S.a3.z: iffrnm % Hthrar^r of Proftaanr lettiamm Smktttrftgr Uarftrlin % Eibrarg nf Prtttrrtnn Qlljwlngtral ^mtttarg BS 651 .T68 1896 Townsend, L. T. 1838-1922. Evolution or creation EVOLUTION OR CREATION ? EVOLUTION or CREATION A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND SCRIPTURAL THEORIES OF CREATION AND CERTAIN RELATED SUBJECTS BY PROF. LUTHER TRACY TOWNSEND D.D. AUTHOR OF " CREDO," " FATE OF REPUBLICS," ETC. FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York Chicago Toronto Publishers of Evangelical Literature Copyright, 1896, by Fleming H. Revell Company. TO OUR THREE PRECIOUS CHILDREN : AGGIE, WHOSE HOME IS IN HEAVEN | MAUD, QUEEN NOW OF HER OWN HOME ; AND FANNIE, WHOSE GENTLENESS AND LOVE ARE OUR BENEDICTION* Within a few days after this dedication was written, Fannie, pure, affectionate, and devout, left us and is with Aggie. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Introduction n CHAPTER I Questions, Ways, and Views I. Vital Questions 25 II. Ways Proposed for Bringing Man and Woman upon the Earth 26 III. Views Concerning the Bible Account of Creation. . . 29 CHAPTER II Dogmatisms and Hypotheses I. Dogmatisms of Naturalism 35 II. Working Hypotheses 46 CHAPTER III Origin of Life— Naturalistic Views I. Spontaneous Generation 56 II. Bathybius and its Kindred 64 III. Bioplasm 68 CHAPTER IV Hypothesis of Evolution I. Its History 72 II. Facts Antagonistic to this Hypothesis 76 III. Opinions Antagonistic to this Hypothesis 88 7 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER V Hypothesis of Evolution (Continued) I. Human Fossils 95 II. Civilization 97 III. Monkeys and Men 107 IV. Human Degeneracy 109 V. Opinions Antagonistic to the Hypothesis that Man is the Product of Evolution 114 CHAPTER VI Enterprise in Apes and Missing Links I. Naturalism in Close Quarters 120 II. Specific Statement of Monkey Evolution 122 CHAPTER VII Beginnings, Periods, Mosaic Days, Types I. Scientific Account of the Beginning of Things. .... 133 II. Classification of Geological Periods 138 III. Bible Account and Mosaic Days 140 IV. Law of Types 145 CHAPTER VIII The Ice Age and the Mosaic Week I. The Ice Age of Geology 155 II. The " Tohu" and " Bohu " of the Bible Identical with the Ice Age of Geology 168 III. Creations of the Mosaic Week 169 CHAPTER IX Diversity of Opinion and Meaning of Terms I. Diversity of Opinion as to Geological Periods 182 II. Meaning of Terms Employed 186 III. Diversity of Opinion as to the Human Period. .... 189 TABLE OF CONTENTS 9 CHAPTER X Man's First Appearance on Earth I. Geological Research 198 II. Archaeological Research 211 III. Written History 212 CHAPTER XI Primitive Men and Race Unity I. Rough-stone Age of Geology Identical with the Antediluvian Age of the Bible 221 II. Unity of the Race 233 CHAPTER XII The Trinity and the Logos I. The Trinity from a Philosophical and Scientific Point of View 243 II. An Appeal to the Bible 254 III. The Logos in History 259 CHAPTER XIII Christ the Creator I. Creation of Material Forms and the Gift of Life. ... 261 II. Creation of Man 265 III. Creation of Woman 276 CHAPTER XIV Man I. Solitariness of Man 290 II. Majesty of Man 303 INTRODUCTION THIS book is written for Christian people who are perplexed with certain conclusions reached by many celebrated scientists, by not a few dis- tinguished philosophers, and by some theologians. So far as the subjects discussed permitted, we have dropped scholastic terms and have expressed what we have to say in plain English speech. We have quoted freely from others, feeling that in these times a writer would be unwise to attempt original investigations in the various fields of religion, philosophy, and science when experts already have provided in abundance the data desired. Division of labor to a limited extent, as every good quotation in any book shows, is as useful in literary as in other undertakings. We are certain this book will be looked upon coldly by the scientist whose domains we invade, also by the socialistic reformer who discounts all inquiries except those that take into consideration the existing conditions of humanity, and by the speculative theologian who inclines to the opinion 12 INTRODUCTION that science should be left to take care of itself, while all thought and work should be subordi- nated to a continuous preparation for an invisible and endless destiny. The views presented in this volume are not a sudden growth, but for years have been enter- tained by the author. In " Credo," "Bible Theology and Modern Thought," "The Arena and the Throne," "Mosaic Record and Modern Science," and "The Bible in the Nineteenth Century," some of the theories not only were hinted at, but more or less expanded. That we have not deemed it necessary to reconsider views that were published twenty years ago may be regarded by our critics as a humiliating confession. But the reason for this persistence of opinion is not stubbornness, or un- familiarity with the most recent literature on the subjects discussed, or any superior foresight, but solely because from our first book to our last the effort has been to ascertain what the Bible teaches, and then as far as possible to harmonize all dis- coveries and facts with those teachings, having meanwhile the most implicit confidence in the absolute correctness of all Bible revelations when rightly interpreted. And as the years have gone by this confidence, instead of diminishing, more and more firmly has been established. We have full knowledge that our logical treat- INTRODUCTION 13 ment theoretically is, to a certain extent, contrary to the so-called scientific method, which proposes to discover and study facts without any mental bias. We confess at the outset that our supreme faith in the Bible has resulted in a bias or predis- position. And our feeling is that even among scientific men, whatever the creed they hold, not one in a thousand approaches any subject with- out a predisposition of some sort. We hope, however, that it will be seen, as the discussion proceeds, that the predisposition to which we have just made confession is not such as to blind the mind to established facts, or to lead us in the face of such facts to reach errone- ous conclusions. Under the light of the searching investigations now going on, some of the positions we defend, especially those belonging in the field of paleon- tology (ancient life of the earth), may sooner or later need modification. But if this should be the case, we are in a goodly company ; for there is scarcely an investigator of note in any field of knowledge who, at one time or another, has not advanced views which subsequently he has been compelled to abandon or modify. During the coming century, if there should be discovered the remains of anthropoid (human- like) creatures of a character to throw additional light upon the supposed immediate ancestors of 14 INTRODUCTION man, and if all the missing links in the chain of animal life should be found, our retreat would not need to be more rapid or marked than that of Professor Lyell as to the antiquity of the race, or than that of Professor Darwin as to several views published in the earlier, but abandoned in the later, editions of his books. So far as the missing links are concerned, we should not regret their discovery. They would prove, as we presently shall see, a creative fore- cast in the universe, but not of necessity a nat- uralistic evolution. As will be inferred from the foregoing state- ments, we are not in sympathy with many of the more recent scientific and theological views on the subjects discussed in this treatise; but our antagonism, we hope, will be found to be not against science or philosophy, but against what seems to us to be an unscientific and unphilo- sophical naturalistic skepticism. A brief sketch of skepticism, since it is to re- ceive continuous mention in this treatise, will not be out of place in this Introduction. In its varying phases skepticism has not been an immutable creature ; it has changed with its environments. But, true to its instincts, what- ever has been its attitude toward other things, it always has been the same relentless foe of super- naturalism. INTRODUCTION 15 Beginning with the Christian era, the Gnostics (men of knowledge), properly termed rationalists, promised and attempted great things. But though their attacks were resolute, they disturbed none of the foundations of the Christian faith, and in a few years Gnosticism took its place among the exploded philosophies of mankind. Several hundred years passed, and then skep- ticism, becoming what is known as "free thought," threatened the extinction of supernaturalism. But through this crisis Christianity passed, and there was no smell of fire left upon its garments. The philosophical skepticism of I 740 found in David Hume an able champion, who confidently predicted the overthrow of supernaturalism before the dawn of the twentieth century. About the same time Voltaire, representing the skepticism of France, with great assurance asserted that, though it had taken twelve men to plant the creeds of supernaturalism, his single arm would root them out. In the same tone was the boast of Thomas Paine, who stood as an advocate in America of the skepticism of his day. " I have cut down," he said, " every tree in the garden of Paradise." By which he meant that there was nothing left for supernaturalism as embodied in Christianity except to die at the roots. Theodore Parker, a later American representa- 16 INTRODUCTION tive of a kind of philanthropic skepticism, declared that he would traverse New England in all direc- tions, that his voice should be heard in city and village, and that, unless there were something more in the popular theology than he dreamed, he would demolish it to its foundations. • In Germany, during the last of the eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth century, unbelief took the form of " destructive criticism." It sought to eliminate from the Christian religion everything supernatural. But, quite contrary to the expectations of those who originated the effort, it resulted in placing Christianity on a firmer basis than ever before occupied. As Canon Farrar, speaking of the movement, says, " The period of doubt, though sad, became the transition to a more deeply seated Christian faith." Of late years in Europe and America skepticism has played several parts. It has been a " higher critic " ; it has been a proud, synthetic philoso- pher; it has been an atheistic materialist; it has been an imperious agnostic, regarding with disdain any profession of religion that a human being might make. During the last more than a quarter of a cen- tury skepticism has been especially active in the field of naturalism. It has allowed no depart- ment of knowledge to escape its attention. It INTRODUCTION 17 has been engaged in biological experiments; it has made geological researches; it has explored ancient ruins ; it has read written history ; it has studied the structure of language; but with all its diligence, and much to its discomfiture, it has been unable to find that which has been the ob- ject of its most untiring search ; namely, some way of bringing life and man upon our planet without the supernatural interposition of an almighty and all-wise Being. Naturalism at the present time has a waning reputation, and is not able to point to a single scientist, whether theist or atheist, who claims to be able to offer a particle of reliable evidence that life originally could have appeared on earth except through the presence of antecedent life. Furthermore, naturalism with silenced lips is forced to confront the charge, made by such eminent and loyal high priests of science as Lotze, Wundt, Helmholtz, and Professors Agassiz, Gray, Dana, and scores of others, that the naturalistic theory of evolution independent of supernatural interpositions, in the light of modern thought, is the merest unauthorized assumption. In fact, naturalism is fast becoming an aban- doned camp. Dr. Haeckel, one of its most reso- lute defenders, is by his own confession almost the only one left to reject the theory that there has been a supernatural interposition in the crea- 18 INTRODUCTION tion of the universe. " Most naturalists at the present day," he says, " are inclined to give up the attempt at natural explanation, and take ref- uge in the miracle of inconceivable creation." In his " History of the Creation," Haeckel makes this additional confession : " At one part of the history of development we must have recourse to the miracle of a supernatural creation if we do not accept the hypothesis of spontaneous gener- ation." But spontaneous generation, as presently we shall see, is an exploded theory, and Haeckel and his few straggling followers are left, therefore, with no scientific support whatever for their athe- istic naturalism. On the other hand, the friends of supernatural- ism have abundant reason for encouragement, not only from the results of scientific investigation, but also ; n the fact that strong allies from un- expected quarters recently have appeared in its defense. In 1876 Professor George Q. Romanes was writing in the interest of skepticism. He was recognized as one of the most eminent men of science, remarkably able and clear-sighted, and in his defense of naturalism standing second to scarcely any one. In his last book recently pub- lished, he is found to have renounced his former views, taking the attitude of a defender of the INTRODUCTION 19 Christian faith, and died a few months ago with his eyes fixed in the direction of the cross. Right Hon. Mr. Balfour, a brilliant debater, an able administrator, a solid and thoughtful writer, who in English politics ranks next, perhaps, to Mr. Gladstone, wrote not long since a book en- titled "The Foundations of Belief," in which he appeared as an adverse critic of naturalism, de- fending with much ability the primitive faith of the Christian church. In the midsummer number of the " Fortnightly Review," 1895, Herbert Spencer tried to break the force of the strong blows of Balfour's book and at the same time to parry the keen strokes of Professor Mivart's attacks. No one who read the article of Mr. Spencer can fail to see that much of his reply is feeble and incoherent. It is also noticeable that writers for the news- paper press and for the various reviews of Europe and America, secular as well as religious, almost to a man concurred in the opinion that Herbert Spencer's elaborate system of naturalism at length has broken down ; that he no longer is the giant his friends once thought him ; that the Christian faith, so far as he is concerned, is moving calmly on as if nothing had happened, gaining in every quarter its conquests; and that in the highest realms of science and philosophy Christianity is entitled, as never before, at least to a new hearing. 