man and man-ape based on the slenderest 
 objective evidence, has been able to bridge this gulf. 
 Here by way of eminence we see capacities and en- 
 dowments which, however transmitted, find their 
 analogue and their ultimate cause in a Creative Will 
 and in the attributes of God in whose image man was 
 made. ‘The poets who with anointed vision have seen 
 most deeply into nature and human life steadfastly 
 refuse to accept the naturalistic account of the origin 
 of man, even of the individual man. He comes into 
 the world trailing clouds of glory from God who is 
 his home; he comes from out the boundless deep; he 
 comes from the spiritual world within or beyond the 
 world we see, and is the main miracle of existence 
 with power on himself and on the world. Even the 
 biologist who has done most of late to interpret evo- 
 lution in terms of a naturalistic philosophy has con- 
 fessed that “the development of a human being, of a 
 personality, from a germ cell seems to me the climax 
 of all wonders, greater even than that involved in the 
 evolution of a species or the making of a world” (E. 
 G. Conklin, “Heredity and Responsibility,” Science, 
 Jan. 10, 1913). If science is unable to account by 
 natural factors for the origin of a single human in- 
 dividual it cannot a fortiori account for the origin of 
 the whole human race. 
 
 The earliest man of whom we have unmistakable 
 evidence in skeletal remains believed in a future life, 
 
184 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EvoLuTION 
 
 and the rudest savage has some conception of a 
 Supreme Being. The religious history of men is the 
 search for God, a feeling after God if haply they may 
 find Him. Within a certain race, there is evidence 
 that a special revelation—an answer to the longings 
 of men—was made, ultimately designed to become uni- 
 versal. God spoke unmistakably, but in divers por- 
 tions and manners, to the fathers in the prophets, and 
 at last in the fullness of time in fullness of revelation 
 of His grace and truth in His Son, who was in a pre- 
 eminent sense the Word. He came with full creden- 
 tials, speaking words of grace and of eternal life, and 
 performing wonderful works of mercy and power. On 
 the field of history He was declared to be the Son of 
 God with power by the resurrection from the dead. 
 In His best authenticated words He placed Himself 
 in the center of the world’s religious life, and increas- 
 ing multitudes of men look to Him and His cross with 
 reverence and gratitude, and with implicit trust place 
 their interests for time and eternity in His hands. 
 The evolutionist who exalts his theory into a phi- 
 losophy of the universe must perforce deal with the 
 outstanding fact of Jesus Christ, and answer the ques- 
 tion, “What think ye of Christ?” ‘Two answers are 
 possible. The evolutionist may, with Professor Lane, 
 accept the doctrine of the church, identifying Jesus 
 Christ with the eternal Word and Creator of all 
 things, thus regarding Him as the ruler of nature and 
 all her laws, including the law of evolution; or the 
 evolutionist may regard Jesus as a product of evolu- 
 tion and subject like all other facts of natural and 
 
CHRIST AND E\voLUTION 185 
 
 human history to its laws. In the former case the in- 
 carnation must be regarded as not only a unique event 
 but as the central fact in the religious history of man- 
 kind. To use an expression of Bishop Gore, it domi- 
 nates the intellectual situation. A uniformitarian 
 philosophy or a philosophy of immanence can no 
 longer be held. The acceptance of the incarnation. 
 means a view both of God and man profoundly dif- 
 ferent from that of evolutionism. It means that God 
 can come and has come into human history in a spe- 
 cial and supernatural manner; and it means that man 
 instead of being of the same kind as the brute is akin 
 to God, though differing from Him in an infinite 
 degree. ‘To admit that God has spoken through the 
 Word is to admit that He can speak and indeed has 
 spoken through the prophets. To admit the super- 
 natural in the incarnation is to accept the supernatu- 
 ral in the ministry, atoning death and resurrection of 
 Christ. To admit that in the fullness of time God 
 sent forth His Son is to open the way for the ac- 
 ceptance on suitable evidence of the special exercise of 
 creative power at the critical points of human and of 
 natural history. Such a view would not be inconsis- 
 tent with the admission of biological evolution or 
 transformism within a limited sphere, provided that 
 proof was forthcoming that such transformation has 
 taken place by some natural knowable method, but evo- 
 lutionism as a closed system of naturalism would of 
 course be abandoned. 
 
 The other alternative is to make Jesus Christ and 
 the religion that He founded the product of evolution. 
 