20 INTRODUCTION Others, too, are speaking, some of whom have spoken before ; and among them is the foremost of Englishmen, one who is known throughout the world better than any other Englishman, the Right Hon. William E. Gladstone. He has written recently an introduction to an American publication in defense of the sacred Scriptures, and now is engaged on another work in the in- terest of the Christian faith under the suggestive and luminous title, " The Triumphs of the Cross." Professor James Dwight Dana, whose scientific publications have placed him in the front rank of philosophical naturalists, in one of his most recent utterances offers anew his tribute to the Christian faith in these words : " I find nothing in my view of evolution to impair or disturb my religious faith ; that is, my faith in Christ as the source of all hope for time and for eternity. The new doctrines of science have a tendency to spread infidelity ; but it is because the ideas are new and their true bearing is not understood. The wave of scientific skepticism is already on the decline, and it is beginning to be seen, more clearly than ever, that science can have nothing to say against moral or spiritual questions, and that it fulfils its highest purpose in manifesting more and more the glory of God." Across the English Channel, Brunetiere, an ac- complished and brilliant essayist, reviewer, and INTRODUCTION 21 critic, quite recently has been throwing bomb- shells into the naturalistic camp, under the title, "The Bankruptcy of Science," and the naturalis- tic skeptics of France appear not to know what to say in reply. In Germany the reaction against naturalistic and materialistic skepticism is beginning to be noticeable, if not pronounced. It looks, as an English reviewer recently has said, as though " the Christian religion is about to have its innings." Only a few months ago one of the most dis- tinguished of modern scientists, to whose words repeatedly we shall refer in this volume, passed from sight. And it is no small gratification to the Christian believer that this great apostle of naturalism, who was more religious than he ever admitted, or perhaps than he knew, asked, a few days before his death, to be buried with the rites of the beautiful and impressive service of the Church of England. Over his dead body, in the chapel at Maryle- bone, was read the First Epistle to the Corin- thians, fifteenth chapter. And nowhere in all the world's literature can be found words that, at the mouth of a newly dug grave, are more fitting and inspiring. " Behold, I show you a mystery ; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an 22 INTRODUCTION eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy victory ? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." To those who think deeply it is very suggestive that Professor Huxley, whom Christians have been inclined to class among their foes, in his last hours turned his face toward the light, at least not away from the light, that comes from super- naturalism. In concluding this perhaps too lengthy Intro- duction, the reader will allow an expression of assurance that supernaturalism as represented by the Christian religion was never more potent than at this very hour. The tomb in which the early and the later and the latest naturalism has INTRODUCTION 23 sought to bury it is empty. The faith that was thought to be in its grave has come forth and is everywhere, and, from the nature of the case, there never can be for it anything like a contin- uous decline or death. A system of philosophy and religion that is able to assuage trouble, re- lieve anxiety, and afford grand and inspiring con- ceptions of human life and destiny carries along with it, in a world like ours, the potency and promise of a final triumph. Goethe did not fail to note this power and per- sistence of the Christian faith, paying it a high compliment : " The greatest honor is due to Christianity for continually proving its pure and noble origin by coming forth again, after the great aberrations into which human perversity has led it, more speedily than was expected, with its primitive, special charm ... for the relief of human exigency unimpaired." If we mistake not, the period of destructive criticism in all its phases is passing, and a resto- ration of primitive orthodoxy, on a more decided intellectual plane than ever before, already has begun. And in view of what almost daily is unfolding, a late prophecy in the London " Quarterly Review" does not seem extravagant: " The twentieth century will find the structure of Christian faith more firmly founded, more widely extended, more abundantly enriched and 24 INTRODUCTION strengthened than ever before in the history of Christendom." The grounds of these triumphs are funda- mental, and are briefly set forth by Lecky, in his " History of Rationalism " : " The great charac- teristic of Christianity, and the great moral proof of its divinity, is that it has been the main source of the moral development of Europe, and that it has discharged this office not so much by the in- culcation of a system of ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and attractive influence of a perfect ideal." It is to the author an occasion of profoundest gratitude that in this book, and early in the ap- proaching revival, he is permitted to make a slight contribution to a body of literature, in exposition and illustration of the sublime truths of the Chris- tian religion, that the next quarter of a century is sure to call forth from the ablest minds in the civilized world — those engaged in secular and scientific as well as in distinctively religious pur- suits. CHAPTER I Questions, Ways, and Views i. vital questions How came the human race on this earth, what is its mission here, and what its destiny? are questions that over and over again recur to thoughtful minds, and are the basis of some of the profoundest and some of the most intensely interesting discussions and speculations that have appeared in the realms of physical science, psy- chology, ethics, and religion. Nor is there any reason for supposing that there will be an abatement of this interest, at least until the close of the present human dispen- sation. Different points of view may be taken ; additional light may shine on the various prob- lems of matter, mind, and life ; data not before observed may come to the aid of the inquirer; but all this will only intensify interest in these questions that forever lie in the pathway of man- kind. 25 26 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? The ground we propose to cover, or rather the ground to which we limit our investigation, is that lying within the range of the first of the foregoing questions, How came the human race on this earth? Relatively this question is of less importance than either of the others, but it has nevertheless an importance of its own, and is logically and historically first in order; and as it is the only one in which naturalism takes any considerable interest, and as it has constituted the bone of contention between naturalism and super- naturalism during the last fifty years, and because of other reasons that shortly will appear, we se- lect it for discussion in this treatise. II. WAYS PROPOSED FOR BRINGING MAN AND WOMAN UPON THE EARTH The various methods or devices that have been suggested for bringing the human race into this world may be reduced to three. First, man and woman came without any supernatural or mirac- ulous interposition whatever. Second, they came by a sort of indirect, or mediate, supernatural or miraculous interposition. Third, they came by a direct supernatural or miraculous interposition and in precisely the way the Bible describes. The first method has no room in it for a per- QUESTIONS, IV AYS, AND VIEWS 27 sonal God. All the beautiful, all the marvelous, and all the stupendous things in the sky and on the earth, including man and woman, with their bodies, minds, and souls, from the beginning or from all eternity, have been wrapped up in matter. In other words, matter itself contains whatever of potency or of activity or of wisdom is essential in the evolution of all things. The process of this evolution is claimed to be a perfectly natural one, and is twofold; namely, spontaneous generation of life at the outset, wherever generation of any kind is needed, and afterward evolution by natural selection, or by the survival of the fittest, or by the use or disuse of organs or parts, carried on through millions of years. The second method is opposed to the first in this, that it has a measure of room for a personal God. According to this view of the origin of humanity, certain original germs or germ-stuffs were miraculously created, and the first passage or change of these non-living into living germs took place under the Creator's immediate super- intendence. But afterward the evolution from these feeble beginnings into all the higher forms, including man and woman, with their distinctive and marvelous endowments of thought, will, and conscience, has been achieved through perfectly 28 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? natural processes, long continued, to be sure, and somewhat weary, orderly or abrupt as the case might require, and with nothing more of anything supernatural or miraculous than daily is passing under our eyes in, for instance, the growth of a tree or the development of a child. The third method differs from both the others in this, that it interprets the Bible account of creation literally, and therefore finds a miracle- worker, present and active, at every stage of world-building and of man-making. It may be regarded by our readers as an act of unwarrantable rashness, but, for reasons that at length will be obvious, we set aside at the start the second method in the foregoing enumeration, which is the one that apparently is beset with fewest difficulties, and the one that first and last and by many persons has been adopted as a sort of compromise measure. But to us it seems an exceedingly illogical and perilous method both from a theological and a scientific point of view, and, like most compromise measures, we are sure that in the end it will fail to satisfy any one. We are left, therefore, to limit our discussion to this twofold question : Did man and woman come upon the earth through spontaneous gen- eration, followed by some sort of natural evolu- tion, or did they come by supernatural interposi- tion, and in precisely the way the Bible describes? QLJ EST IONS, WAYS, AND VIEWS 29 III. VIEWS CONCERNING THE BIBLE ACCOUNT OF CREATION The different methods of expounding the Bible story of creation are easily grouped. First, there is the out-and-out skeptical view. Those who hold it pronounce the Eden story a mere fable, having its origin in the infancy of the human race, and that it no more represents the real facts connected with the origin of man and woman than the crudest mythical legends of ancient or of uncivilized peoples represent the condition of things that those legends describe. This skeptical view strikes not only a fatal blow at the Bible account of creation, but, so far as it contains anything miraculous or supernatural, it antagonizes the entire scriptural record. The second method of interpreting the Bible account of creation, and the one that is held by many thoughtful and devout Christian scholars, is that the story no longer should be regarded as literal in all its particulars, but should be viewed as a series of symbolical, pictorial, or scenic representations, allowing of various and easily "adjustable explanations." It is held to be an apocalypse of the past, in the same way that the revelations granted to John in Patmos are an apocalypse of the future. As Bishop Clifford 30 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? states the case, " Genesis is a liturgical poem, whose design is to consecrate the days of the actual week to the memory of the several works of creation." Those who hold this view, among whom are several eminent scientists and men of literature, also not a few theologians, do not question for a moment what is called the " subjective truthful- ness " and consistency of these symbolical pic- tures. Indeed, they think or claim that this poetic view gives the Mosaic account a signifi- cance and grandeur that is not possible when the story is regarded as literal in all its particulars. These interpreters tell us that the Bible to them was never so grand a book as since these new views have been entertained. According to this " improved interpretation," the words, " the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground," do not mean that God took plastic clay and literally molded the image of a man, but mean that originally man, in common with all animals, came by evolution or by other perfectly natural processes from the earth ; and the words, " breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," do not mean a literal breathing into the nostrils, but that the human body, passing by orderly evolutions from lower physical conditions and environments, through multiplied ages, at length was brought to a state in which it received QUESTIONS, IV AYS, AND VIEWS 31 a special divine touch, and thereby was consti- tuted a new species, and man, with the " in- spiration of the Almighty " upon him, was the outcome. Professor Dana puts the matter in this form : " While admitting the derivation of man from an inferior species, I believe that there was a divine creative act at the origin of man ; that the event was as truly a creation as if it had been from earth or inorganic matter to man." Very similar are the words of Professor Alex- ander Winchell : " Preadamitism does not exclude the current conception of Adamic creation. It admits that Adam was ' created,' but substitutes for manual modeling of the plastic clay the wor- thier conception of origination according to a ge- netic method, and thus embraces the Adamic ori- gin under an intelligible method of production so sublime and significant as to include the whole world of organic beings. That higher percep- tion, which is a function of reason, clearly discerns in derivative origins the perpetual presence and potency of a Power which is in matter, but does not belong to matter. The derivation of Adam from an older human stock is essentially and lit- erally the creation of Adam." Professors Dana and Winchell, as the reader notices, are far more respectful in their language than are some of our theologians and clergymen, 32 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? who ironically characterize the Adam of a literal translation as " the mud man " or " the mud-pie man " of theology. Again, according to this pictorial method of interpretation, the Mosaic account does not mean that the Lord really " caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam," and then took a rib from him and made it into a woman, as the Bible reads, but means that by an " ineffable process," as Profes- sor Lange suggests, or by a " mere functional impulse," as Professor S. H. Carpenter would say, the female nature, at some point in the his- tory of the human body, " was organically divided from the one generic humanity," and somehow man became two — man and woman. That this poetic, pictorial, or scenic view of the story of creation is in some respects a relief from scientific and theological difficulties is apparent enough ; so much so, indeed, that for a long time we hesitated to attack it. But on further thought the conviction came that by adopting this so- called " improved method " of interpretation all perplexity is not removed, and that certain new and very embarrassing difficulties are en- countered. One of the new difficulties that attaches to the pictorial method of interpretation is that it makes it quite impossible to tell where the poetry of any part of the Bible ends and where the literal ac- QUESTIONS, IV AYS, AND VIEWS 33 count begins. Each reader is left to decide this matter for himself. Moreover, by such an interpretation the integ- rity of the whole record is imperiled. And, as we said before, the naturalist is no better satisfied, from a purely scientific point of view, with the scenic or poetic than with the literal version of the story. The third method of viewing the Bible account of creation, which is really first in logical order, though sometimes it is readopted after other methods have been tested, regards the Book of Genesis as a literal statement of facts as they actually took place. It is the view held by the child that has been reared in a Christian home. To such a child the story is literal in all its par- ticulars. No imaginary or scientific difficulties stand in the way. The child reads, is interested, and believes. It is also the view of great multitudes of devout Christian people who as yet have not been dis- turbed at all by the science and art of " higher criticism." To this innocent-mindedness the Old Testament story of creation is no more a myth than is the New Testament account of the birth, life, and miracles of Christ, or than the story of Paul's conversion and shipwreck. It is possible, however, that the unliteral view has become of late so popular, and the literal one 1/ 34 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? so much discredited, that most .of our readers have begun to wonder if in these last years of the nineteenth century any one who pretends to be familiar with the facts of science and with the recent methods of Bible study, and who cares at all for his reputation, can be found who, appa- rently with a multitude of odds against him, is venturesome enough to defend the literalism of the Bible account of creation. CHAPTER II Dogmatisms and Hypotheses i. dogmatisms of naturalism Scientific investigators claim great fairness in their researches and in their reception and use of facts that come under their observation. Men in other intellectual pursuits have been inclined to grant most of these claims, though sometimes compelled to object to the reasoning employed and to dissent from not a few of the conclusions reached. In recent years, however, the positions taken and the language employed by skeptical investi- gators have forced the conviction upon not a few minds that the results of modern scientific dis- covery are not always impartially presented to the outside public. At all events, the suspicion has been on the increase that " the obscuring in- fluence of a preconceived idea," as Bacon desig- nates the disease, has dropped a veil over the perceptions of some of our scientific friends, or 35 36 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? that possibly a wilful intent has concealed much of importance that otherwise would make for supernaturalism as opposed to naturalism. We do not, or at least ought not to, censure too severely our naturalistic leaders on account of their intellectual crookedness ; for they are exposed with the rest of the world to a common depravity. Says the distinguished author just referred to in his " Novum Organum " : " If the human intellect hath once taken a liking to any doctrine, either because received and credited or because otherwise pleasing, it draws everything else into harmony with that doctrine, and to its support ; and albeit there may be found a more powerful array of contradictory instances, these, however, it does not observe, or it contemns, or by distinction extenuates and rejects them." More briefly Mr. Emerson expresses the same thought thus : " Give me the creed of a man, and I will tell you what he will say." That we do not stand alone in the opinion that the foregoing observation is as true of scientific as of other men is evident from a remark of Pro- fessor Alpheus Hyatt, who is a thoroughgoing naturalistic evolutionist, and whose careful work, especially among Jurassic ammonites, has brought him into very favorable notice at home and abroad. He says, " A scientific man who has a theory to support is as stubbornly difficult to DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES 37 convince, even on clear evidence, as any other man." In support of this charge he gives an in- stance of a distinguished German professor who had tacitly admitted that if a certain type of shell could be found .he would adopt Professor Hyatt's theory, though opposed to his own. After a ten days' search among the cabinets of Germany, Hyatt made the discovery. He re- turned to the professor, stated what he had found, and presented him with drawings. Did that distinguished scientific German natu- ralist thank Professor Hyatt? Did he acknow- ledge his error? No; he looked at those draw- ings, laid them down, then looked at them again. His face colored slightly ; he arose, walked to the window, gazed out, and, while holding the fact in one hand and his theory in the other, emphati- cally replied, "I don't believe it!" That was dogmatism with a vengeance. He was like the distinguished scientific professor of Padua, who would not look through the telescope lest he should see the moons of Jupiter, which he did not want to see. Naturalism has a way of hypnotiz- ing not only the common people, but even the leaders of scientific thought. Now, as these facts ever and anon are cropping out, it ought not to surprise any one that such questions as the following are beginning to crowd on the lips of those who but lately listened rever- 38 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? ently and in silence to the high priests of the scien- tific world : — Have not the inclinations of skeptical scientists been mother to their opinions? Have they not been questioning truth partially ? May not their enthusiasm, as too often is the case with other men, have incapacitated them for making broad and wholesome generalizations? Hence when the scientist, or, for that matter, the philosopher or the theologian, approaches, no surprise should be felt if the command, " Hats off," is not obeyed as meekly and instantly as it was a quarter of a century ago. " Why should I take my hat off? " is a question that any man has a right to ask in this independent age of ours. We hope, however, from these remarks, no one will infer that we are unappreciative of the valuable and hard work done by many of our scientific smiths. Their patient and untiring in- vestigations are entitled to a world's grateful recognition. And, personally, we pledge our supreme loyalty in this discussion to every fact these men can establish. But in all sincerity we add that, with regard to some of the conclusions reached by eminent naturalists, and for some of their published opinions, we have the most un- qualified disrespect; we are compelled to regard them of no weight or importance whatever. Now it is doubtless the judgment of most of DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES 39 our readers that the apparent lack of courtesy shown in these remarks toward those who have a world-wide reputation and great wealth of ma- terials with which to support their opinions ought not, except for the very best of reasons, to be indulged, especially by one whose time for origi- nal research in these matters of necessity is limited. We therefore, venture a word by way of personal explanation. At the Edinburgh meeting of the British Association, 187 1, Sir William Thomson being for that year the president, we were for- tunately in attendance. Nearly all the distinguished scientific men of the British empire were there, also some of the most noted men of all Europe and America. We never can forget the emotions almost of awe with which that array of the world's learning was looked upon. But, on the other hand, we never can forget the feelings of surprise that came by reason of the opening address of the president. His effort was to explain on the grounds of naturalism the origin of life in this world. Already the gravest doubts as to the efficiency of spontaneous gen- eration to produce life had been expressed, and therefore Sir William sought, as could be ex- pected, some other naturalistic way of introduc- ing it upon our planet. Hence he concluded to bring it here from somewhere outside. And, ap- 40 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? parently with the utmost seriousness and amid the hush of that learned assembly, he advanced the theory that life came to this planet on a me- teoric fragment from some other planet. At first the discussion seemed a huge joke. But Sir William was serious and earnest, and those distinguished men listened intently, and some of them nodded assent. On second thought, how could we help ask- ing if scientific men really are entitled to even a moderate measure of respect while propounding in the name of science, with overwhelming odds and nearly every well-established fact in the realms of nature against them, their narrow schemes for building a universe and peopling worlds without recognizing the intervention of the great Being who, as we have a multitude of reasons for believing, is the source of all power and of all life ? From that day to this we have been measurably irreverent in the presence of naturalists. Men talk about the speculations and dogmatisms of theology, but even in their most extravagant phases may it not be questioned whether the speculations of theology are half so fallacious, and whether its dogmatisms are half so intense and irrational or illogical, as those of some of the men who are regarded leaders of scientific thought? The words with which Rousseau described the DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES 41 philosophers of his time we often are inclined to apply to some of our modern scientific leaders. ".I have found them," he says, "proud, posi- tive, dogmatizing, even in their pretended skep- ticism, knowing everything, proving nothing, and ridiculing one another. There is not one of them who, coming to distinguish truth from falsehood, would not prefer his own error to the truth that is discovered by another. " Under pretense of being themselves the only people enlightened, they imperiously subject us to their magisterial decisions, and would fain palm upon us, for the true reason of things, the unintelligible systems they have erected in their own heads, while they trample underfoot all that man reveres." When, therefore, we are told that spontaneous generation or evolution or bathybius or monism, or anything else, is believed in by this distin- guished man or by that distinguished man or by the other distinguished man, or by scores of dis- tinguished men, we no longer are inclined to give assent until we know whether these " distinguished men " are broad enough to take in and deal fairly with all the facts bearing on the questions in- volved. Do they attribute transcendent impor- tance to clay banks, and none to religion? Do they almost worship shells dug from the different strata of the earth, and pass heedlessly by the 42 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? souls of men? Do they patiently study and an- alyze moonlight and starlight, and never think of pondering the wonderful phenomena of instinct, intuition, consciousness, and conscience? Are their eyes ever upon the visible, with no thought of the invisible? If so, we withhold assent and allegiance, and the more so since the pathway of men of this class, from its beginning to the pres- ent time, is strewed with rejected theories that once held sway over the people. Electricity, for instance, once was investigated on the supposition that it is fluid ; then it was held to be force ; now it is regarded as an energy, convertible into other calorific or mechanical energies. This last hypothesis may hold for ten years or longer, or only until to-morrow. From Werner's time to the near present, a score of geological hypotheses likewise have been in full force, some of which now create a smile. At the beginning of the present century the French Institute enumerated no fewer than eighty geo- logical theories that were hostile to the Bible, but not one of those theories is held to-day. The beautiful theory of Lavoisier as to respiration, though supported by many carefully observed facts, was exploded in an hour, and at the present time is useful only as a warning to the over- sanguine investigator. In former times the hy- pothesis that heat is a form of matter was thought DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES 43 to be established; but now we are confidently told that it is a mode of motion. Professor Huxley bravely started out with his theory of a life-producing bathybius, but soon discovered his mistake and abandoned the theory. Sir William Thomson without timidity announced his theory of the meteoric origin of life on the earth, but one year was enough to silence his lips on the subject. The once popular dogma that man is a direct descendant of the monkey is now almost univer- sally rejected on the ground that the structural differences between a man and a monkey are such that they develop in opposite directions. The monkey baby and the human baby may look alike, but the more the monkey baby is developed the less of a man and the more ofa monkey he becomes. The " missing link " that came in to take the place of the monkey, a sort of scientific mediator between man and monkey, repeatedly has been discovered, and then as repeatedly has been found not to be the missing link at all, but something else that without much difficulty is classed with existing and well-known orders. The discovery of argon and of the Roentgen ray has quite taken the breath of many of our scientific men, and will yet put to confusion a score of pet theories. And this is only the beginning. 