186 Tur CHRISTIAN AND EVOLUTION 
 
 C. A. Beckwith, professor of Christian theology, 
 shows in his “Idea of God” (1922) what a profound 
 transformation the application of evolutionary prin- 
 ciples will make in the doctrines of Christianity and 
 even of theism. Professor Beckwith teaches that God 
 is not conscious in the ordinary sense, for “self-con- 
 sciousness is a late comer in the evolution of reality” 
 (p. 142). As social conditions change there must be 
 a change in the idea of God. ‘No idea of God which 
 arises under historical conditions is permanently valid 
 for the rational and religious consciousness” (p. 9). 
 The idea of God held by Moses, or Paul, or even by 
 Jesus cannot be final, for “while each of these ideas 
 of God was in turn adequate for the particular period 
 in which it appeared, it became progressively insuf- 
 ficient for later conditions” (p. 9). Professor Beck- 
 with is less certain than Socrates or Plato of a future 
 life, for, in speaking of the desire for continued life 
 after death, he says that “whether we shall realize this 
 in prolonged individual consciousness or only ‘join 
 the choir invisible,’ experience here below offers us no 
 lighted torch” (p. 334). 
 
 It is interesting to note how Professor J. Y. Simp- 
 son, theologian as well as scientist, solves the problem. 
 He maintains in his ““Man and the Attainment of Im- 
 mortality” that man is not immortal but only becomes 
 so when brought into relationship of obedience to 
 Jesus Christ. The coming of Christ, it is said, “was 
 no more, but also no less a ‘special intervention’ than 
 the appearance of life, or self-consciousness, or any 
 of the other big lifts in the cosmic process” (pp. 311, 
 
Curist AND E,VOLUTION 187 
 
 312). The Virgin Birth is a “beautiful story” which 
 arose out of belief in the sinlessness of Jesus and a 
 misunderstanding of the passage in Isaiah. The doc- 
 trines of pre-existence and deity, came, it is intimated, 
 from an unwillingness to deny to Jesus the highest 
 categories. Continuity must be preserved at all costs: 
 “Life builds upon the basis of the inorganic elements; 
 self-conscious after all posits consciousness; Jesus is 
 the Son of Mary” (p. 264). With one hand Profes- 
 sor Simpson lowers, but with the other hand he exalts 
 the person of Christ. Jesus becomes non-miraculous 
 in origin and person, but so endowed with creative 
 power that relationship to Him raises man from the 
 level of the beasts that perish to become a sharer of 
 the immortal life of God. Jesus becomes of historic 
 not of cosmic significance, the product of a temporal 
 process, but He is as well the author of eternal sal- 
 vation to them that obey Him. The equilibrium in 
 Professor Simpson’s scheme is unstable. If, as the 
 church has always believed and proclaimed in her 
 creeds, Jestis was conceived by the Holy Ghost and 
 born of the Virgin Mary, then we have in the com- 
 ing of Christ a union of the natural and supernatural 
 which may well throw light upon other critical 
 moments and “big lifts” in the natural series. 
 
 Over against the certainties of Christian faith and 
 experience the evolutional philosophy is a curious mix- 
 ture of gnosis and agnosia. The evolutionist “knows” 
 that life was produced by natural causes, but he cannot 
 describe or reproduce or imagine the conditions under 
 which it arose. He “knows” that man is the offspring 
 
188 Tur CHRISTIAN AND E,voLurIon 
 
 of the animal, but he does not know from what animal 
 he sprang, or when, where, how, or in how many in- 
 stances the transition took place. He “knows” that 
 all species have arisen from natural causes from a few 
 forms or from one, but he has never observed a single 
 instance of such transformation and has practically 
 given up the attempt to imagine how it might have 
 taken place. As if to console himself for his loss of 
 confidence in natural selection or any proposed method 
 of transformation, the evolutionist proclaims that 
 though agnostic as to the factors he is certain of the 
 fact. The Christian theist is tempted to cry out, as 
 Paul did to the intelligentsia of Athens, “What ye 
 ignorantly worship that declare I unto you.” ‘The 
 growing skepticism of evolutionists as to the factors 
 of evolution is being matched by a growing skepticism 
 among the intelligent public as to the fact. 
 
 The religious thinker will have an open mind to 
 scientific evidence, but will insist that fact and assump- 
 tion be carefully distinguished. He will be slow to 
 accept as the teaching of science metaphysical infer- 
 ences built upon uncertain data. He will attempt to 
 prove all things and hold fast that which is good. In 
 the present state of scientific opinion he will see every- 
 thing to justify the belief that the science of tomorrow 
 will be different from the science of today, and he will 
 see nothing to forbid the conviction that the word of 
 the Lord endureth forever. 5 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 
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