44 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Have we not, therefore, the best of reasons for supposing that at least some of the hypotheses now held by naturalism will fare no better? In- deed, the hypothesis of evolution by selection or by the survival of the fittest, or by any other natural agency or process, is at this very hour trembling for its safety, if it is not, as we may be able to show, already antiquated. Hence it is clear that we are not to adopt an opinion simply because held by somebody else or because it is current to-day ; nor is even the scientist to adopt an opinion as a man takes his wife, lifelong and "for better, for worse," "in sickness and in health." Rights of quick and easy divorce must be conceded when the hypothetical spouse does not comply with the demands of the hour. Professor Huxley suggestively and wisely re- marks that those who have taken an active part in science should be killed at sixty, not being flexible enough upon arriving at that age to yield to the advance of new ideas. I" Verily the world is waiting for a scientific man with such broad, generous, and comprehensive views as will enable him to stand just a trifle above all specialists of all schools and of all ages, and who without prejudice can walk calmly back- ward and forward among all treasures of all knowledge, whether found in the material uni- verse, in the realms of mind, in the history of DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES 45 providence, or in the sacred Scriptures, scanning everything closely and comparing impartially, until upon his soul dawns in silent majesty a con- clusion — the eternal truth of God. " There are great truths that pitch their shining tents Outside our walls, and though but dimly seen In the gray dawn, they will be manifest When the light widens into perfect day." But lest we may leave a false impression, we add that not all the high priests of science and philosophy are enemies of revealed religion. While such men as Virchow, Haeckel, Bain, and several others assert that certain observed facts and phenomena of nature prove that the universe has been produced by natural agencies, on the other hand, such distinguished men as the late Rudolf Hermann Lotze, who for a quarter of a century was regarded as the leading philosopher of Germany, and Wilhelm Max Wundt, indisputably the leading physiologist of Heidelberg, and per- haps of all Germany, and Professor Hermann Helmholtz, Berlin's most renowned physicist, together with some of the profoundest scholars elsewhere in Europe and America, think other- wise, and from the same facts and phenomena infer that the universe could not have been pro- duced by natural causes, but must have been brought into being and have been peopled by a supernatural agency infinitely powerful, infinitely 46 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? wise, and infinitely good. There are more of these men who to-day are on the side of Bible revelation than perhaps we imagine. If not re- pulsed they may be near making, in its truest and broadest sense, a public profession of religion. At least when the theologian meets the physicist or the metaphysician on the great highways of truth, he should not be too ready to shout, " In- fidel! " before it is known whether or not these men are at prayer. And so far as matters stand to-day, we are convinced that the people of God have nothing to fear except their own lack of faith and courage. II. WORKING HYPOTHESES Perhaps some of our readers, while admitting that there is a lack of evidence in support of many scientific and philosophical theories, are on the point of replying that a lack of evidence does not disprove the possibility of a given theory. This is true ; yet, on the other hand, lack of evidence, at least in the judgment of a scientific mind, will not allow evolution or any other theory to be discussed as if it already were estab- lished. The naturalist has an unquestioned right to adopt what is called a working hypothesis, by which is meant a supposition used temporarily as a matter of convenience in classifying or account- DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES ±1 ing for facts or phenomena ; it very suggestively has been called the "search-light of science." And it may be remarked that nothing among men is more rational or common than the work- ing hypothesis. When the mechanic at his bench, or the farmer in his field, or the woman at her wheel or cradle, says, " Now let us suppose," they are making use of a working hypothesis just as really as did Laplace when constructing his theory of the formation of worlds, or as did Dar- win when propounding his scheme of evolution. But when the working hypothesis is employed, it must not be passed among men for more than it is worth. There are a few simple rules that should govern the use of this convenient method of investigation with which one must comply, or in the " congress of the ages " he will be complained of. We enu- merate the following:* First, there should be clearness of statement. Thinking men have reached the conclusion that, other things being equal, there is a presumption in favor of that which is clear, and an equally strong presumption against that which is unclear. When, therefore, Herbert Spencer complains that those who recently are attacking both his science and his philosophy misunderstand him, he is ex- * These rules are more fully stated in the author's treatise en- titled " Bible Theology and Modern Thought," pp. 19-32. 48 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? posing himself and his system to an additional criticism. " Why am I misunderstood by some of the acutest minds of the age?" is a question he well may ask, and likely enough he will find no little embarrassment in answering it. If, therefore, in these times the speculative physicist, the metaphysician, or the theologian would gain a respectful hearing, his working hy- pothesis in conception and expression must be as free from obscurity as the case will allow. Second, a working hypothesis is not verified so long as it rests upon mere possibilities. The hy- pothesis itself is only a possibility ; if made to rest upon other possibilities, nothing is gained. Any number of possibilities cannot make a fact, or even a probability. The enterprising investi- gator should have untiring curiosity, inventive sagacity, and a constructive imagination, but he must not plant his feet upon conjecture and call it a conclusion. Third, a working hypothesis, to possess any considerable weight, must receive the assent of all, or nearly all, who are capable of investigating the subject. When, for instance, scores of men eminent in the field of natural science do not see any reason for giving their assent to the hypothesis of uni- formity in nature's processes, or to that of evolu- tion as announced by Mr. Darwin and defended DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES 49 by Mr. Spencer and others — indeed, when men who are abundantly capable of judging of these matters absolutely reject these hypotheses — then we must conclude that for the present such hy- potheses should have no weight except that ac- corded to other very questionable speculations, even though they have been adopted by men of great distinction. Fourth, an hypothesis which cannot account for most of the phenomena under examination adequately, and without the exclusion, distortion, or mutilation of correlated data, is to be rejected. This rule, in substance, is clearly enjoined in Sir William Hamilton's discussion of hypotheses, and, though rigid, is nevertheless adopted by all the more prudent inquirers. The comment made by one whose ability cannot be questioned is that " the failure to explain one single well-observed fact is sufficient to cast doubt upon or even to subvert any hypothesis." Fifth, no hypothesis should be adopted until it is ascertained that at the moment of its adoption no other answers equally well the requirements of the case ; nor should it be retained a moment after it fails to explain better than any other the observed and related phenomena. This rule was suggested by Dr. Thomas Sydenham in his the- ory of medical practice. Both John Locke and Francis Bacon in their philosophy approved it. 50 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Professor Tyndall, in his scientific investiga- tions, theoretically adopts it, declaring that " with- out verification, a theoretic conception is a mere figment of the intellect. If deductions be in ac- cordance with the facts we accept the theory ; if in opposition the theory is given up." As would be expected, therefore, every path of investigation is strewed from its beginning to its end with rejected hypotheses. And the path of science shows as much wreckage of this sort as does that of philosophy or theology. Sixth, the building of arguments upon a work- ing hypothesis, as though it already were estab- lished, is fallacious. The temptation to break this rule, whose importance has been recognized by every writer on the laws of reasoning from the time of Aristotle to the present, must be very strong; for some of our leading scientists time and again are found transferring, quietly and without any apology, their working hypotheses from the field of inquiry to that of certitude. " We have reason to suppose," etc., says Her- bert Spencer, while building his constructive philosophy. Now that is a legitimate statement, and is a lawful use of an hypothesis. But, with nothing new presented and in the very next par- agraph, he says, " If, then, we see," etc. (that such and such is the case), then such and such conclusions follow. DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES 51 In a court-room one lawyer would say to an- other that such reasoning is either careless or dishonest. So, likewise, Professor Tyndall makes the same mistake when he says, "We should, on philosoph- ical grounds, expect to find," etc. (certain re- sults). But in the next sentence his expectation, with nothing additional presented, becomes a certainty, and he continues, " This relation being thus invariable, therefore," etc. (such and such conclusions follow). Final conclusions cannot rest upon mere ex- pectations, is the most respectful reply that such reasoning or statement deserves. Dr. Friedrich Karl Biichner announces that " matter is the origin of all that exists," and that " all natural and mental forces are inherent in it " ; that "nature, the all-gendering and all-devouring, is its own beginning and end, birth and death" ; that " she produced man by her own power, and takes him again " ; that " there are no other forces in nature besides the physical, the chemical, and the mechanical." He then proceeds to reason as if these assertions were established facts, and thence infers his system of atheism. The reply is that these claims are not estab- lished, never have been established, and, what is more, from the nature of the case they never can be established. He and all his followers, there- 52 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? fore, are standing on assumptions, not on sub- stantiate. The frequency with which this fallacious method of investigation and reasoning is met renders the observation of the German philosopher Leibnitz very pertinent : " We have many good books and good thoughts scattered about here and there, but we scarce ever come to establishments." Thre most deplorable violations of this rule take place when some hypothesis of a first-class in- vestigator is adopted as an established fact by a second-class dabbler. Professor Huxley, for illus- tration, suggests the following hypotheses : " Mat- ter is all-powerful and all-sufficient ; " " man is only a sentient automaton ; " " protoplasm is the organ of all life ; " " protoplasm is a molecular machine, the total results of the working of which, or its vital phenomena, depend, on the one hand, on its construction, and, on the other, upon the energy applied to it." The professor then attempts to explain upon these hypotheses the various phenomena of the physical universe. And we find no fault with the attempt. But forthwith some unfledged skeptic begins to reason as though these assump- tions were established truths. He says, " Matter, according to modern scientific men, is all-power- ful ; man is an automaton ; protoplasm is all-pro- ductive. These are facts established by modern DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES 53 science ; therefore there is no God in the universe, and human responsibility and accountability to a Supreme Being are whimsies." What troubles us most in all this false reasoning is that many young men have lost their heads and their Christian faith, and then have suffered a wreck of character by following these utterly false and pernicious methods, that have been employed by those who should have been more careful of their example. And all the more inexcusable is it for one to trust one's faith to the opinions of distinguished scientists, since often they confess themselves to be in darkness. Sir Charles Lyell, for instance, is of the opinion that man was developed from some of the monkey family, but makes the ac- knowledgment that there is no tangible evidence for that opinion. He thinks evidence may be found sometime " in the unexplored geological regions of central Africa." Dr. Barden Powell believes that there is a chain of development extending through an enormous period, but confesses that link after link at different points in the chain is wanting, and that conditions are such as to " preclude us from knowing anything about them whatever." When we ask Mr. Darwin about the evolution of the battery of the electric eel, or about the evolution of the eye of the cuttlefish, or of the 54 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? eye or ear of a human being, matters that his theory without much hesitation ought to explain, he hastily takes refuge under a confession of ignorance, replying that " it is impossible to con- ceive by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced." And when we ask him for the missing links he sends us, not, as Lyell does, to central Africa, but to " undiscovered [and undiscoverable] fossil- iferous strata below the Silurian." And when we ask him a little more specifically about the origin of the species, and how four or five primeval forms or original germs could have developed into all the various forms of life that have existed and that now exist, he replies, " Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound." And yet we hear on every hand that the hy- potheses of naturalism are established! We have presented the foregoing rules and illustrations partly to show that much of what has been circulated among the people under the name of science, when tested by correct principles of reasoning, is not science at all, but is only the cheapest, though sometimes very perilous, talk. So long as the naturalist, in harmony with his working hypotheses, gives attention to arranging and labeling the phenomena falling within his department of study, he does well. It is only when, with a half-filled cabinet, — nay, with not DOGMATISMS AND HYPOTHESES 55 one shelf filled, — he begins to draw universal de- ductions that we object. It is not with science that we find fault, but with scientific error. As we already have said, investigation by hypothesis is universal, legitimate, useful, and delightful ; and even the hypotheses of naturalism within their legitimate bounds need not be treated to scoffs and sneers. But when the different hypoth- eses of investigators are vaguely conceived and presented, or when they are supported chiefly by negative, conjectural, or ex-parte evidence, or when they are converted into citadels from which attacks are made upon the Christian religion, then suspicions are aroused that naturalism, in this deliberate misuse of hypothesis, is lacking, as already suggested, in either wisdom or honesty. CHAPTER III Origin of Life — Naturalistic Views i. spontaneous generation LOOKING over the surface of the earth, we discover that it has rivers, lakes, and oceans; it has hills, mountains, islands, and continents ; it has a great variety of vegetable life and an equally great variety of animal life. But no one at all familiar with modern science can have the least doubt that there was a time when nothing of the kind existed ; there were neither rivers, lakes, oceans, hills, mountains, islands, continents, nor vegetable or animal life in any of their present varied forms or in any other material or visible forms. The skilled scientist, however extreme his non-belief, or however agnostic or atheistic his hypothesis, unhesitating, confesses that, in tracing the history of our planet through its different geological stages, at length he comes to a time when man was not. After reaching certain boundary lines in geological history, not a bone nor a solitary relic of man can be found. 56 ORIGIN OF LIFE— NATURALISTIC VIEWS 57 It also is discovered that the atmosphere and the surface conditions of the earth at one time absolutely precluded the possibility of human life. Indeed, geological history can be traced back until a period is reached when not only human, but animal life of every kind, was unknown on the earth's surface. Not a bird flew through the air, not a worm or an insect burrowed in the soil. And then a time yet earlier is discovered, when the traces of only the lower forms of vegetable life are found, and a time earlier still, when they too did not exist. But long before these eons there was a time when the earth's surface was molten and plastic like wax, round, smooth, and hot as a globule of molten lead, dropped through the atmosphere to cool. The earth has been red-hot, white-hot, blazing-hot, and for almost innumerable ages was nothing except a mass of intensely illuminated gas. But long before that there was a time when — but we need go no further ; naturalism must stop there. It can take no additional step without coming into the pres- ence of an eternal and invisible Power that makes for orderly arrangement and adjustment; and that discovery naturalistic science does not care to make. We may add, however, that it is an irrefutable scientific induction that what is true of our planet is essentially true of every other planet and of 58 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? every star; that is, there was a time when there were no material objects in the physical universe except such as were clothed with glowing flames of fire. And there can be no disproof of the statement that there was a time earlier still when there was nothing in the infinitudes of space ex- cept the thought and purpose of an invisible somewhat which we may call God. And when it pleased him he purposed and spake, and as- tronomical and then geological history began. In geological history an era at length was reached when the earth cooled off, the waters condensed, dry land appeared, and days and seasons were es- tablished. In a word, the earth became such that vegetable and animal life and the human family could have thrived if only they were placed here. The questions, therefore, that confront us are these : If life, vegetable or animal, is eternal, or if it existed before the worlds were formed, how could it have passed through the fires of the earth and of the physical universe without having all its vitality scorched and burned out? If it has not always existed, how could it, even in its lowest forms, make its first appearance in the physical universe? For two centuries or more the scientific world has been divided on this subject of the origin of life, for the larger part, into two schools ; the one contending that life is self-originating, the other ORIGIN OF LIFE— NATURALISTIC VIEWS 59 that it can come only from preexisting life. For a long time the first of these schools led the other in both the number and ability of its advocates. As the matter recently has been stated, " Spon- taneous generation, now rejected as heresy by both theology and science, was once orthodox with both." The question was brought to its severest test about twenty- five years ago, when Dr. Henry C. Bastian, an eminent London pathologist, began a series of very interesting experiments. He reached a conclusion which was stated in his book entitled " Beginnings of Life " in these words : " Both observation and experiment unmistakably testify to the fact that living matter is constantly being formed de novo, in obedience to the same laws and tendencies which determine all the more simple chemical combinations." On the strength of the doctor's experiments, and by reason of conclusions reached by him and by others, the question of the origin of life for a time seemed settled. It was agreed that, as a liquid can change into crystals, so dead matter, under certain conditions, can change into living matter.* Professor Tyndall and Dr. William Henry Dallinger, being not quite satisfied with the fore- * With Dr. Bastian stood three other noted men, Pasteur, Child, and Wyman, as defenders of spontaneous generation on experimental grounds. 60 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? going conclusions, repeated several of Dr. Bas- tian's experiments, making many additional ones, and using far greater precautions than those em- ployed by any of their predecessors. Under these new tests and experiments the attempt to produce life spontaneously absolutely failed. After many critical and laborious experiments made among the higher Alps, Professor Tyndall concluded an address on the " Origin of Life," delivered before the Royal Institute of London, with these words : " This discourse is but the summing up of eight months of incessant labor. From the beginning to the end of the inquiry there is not a shadow of evidence in favor of spontaneous generation. There is, on the contrary, overwhelming evidence against it ; but do not carry away with you the notion, sometimes erroneously ascribed to me, that I deem spontaneous generation 'impossible,' or that I wish to limit the power of matter in re- lation to life. My views on this subject ought to be well known. But possibility is one thing and proof another; and when in our day I seek for experimental evidence of the transformation of the non-living into the living, I am led inexorably to the conclusion that no evidence exists, and that in the lowest, as in the highest organized creatures, the method of nature is that life shall be the issue of antecedent life." ORIGIN OF LIFE— NATURALISTIC VIEWS 61 Later, in an article in the " Nineteenth Cen- tury," Professor Tyndall reiterated his opinion with these words : " I affirm that no shred of trustworthy experimental evidence exists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared indepen- dently of antecedent life." Professor Huxley, in his article on " Biology " in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," is almost as em- phatic as Professor Tyndall : " Of the causes which have led to the origination of living matter, it may be said that we know absolutely nothing; . . . the present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the non-living." Professor Lionel S. Beale, in an address deliv- ered before the Microscopical Society when taking the chair as president, employed this language : " The present state of knowledge justifies the conclusion that no form of living matter existing at present, nor any which existed in the past, directly originated from non-living matter or in any way derived its powers or properties from the non-living." Professors Balfour Stewart and Peter G. Tait, joint authors of an anonymous treatise entitled " The Unseen Universe," speak emphatically and without contradiction for the scientific world when they say that " all really scientific experi- ence tells us that life can be produced from a liv- ing antecedent only." 62 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Dr. J. H. Stirling, in his book, " As Regards Protoplasm," is scarcely less emphatic: "We are in the presence of the one incommunicable gulf, the gulf of all gulfs, that gulf which Mr. Huxley's protoplasm is as powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has ever been suggested since the eyes of men first looked into it — the mighty gulf between death and life." Says Dr. Rudolf Virchow, in his treatise 'en- titled " Freedom of Science in the Modern State," " Whoever calls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts made very recently to discover a decided support for the generatio cequivoc in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any form accepted as the basis of our views of life." Sir William Thomson, in his address upon tak- ing the presidential chair of the British Associa- tion at Edinburgh, used this language : " A very ancient speculation, still clung to by many natu- ralists, supposes that, under certain meteorological conditions very different from the present, dead matter may have run together or crystallized or fermented into ' germs of life ' or ' organic cells ' or ' protoplasm.' But science brings a vast mass of inductive evidence against this hypothesis of spontaneous generation, as you have heard from my predecessor in the presidential chair. Care- ORIGIN OF LIFE— NATURALISTIC VIEWS 63 ful enough scrutiny has, in every case up to the present day, discovered life as antecedent to life. Dead matter cannot become living without com- ing under the influence of matter previously alive. This seems to me as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation." The words of Dr. Dubois Raymond are no less to the point : " It is absolutely and forever in- conceivable that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms should be otherwise than indifferent as to their own position and mo- tion, past, present, or future." Mr. Darwin, too, always insisted that sponta- neous generation can account for nothing, and that creative intelligence must have placed upon the earth the five or six primal germs of all extinct and existing vegetable and animal life. The following is Professor Agassiz's suggestive profession of faith : " All these beginnings of animal life do not exist in consequence of the continued agency of physical causes, but have made their successive appearances upon the earth by the immediate intervention of the Creator." To these men who deny that there is any evi- dence of spontaneous generation, and who declare with Darwin and Agassiz in favor of supernatural interposition, are to be added also Leibnitz, Davy, Herschel, Faraday, Forbes, Carpenter, Dawson, Gray, Dana, Helmholtz, Verdt, Lotze, and many 64 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? others among the profoundest thinkers of Europe and America. Such is our authority for saying that the hy- pothesis which claims that non-living matter may be endowed with life, without the aid of already existing life, is utterly without foundation. These eminent scientists and philosophers, after the most thorough experiments and tests, assure us that neither additions nor subtractions nor multiplica- tions nor divisions, nor manipulations of any other sort, ever have been able to give life and con- sciousness to dead matter. Nor has chemical, electrical, mechanical, or any other force ever been known to change into vital force. " Vital force alone can produce vital force," is a modern scientific dictum. It is clear, therefore, as sunlight that those who are trying to build a superstructure upon the theory of spontaneous generation have to-day not a shadow of foundation. They build in and upon vacuum who exclude from the universe a living One who precedes all forms of existing life, and who gives life to all things and to all beings that are endowed with it. II. BATHYBIUS AND ITS KINDRED In speculative matters one failure often precip- itates others to such extent that theories which ORIGIN OF LIFE— NATURALISTIC VIEWS 65 on a given day are rated as perfectly solvent the next day are plunged into irretrievable bank- ruptcy. Hence the disasters that have overtaken spontaneous generation not only have brought to it misfortune, but, as might be expected, have played havoc with other atheistic schemes and agencies devised for peopling with life the earth and the universe. We may call attention to a few of these abor- tive life-producing devices. Sir William Thomson threw out the suggestion that in " vortex-atoms " is to be found the origin of the universe. Professor Friedrich Hoffmann surmised that there is a " productive vital fluid " of such potency as to bring into existence origi- nal life-germs; once having these, the universe, as is claimed, easily can be peopled with vegetable and animal life. Professor William K. Clifford affirmed that " cosmic emotion " is the basis of life. Professor August Weismann made " germ- plasim " the creator of things. Professor Edward Drinker Cope solves all the difficulties of life's beginnings by " bathmism " or " growth-force." For a time M. Pouchet was sure that " proliger- ous pellicles " are the source of life. Dr. Bastian exalted to the same eminence " plastid particles," and Professor C. F. Miiller delegated to " monas " the same high office. M. M. Ferris and Professor Rudolf Albert Kolliker introduced the world to 66 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? his Majesty " parthenogenesis," while others have asked us to worship "pangenesis." " Bathybius " is another of these celebrated characters that a few years ago was raised into considerable notoriety. It was imported to this country and introduced to the citizens of New York by Professor Huxley in his lectures de- livered there in 1876. Bathybius, as described by its godfather, " is a sheet of gelatinous living matter enveloping the whole earth beneath the seas. ... It is self-formed and is the foundation of life." It should be observed, however, that Professor Huxley never saw bathybius, and he never saw anybody else that ever saw it. On second thought, men began to smile at it. Professor St. George Mivart at length began to poke it with his scien- tific stick, and found it to be, he said, nothing but a "sea-mare's nest." A little later its distin- guished author forsook the thing and left it in the bottom of the sea. Without the use of any of the foregoing tech- nical terms, but with persistent and tiresome mo- notony, Dr. Buchner tried to account for the universe on the supposed inherent powers of " matter " and of " nature." " Matter," he says, " is the origin of all that exists ; all natural and mental forces are inherent in it." Now all these several terms sound well enough, ORIGIN OF LIFE— NATURALISTIC VIEWS 67 but it is discovered that, without spontaneous generation to produce what they are supposed to represent, we are left precisely where we were before these different words were coined into speech. They are forceless and scientifically useless without spontaneous generation. As al- ready suggested, the moment that spontaneous generation made its surrender, that moment all other atheistic theories of the origin of life were strangled or beheaded ; and it is strange that our scientific men have not made this discovery. One might just as well pin his faith to the recently discovered basic element, argon, or to the more recently discovered marvelous cathode ray, pro- nouncing either of them to be the missing link between dead matter and living matter, as to at- tempt to account for life through vortex-atoms, bathybius, or any of their kindred. And it also should be observed that all these claims of naturalists have been nothing but as- sertions. They are not entitled even to the rank of an hypothesis. And if they were, it should be kept in mind that hypothesis is not proof. Men may tilt hypothesis and assertion against hypoth- esis and assertion until doomsday, with no result save simply that with which they started. And is not the common sense of humanity likely to look at length upon all these atheistic theorizings as indicative of an approach to some sort of logi- 68 EVOLUTION Ok CREATION? cal imbecility? Or, to speak with a little more respect, does it not all seem very much as James Martineau says : " The history of knowledge abounds with instances of men who, with the highest merit in particular walks, have combined with it a curious incompetency"? III. BIOPLASM Because a bad use has been made of this word we allow it to detain us for a moment. In no respect, however, should it be classed with the preceding list of nondescripts, for what it repre- sents is something that in its make-up and work is marvelous and startling — a something with which a believer in Bible theology should be on good terms. The primal germs of life, animal and vegetable, are called bioplasts ; and, as has been well said, " Oak and palm, worm and man, all start in life together. " In the embryo they are indistinguish- able, and in their beginnings are a simple sub- stance resembling in appearance the white of an egg. Chemically they are compounded of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Says Professor Lionel S. Beale, in his work entitled " Bioplasm," " Neither by studying bioplasm under the micro- scope, nor by any kind of physical or chemical in- vestigation known, can we form any notion of the ORIGIN OF LIFE— NATURALISTIC VIEWS 69 nature of the substance which is to be formed by the bioplast, or what will be the ordinary results of its life and work." In his " Lay Sermons " Professor Huxley, speaking of bioplasm, says, " It is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polyp, are all composed of structural units of the same character ; namely, masses of bioplasm with a nucleus." And later the professor, after giving the most painstaking study to this subject, tells us what he observed while watching through his microscope the performances of a bit of this life- stuff. " Strange possibilities lie dormant in that semi-fluid globule. Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid and yet so steady and purpose-like in their succession that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And then it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column and molded the contour of the body ; pinched up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fastened flank and limb 70 EVOLUTlOti OR CREATION? into due proportions in so artistic a way that, after watching the process by the hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more suitable aid to vision than an achro- matic would show the hidden artist, with his manipulation to perfect his work." The professor might have added that bioplasts never change their occupations, but always con- duct themselves upon the strictest principles of division of labor. In the unborn human body, for instance, some of the bioplasts are at work building muscular tissue ; others are construct- ing bone ; others are manufacturing nerves ; others are building arteries and sinews, eyes and ears; and when properly fashioned the child is born. On through babyhood, childhood, youth, and middle life, these indefatigable workers continue their respective tasks, painting the rose on the cheek, giving the sparkle to the eye, and con- structing a brain laboratory in which are evolved all the dreams of fancy, all the conceptions of poets, and all the thunders of oratory heard in the world. Such bioplasts are gods! Ah, but, poor things! they die and never rise from the dead. At this point three things should be noticed: first, bioplasts build in what is called " coordina- tion of parts," with constant reference of means to ends, thus rigidly obeying the two great laws ORIGIN OP LIFE— NATURALISTIC V1EIVS 71 of organic beings, "unity of type" and "adap- tation to ordained conditions of life and existence. ' ' In this persistent loyalty to unity of type the whole family of bioplasts is the inveterate foe of the entire scheme of evolution. So far as we can judge, bioplasts are ever trying to prevent any change of the individual type on which they work. The second fact of importance is that this life- stuff called bioplasm never has life unless touched by an already existing life. The plant bioplast is able to convert carbonic acid, water, and ammonia into life-stuff; but it must be a living plant bio- plast that touches these chemicals ; otherwise they remain lifeless. The animal bioplast is able to convert vegetable and animal products into living tissue ; but it must be a living animal bioplast that touches these materials ; otherwise there is no transformation from dead to living matter. The third fact, and one that inevitably follows from the other two, is that every particle of life- stuff, vegetable or animal, that now exists or that ever has existed points back with an index-finger inflexible as steel to an invisible but infinitely in- telligent source of life. And this source of life, without apology to atheistic science, we may con- tinue to call God. CHAPTER IV Hypothesis of Evolution i. its history The hypothesis of evolution, also called the de- velopment theory, teaches that the universe as it now exists is the result of an immense number of changes constituting a progression that is somewhat like the unfolding of a plant from a seed, or of an animal from a life-germ ; and, start- ing with a few original life-forms, the theory of evolution teaches that all the various types and species of plants and animals in an orderly way have been developed, reaching at last their cul- mination in man. This view of the evolution of things is, however, far from being a recent speculation. The old Egyptian myth that all things sprang from a mundane egg, and the teachings of the early Greek philosophers that matter originally sprang from water or from a fluid state, and that plants, animals, and worlds came from atoms which are 72 HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 73 infinitely numerous and eternal, are at least fore- gleams of all that has been claimed for evolution in these later years. Professor Tyndall frankly acknowledges that he finds the atomic philosophy and the survival of the fittest in Democritus. Aristotle likewise was an experimenter in these same fields. Lu- cretius was a clearly pronounced evolutionist. The Arabian scientists most emphatically taught the evolution of the universe from atoms and germs. Dismissing from the universe a personal Creator, Epicurus placed back of his scheme of evolution what may be called spontaneous chance. Evo- lution as a method was almost as explicitly set forth by St. Augustine as by Charles Darwin. Giordano Bruno, in 1580, read papers before the most cultivated people of his times on evolution and spontaneous generation. About the same time Francisco Suarez adopted and greatly extended the evolution views of Augustine, and made such application of them as to deprive modern thinkers of their claim to originality. In 1640 Professor Pierre Gassendi, though not rejecting the superin- tendence of an infinite intelligence, defended the doctrine of development from atoms. In 1748 De Maillet advanced the theory that plants and animals are spontaneously modified forms of na- ture. Comte de Buffon, about 1780, announced the theory of transmutation of species. Lord 74 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Monboddo, in 1778, suggested the possible origin of man from the ape. Jean Baptiste Lamarck, a distinguished French naturalist, proposed, in 1809, the hypothesis of the elevation of an animal " to a higher range of faculties and appropriate or- gans by the prolonged and repeated efforts made by it to obtain to conditions and advantages just within or at first just beyond its reach." Erasmus Darwin, as early as 1795, published views that contain the fundamental principles of the most pronounced Darwinism of the present time. Dr. W. C. Wells, in 181 3, used the term "natural se- lection " and applied it to the development of man. Professor William Herbert, in 1822, pub- lished the theory of the " transmutation of species in plants," and about the same time Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire announced the hypothesis of " trans- mutation in the animal kingdom." Hugo von Mohl and Max Schultze, in 1850 or a trifle later, spoke of a protoplasmic material or substance from which all things originate. Herbert Spencer nearly fifty years ago connected the theory of de- velopment with both cosmology and biology. Dr. Alfred R. Wallace and Charles Darwin, in 1858, separately announced the hypothesis of the " ori- gin of the species by spontaneous variation, and the survival of the fittest through natural selec- tion and the struggle for existence." Such is the history of evolution down to the HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 75 time of its announcement by Dr. Wallace and Mr. Darwin. So far from being something new, it would better be regarded a revival and en- largement of views entertained by philosophers and church fathers, skeptics and scientists, dur- ing the last twenty centuries. On this subject, as on many others, we may utter the facetious complaint, attributed to Macaulay, that the an- cients have stolen all our best ideas. Evolution should not be assailed, however, because it is old or because it is new, but simply because it lacks the support of facts. The in- dictment we are constrained to bring against it, especially in its attempts to account for the origin of things, is not modest ; indeed, it appears to be exceedingly dogmatic, and is offered with a pretty clear understanding of the surprise with which in some quarters it will be received. It is this : the hypothesis that animal life, including man and woman, originally came upon this earth from some kind of life-forms lower than itself, that had their beginning in spontaneous gen- eration, maturing through evolution by natural selection or by the survival of the fittest or in any kindred ways, is at the present stage of scientific inquiry not supported as a whole or in any of its parts by a single well-established fact in the whole domain of science or philosophy. An announcement of this kind, which seems 76 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? defiant and certainly is antagonistic to much that has been said by some of the most distinguished scientists of this century, ought to be challenged unless strongly supported by facts and by first- class authorities. Indeed, this indictment, if un- supported, would be regarded properly as a piece of insolent clerical dogmatism. II. FACTS ANTAGONISTIC TO THIS HYPOTHESIS Professor Haeckel, as is well known, attempted to derive the higher plant forms from Algae or seaweed. But, as Sir John William Dawson has shown, nothing could more curiously contradict actual facts. The Algae that appeared in the Silurian deposit are neither more nor less ele- vated than those found in the modern seas. And those other forms of vegetable life that look as though they might bridge the space be- tween sea-plants and land-plants are not found in the older geological deposits, while land-plants without any predecessors seem to have started at once into being in the guise of club-mosses, a group by no means of low order. The oldest land-plants that represent the highest recent types of the series to which they belong are in some instances better-developed examples of those types than any that now can be found on the earth. HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 77 Another fact of interest, and one that illus- trates the persistence of species in the vegetable world, is this : the oak, the birch, the hazel, and the Scotch fir easily are traced back at least ap- proximately to the ice age; but through all this stretch of time they have remained the oak, birch, hazel, and fir without any essential variation. In the animal kingdom, too, derivation from one species to another is not established. Whether mammals are derived from amphibians or from reptiles or from neither is a matter of dispute among naturalists. The development of the true horse from an animal of the angulate type is a waning theory. Of the early sharks, ganoids, and placoderms there are discovered no precur- sors at all. And the persistence of some types of animal life is very remarkable. The insect, for instance, that built the first Florida coral reef, which is thirty thousand years old or more, has not changed in the least during its entire career. Coming down to comparatively recent times, it is found that the birds and beasts of the Roman catacombs and of the Egyptian pyramids are identical with existing species. Count Cuvier, in his work entitled "Theory of the Earth," states the matter with fullness and clearness : " It might seem as if the ancient Egyptians had been in- spired by nature for the purpose of transmitting 78 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? to after-ages a monument of her natural history. That strange and whimsical people, by embalm- ing with so much care the brutes which were the objects of their stupid adoration, have left us in their sacred grottos cabinets of zoology almost complete. Climate has conspired with art to preserve the bodies from corruption, and we can now assure ourselves with our own eyes what was the state of a good number of species three thousand years ago. I have endeavored to collect all the ancient documents respecting the forms of animals, and there are none equal to those furnished by the Egyptians in regard to both their antiquity and abundance. I have exam- ined with the greatest care the engraved figures of quadrupeds and birds upon the obelisks brought from Egypt to ancient Rome ; and all these figures, one with another, have a perfect resemblance to their intended objects such as they still are in our days. My learned friend, Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire, convinced me of the im- portance of this research, and carefully collected in the tombs and temples of Upper and Lower Egypt as many mummies of animals as he could procure. He has brought home the mummies of cats, ibises, birds of prey, dogs, crocodiles, and the head of a bull. After the most attentive and detailed examination, not the smallest difference is to be perceived between these animals and those of the same species which we now see, any HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 79 more than between human mummies and skele- tons of men of the present day." Of late years much has been said of the changes that nature can produce in animal life by the use and disuse of parts or limbs by labor, strife, physical changes or conditions, and by or- ganic influence ; but, as a matter of fact, the natural modification in species never has been such as to secure what properly could be called a new genus. From time to time, especially during the last half-century, as is well known, attempts have been made through what is called " domestica- tion " to produce new and permanent species of animals ; but the results have afforded only the most doleful consolation for naturalism. While it is true that by selective breeding carried on for successive generations there may be obtained cattle with long horns, with short horns, and with no horns ; while fowls may be obtained with large combs, with no combs, or with a rosette of feathers in place of a crested comb ; while pigeons may be obtained having long bills or short bills, long or short legs; still, cattle have remained cattle, fowl have remained fowl, and pigeons have remained pigeons. Dr. Robert Patterson, F.R.S., has stated the case so admirably that we favor the reader with a quotation from his " Fables of Infidelity " : " The efforts of breeders have been exerted 80 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? for thousands of years upon the dog, the ox, the goat, the sheep, the horse, the ass, and the camel, among animals ; and upon the goose, the duck, and the pigeon, and, for a shorter time, but still for two thousand years, upon the com- mon barn-door poultry. Farmers in all lands since the deluge have used their best exertions to improve the cereals, the fruit-trees, the vines, and root-crops and vegetables, and the result has been some valuable modifications of size, shape, flavor, and fertility ; but in no case what- ever has any change of species been effected. All the efforts of breeders have not succeeded in making the horse specifically different from the noble animal described in the Book of Job four thousand years ago ; the sheep has not become a goat, nor the goat a sheep, by all the pains of all the shepherds since the days of Abel ; the ass displays not the least tendency to become a horse, nor the goat to become a cow. Mr. Dar- win makes great capital out of pigeons, enumer- ating all the varieties owned by fanciers, and showing how the Indian emperors bred them a thousand years before Christ. But it is strange that he does not see that this makes against his theory, since in all that time this most variable of birds has never been transmuted into any other species. The pigeon has never been changed into a crow or a magpie or a wood- HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 81 pecker or a chicken — has never, in fact, become anything else than a pigeon. Dogs are also somewhat variable in their varieties, and Mr. Darwin relies greatly upon supposed variations from some one assumed ancestral pair of dogs, into the greyhound, mastiff, terrier, and lap-dog. But, granting all these unproven variations, no instance is alleged of a dog ever becoming a cat or a lion by any care or culture." And says Professor Huxley, " After much consideration, and with assuredly no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is my clear conviction that, as the evidence now stands, it is not proven that a group of animals, having all the character- istics exhibited by species in nature, ever has been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural." Have we not, therefore, kept within the bounds of prudence when saying that a uni- versal law of development and improvement does not exist? Here are some cases where there is a standstill or a persistence of species, in spite of all natural or artificial agencies to modify them. And -who cannot see that these facts constitute a stubborn defiance to all modern schemes of evolution? But, more than this, there are in some in- stances what seem to be backward rather than forward movements. For illustration, there are 82 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? certain shrimp-like animals, similar in form, called the Nauplius, which begin life with con- siderable diversity of organs. The organs grad- ually are perfected in the free-living shrimps as they grow, but disappear in the parasitic animals. Another instance is that of the Ascidia (sea- squirts), which consist chiefly of a mouth and an intestine, through which the sea-water passes, and in this way nourishment is absorbed. The germs of one of this family (the Phalloideae) possess in an elementary form the four essential features — backbone, marrow, throat, and cere- bral eye — which distinguish vertebrates from all other animals ; and not only is there no develop- ment of these elementary organs, but they are actually lost as the animal matures, and there is no restoration after these changes are well estab- lished. The nauplius of the egg of the ship's barnacle, after swimming about for a time, fixes its head against a piece of wood and becomes motionless ; it loses its organs of touch and sight, its legs lose their normal function, and are used only to bring floating particles to the orifice of the stomach, so that the animal has been compared to a man standing on his head and kicking his food into his mouth. Professor Edwin Ray Lankester, speaking of the entire family of parasites, says : " The habit HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 83 of parasitism clearly acts upon animal organiza- tion in this way. Let the parasitic life once be secured, and away go legs, jaws, eyes, and ears; the active, highly gifted crab, insect, or annelid may become a mere sac, absorbing nourishment and laying eggs." The hermit-crab, though apparently making a very cunning natural selection when moving into a second-hand house, the well-built shell of the mollusk, that can stand a good deal of thumping on the rocks without breaking in pieces, is unfor- tunate nevertheless; for there follows a deterio- ration of certain important parts of the body, and several of its organs suffer a partial or an entire collapse. But no new species follows; the ani- mal remains a degenerate crab. In case of the Mosasaurids, a cretaceous species, the changes have been such as to result in what Professor Dana calls "profound degeneration." If, as is claimed, the amphibian snakes of the Carbonic period lost the limbs they once had, that loss is also clearly a case of degeneration. The fish family far back in the Devonian era reached the highest grade in fish vertebrate structure; since that time the fish has been in the way not of development, but of degeneration. Brute mammals long since passed their maximum de- velopment ; none of their descendants have been their equals. 84 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? The foregoing are only a few of the instances that could be given in support of what we were saying on degeneration ; but we are sure they are sufficient to show that there is in the vegetable and animal kingdom not only no universal law of development or elaboration, as has been claimed, but in many cases there is such a deterioration of parts and functions that, if there were steps or leaps either way in a species, they are quite as likely to be downward as upward. And we are sure that no well-informed investigator will dis- pute the statement that the culmination of types, followed by degeneration and extinction, is as much a recognized law in nature as any other one in her code. Or, employing the words of Professor E. D. Cope, who is an eminent and thoroughgoing evolutionist, " The retrogradation in nature is as well, or nearly as well, established as evolution." * There is still one other grouping or class of facts that is a troublesome offense and stone of stumbling to naturalism. There lived during the Paleozoic age five hundred species of trilobites; a little later, speaking geologically, they all dis- appeared. Nine hundred species of the ammonite * If any of our readers care to pursue this topic further, in- teresting matter will be found in a treatise on degeneration by Dr. Dohon of Naples, and in another on the same subject by Professor Lankester. HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 85 flourished at different periods during the Mesozoic era, but all now are extinct. At different periods of the earth's history there have been four hun- dred and fifty or more species of the nautilus; now there are only three, and these are peculiar to the present time. Seven hundred species of fossilized ganoids have been found ; the tribe now has scarcely a living representative, and the cephalopods and goniatites have suffered constant diminution in both size and number. Not only have single species gradually disap- peared, but whole families of different species belonging to a given era, gradually in some in- stances and suddenly in others, have suffered extinction. All the fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals of the Tertiary are now extinct. All air-breathing animals that were on the earth at the beginning of the Carbonic era succumbed during its most flourishing periods, though air- breathers again appeared while the carbon growths were hardening into coal. Exterminations incident to mountain-making, which are accompanied with changes of climate and a rush of waters, have been frequent and wide-spread. The close of that era, for illustra- tion, when the great mountain-range of eastern North America appeared, witnessed one of the most universal and abrupt disappearances of life in geological history. It was so destructive that 86 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? no species of land-animals that preceded can be found among the fossils of subsequent periods in America, Europe, or the rest of the world. And later the disruption of the earth's crust, extending west i6° S., and east i6° N., through which the chain of the great Alps was forced up to its present elevation, which, according to M. D'Orbigny, was simultaneous with that which forced up the Chilian Andes, a chain of three thousand miles in length, terminated the Terti- ary age, and wrought appalling and wide-spread devastations. Dr. Nathaniel Lardner, speaking of this epoch, says, " The waters of the seas and oceans, lifted up from their beds by this immense perturbation, swept over the continents with irresistible force, destroying instantaneously the entire flora and fauna of the last Tertiary period, and burying its ruins in the sedimentary deposits which ensued." We find, therefore, that, instead of a multipli- cation of types through geological time, which would be expected according to the theory of naturalistic evolution, the evidence showing the vanishing tendency of some types and the utter extinction of others is overwhelming. The testi- mony of Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace in his " Dar- winism " is in place : " Although a certain number of species are common to two or more of the great divisions of geological history, the totality HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 87 of the species that have lived upon the earth must be very much more than twelve times, perhaps even thirty or forty times, the number now living." Professor George Q. Romanes does not hesi- tate to say that during the history of animal life " millions of the lower species have succumbed." But geology shows something still worse for the cause of naturalism ; namely, after these ex- terminations there often has been a sudden ap- pearance of whole groups of different genera, families, and species of plants and animals, with- out any recognizable forms leading up to them, or from which, so far as we can judge, they pos- sibly could be developed. This fact, as no one can fail to see, is a well-nigh insurmountable barrier in the pathway of naturalistic evolution. That hypothesis makes no provision whatever for such an abrupt appearance of the various distinct species of life that over and over again during geological history have come into being. It is now clearly evident to all our readers that the early expectations of naturalism that it can account for existing species and genera of animals, with all their variations, on the ground of devel- opment by natural selection, or by the survival of the fittest, or, as Lamarck puts the matter, by the use and disuse of organs and parts, have met in obvious facts almost a continuous series of dis- appointments. Even Mr. Darwin, who, early in 88 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? his career, taught that among races in the strug- gle for life the weaker are destroyed and the stronger, in the long run, survive, also that desire and effort can produce new and improved organs, as a desire to see will result in the formation of an eye, and desire to walk will produce a leg and foot, in his later writings gracefully confessed, to use his own words, that in his " Origin of Spe- cies " he " attributed too much to the action of natural selection." III. OPINIONS ANTAGONISTIC TO THIS HY- POTHESIS Before closing this part of the discussion, we quote from a few acknowledged authorities in support of the view we advocate, that there is no scientific evidence of naturalistic transforma- tions among the species: " That such transformations as are claimed by the evolutionist are wholly unknown to the realms of nature," says Cuvier, " is a point upon which the most distinguished geologists and anatomists are unanimous." " At succeeding epochs new tribes of beings," says Professor Adam Sedgwick, " were called into existence, not merely as the progeny of those that had appeared before them, but as new and living proofs of creative interference." HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 89 " All these facts," says Professor Francis M. Balfour, " contradict the crude ideas of those so- called naturalists who state that one species can be transmuted into another in the course of gen- erations." " The species have a real existence in nature," says Lyell, " and each was endowed at the time of its creation with the attributes and organs by which it is now distinguished." " Everything," says Sir Charles Bell, " declares the species to have its origin in a distinct crea- tion, not in a gradual variation from some original type." " We have absolute proof of the immutability of species," says Sir David Brewster, " whether we search for it in historic or geologic times." Says Professor C. C. Everett, " If these ranks of beings ever rose and moved in glad procession along the upward slope, each passing, by no matter how slow a step, out of its own limitations, and in itself or its posterity entering upon a larger life, it was before the eyes of man were opened to behold them. No searching of his awakened powers can detect, even among the remains of an unknown antiquity, any glimpse of the great movement while in progress of accomplishment. All, as he looks upon it, is as fixed as the sphinx that slumbers on the Egyptian sands. All this story of transformation and activity is a dream." l^ 90 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? The younger Agassiz, in his able paper upon sea-urchins, confesses that he utterly despairs of -finding the missing links upon which evolution inevitably depends. Says Professor Dana, " For the most part throughout the kingdom of life, variation is with- out explanation, though enough is known to en- courage study." Says Professor Tyndall, in the " Fortnightly Review," " If asked whether science has solved or is likely in our day to solve the problem of the universe, I must shake my head in doubt. Behind and above and around us the real mystery of the universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution. . . . " Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they only yield to it a provisional as- sent. . . . " They frankly admit their inability to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be developed save from demonstrable antecedent life. . . . " I share Virchow's opinion that the theory of evolution in its complete form involves the as- sumption that at some period or other of the earth's history there occurred what would be now called spontaneous generation; but I agree with him that the proofs of it are wanting. I also hold, HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 91 with Virchow, that the failures have been so lam- entable that the doctrine is utterly discredited." Says Professor Mivart, " With regard to the conception as now put forward by Mr. Darwin, I cannot truly characterize it but by an epithet I employ with great reluctance. I weigh my words, and have present to my mind the many distinguished naturalists who have accepted the notion, and yet I cannot call it anything but a puerile hypothesis. ' ' Says Dr. Charles Elam, " The hypothesis of natural selection is not directly supported by any single fact in the whole range of natural history or paleontology ; but, on the other hand, every fact which is known with any certainty in those sciences, so far as it bears upon natural selection, directly opposes it." And the elder Professor Agassiz, in words highly prized by every thoughtful Christian, puts the case calmly and strongly : " It is evident that there is a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. This progress consists in an increasing similarity to the living fauna, and, among the vertebrates, especially in their increasing resemblance to man. But this connection is not the consequence of a direct line- age between the faunas of different ages. There is nothing like parental descent connecting them. The fishes of the Paleozoic age are in no respect 92 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? the ancestors of the reptiles of the Secondary age; nor does man descend from the mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary age. The link by which they are connected is of a higher and immaterial nature ; and their connection is to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce man upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end toward which all the animal creation has tended from the first appear- ance of the first Paleozoic fishes." In an address delivered in 1862 before the British Geological Society, Professor Huxley ad- mitted that the time allowed by geological science for the development of vegetable and animal life precludes the hypothesis of evolution as usually advocated by the friends of that theory. These are his words : " Obviously if the earliest fos- siliferous rocks now known are coeval with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just conception of the earliest fauna and flora, the insignificant amount of modification which can be demonstrated to have taken place in any one group of animals and plants is quite incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results of a process of necessary HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 93 progressive development entirely comprised with- in the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks." During the summer of 1885 Professor George E. Post of the Syrian Mission, himself a man of no inconsiderable scientific attainment, visited the British Museum to have certain specimens that he had brought from Syria named and clas- sified. After this had been done he was shown about the museum by Dr. Etheridge, examiner of the science division, and one of England's most famous experts in fossilology. When the interview was closing, Dr. Post asked the ques- tion whether " these orders of creation seen in the collection of fossils in the museum, after all, were not the working out of mind and providence." A reply from a scientist thoroughly acquainted with the vast collections in that museum, and who knows as well as any one else in Great Britain about the " origin of the species " and "missing links," will be received almost with abated breath. This was his answer : " In all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of transmuta- tion of species. Nine tenths of the talk of evolu- tionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observa- tion and wholly unsupported by fact. Men adopt a theory and then strain their facts to support it. I read all their books, but they make no im- pression on my belief in the stability of species. 04 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Moreover, the talk of the great antiquity of man is of no value. Some men are ready to regard you as a fool if you do not go with them in all their vagaries ; but this museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views." CHAPTER V Hypothesis of Evolution (Continued) I. HUMAN FOSSILS What has been said in the preceding chapter concerning the supposed evolution of plants and animals is essentially, and in some respects very manifestly, true of the human family. It is found, as a matter of fact, that the Ethiopian from the earliest historic times has no more changed his skin than the leopard has his spots. The negro, too, as represented in the tombs of Egypt and in Assyrian sculpture, had the same type of nose and heel forty centuries ago that he has to- day. Dr. Ussher, quoted by Dr. Daniel Wilson, speaking of the American type of primitive man, says: " We trace these people back into the very night of time, but find that they have preserved the same type from geological time to the period of the Columbian discovery." 95 96 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Taking the skull as the basis of comparison, the evidence is conclusive that there has been no im- provement or elaboration since the human race began. Professor Huxley, speaking of one of the oldest fossil skulls that has been discovered, says that, so far as size and shape are concerned, it might have been the brain of a philosopher. Professor Pierre Paul Broca, who made a very careful study of the cro-magnon skull that was found in Peri- gord, France, which belongs to the earliest stone age, says : " The great volume of the brain, the development of the frontal region, the fine ellipti- cal profile of the anterior portion of the skull, and the orthognathous form of the upper facial region are incontestable evidence of superiority, and are characteristics that usually are found only in civi- lized nations." Dr. Bruner-Bey declares that these most ancient skulls " surpass in size the average of modern European skulls, while their symmetrical form compares favorably with the skulls of many of the most civilized nations of modern times." Dr. Friedrich Pfaff, in a tract recently trans- lated from the German on the question, " When did Man Appear on the Earth?" has presented the following table, showing the measurement of several skulls belonging to different countries and ages: HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 97 CUBIC INCHES Average of several Northern skulls belonging to the stone age 18.877 Average of 48 English skulls belonging to the stone age 18.858 Average of 7 Welsh skulls belonging to the stone age 18.649 Average of 36 French skulls belonging to the stone age 18. 220 Average of living European skulls 18.579 Average of living Hottentot skulls 1 7.795 Taking any other part of the human body, or the entire body, as the basis of comparison, the showing is no better for the evolutionist. In- deed, from every possible point of view the evi- dence is overwhelming that the oldest men in their physical structure were no nearer the brute than are men now living.* II. CIVILIZATION Passing from the fossil bones of primitive men to their civilization, we discover that the show- ing for naturalism is also very disheartening. In Europe primitive men, those of the early stone age, were violent and brutal, but they were not brutes. They buried their dead, and did this in a manner that shows, judging from comparative * For further confirmation of this subject, see contributions to the Royal Society of London, 1868, by Dr. G. Barnard Davis ; discoveries by Dr. Schmerling near Liege, Belgium ; reports of F. Noetling concerning the Lower Pliocene of Burmah. 98 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? interment, that they had ideas of both a future life and of a Supreme Being. William Boyd Dawkins, in his book entitled " Cane Hunting," speaking of the oldest engrav- ings made by the stone men on the mammoth tooth and reindeer horn, says : " The most clever sculptor of modern times would probably not suc- ceed very much better if his graver were a splin- ter of flint, and if stone and bones were the mate- rials to be engraved." In Asia and Egypt the data are much fuller, and are convincing to all except those, we were on the point of saying, whose perceptions are blunted by adverse predeterminations. The con- dition of the human race in those ancient countries was at the outset manifestly not crude and sav- age, but highly civilized. " The earliest history of those people bursts upon us." "The primitive man," as Dr. Taylor Lewis remarks, "was a splendid being, not scientific nor civilized, it is true, in our modern sense of the words, yet pos- sessing grand powers of body and mind." Those primitive men aimed at great things. They were pioneers ; they colonized countries, as England, France, and Germany have been doing for the last century. They organized governments, they reared mighty pyramids and temples, and con- structed dikes and canals. In the land of Shina, and in the time of Nimrod, they builded cities of HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 99 immense proportions. There were grouped about Nineveh such cities as Calah, Dur Sagina, Tarbisa, Arbel, Khazeh, and Asshur, whose ruins bespeak the " vast ambition and mighty energy of their builders." The banks of the Tigris, lower down, present an almost unbroken line of ruins from Tekrit to Bagdad, while Babylon and Chaldea are studded in every direction with mounds that mark the ruins of great cities that were founded at the very dawn of human history. In addition to this architectural skill, those primitive peoples in Asia, as also in Egypt, had a system of astronomy, a calendar, a knowledge of geometry, a system of writing, and schools of medicine ; they gathered immense libraries, and could harden copper, embalm the dead, and do other things in ways we cannot. M. de Sarzac has been exceedingly fortunate in his explorations in Chaldea (1893-94), having dis- covered, in a depository which formed a part of the palace of the ancient kings of that country, nearly thirty thousand tablets of baked clay covered with cuneiform inscriptions. From these and other facts the conclusion is inevitable that as many as four thousand years before Christ Chaldea was a rich and prosperous country. Her people herded cattle, raised different crops, culti- vated several of the useful arts, and were so far advanced (?) as to drink fermented liquor. 100 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Speaking of the period between 2800 and 3800 B.C., Professor Robert W. Rogers, who, perhaps, is better informed on the early history of Meso- potamia than any other Assyriologist in our coun- try, says : " Those people by some means had attained a high degree of civilization. They car- ried on a wide-extended commerce, had dynas- tic forms of government and a religious priest- hood. They employed the signs of the zodiac, and in the same order as we do ; and, what is still more remarkable, they had the seven days of the week designated by the names of their gods in the same order and having the same characteris- tics as ours. In their schools two languages were taught, the Assyrian and Sumerian, and their diplomatists had knowledge of a third, the Aramaic, which was the universal language for communication in that day, as was French a half- century ago in Europe, and as English is largely to-day the language of commerce. We have rec- ords of a dissolution of a partnership recorded in their month corresponding to January, with the sum allotted to the retiring partner, as fully and minutely set forth four thousand years ago as if the article had been drawn last January by an American lawyer. On another tablet is set forth the sale of a house and lot, with price, executed in due Babylonian form, those of the one party signing their names, those of the other, not being HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 101 able to write, ' making their mark ' with their thumb-nail on the plastic clay. We have three hundred letters of the kings of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, written upon matters of state more than fourteen centuries before Christ, that are models of courtesy and directness." Lockyer, in his book entitled " Nature," has shown that long before the Mosaic age the dwell- ers by the Euphrates and the Nile had mapped out the heavens, ascertained the movements of the moon and planets, established the zodiacal signs, discriminated the poles of the ecliptic and the equator, ascertained the laws of eclipses and the precession of the equinoxes, and, in fact, had worked out all the astronomical data which can be learned by observation, and had applied them to practical uses. Lockyer does not hesitate to say that this knowledge prevailed as far back as the post-glacial or antediluvian period. Tomkins, in his " Papers on the Lists of Thoth- mes III. at Karnak," likewise furnishes unan- swerable evidence that a degree of civilization had been reached in the countries around the Mediterranean, even before the time of Moses, that is an astonishment to the evolutionist who still clings to his naturalism. The same essentially is to be said of Egypt. There is no evidence of infancy in the architec- ture and art of that country. No longer is there 102 EVOLUTION Ok CREATION? any doubt that the pyramids and the imposing structures of Thebes and Memphis are the work of Egyptians whose ancestors, only a few gener- ations earlier, had taken possession of those ter- ritories, and who were among the earliest men who are known to have inhabited the earth. In- deed, the further back one goes the more per- fect the architecture and art of Egypt are found to be. The statue of King Rephren, the builder of the second pyramid at Ghizeh, " is equal in anatomi- cal truth," says Professor Richard Owen, " to any work by Michael Angelo." M. Jacques de Morgan, the French director-general of Egyptian antiquities, in reports just made public, thinks he has found the earliest Egyptian tombs yet dis- covered, and that they antedate by many centu- ries any heretofore examined. In those tombs, estimated to have been used twenty-three to twenty-eight hundred years before Christ, are artistic fresco decorations such as indicate a high state of civilization. In the White Pyramid was found a crown of rare workmanship lying on the remains of one of the Egyptian princesses. It is made of gold inlaid with precious stones, the vari- ous parts being joined together by perfect Maltese crosses. Speaking of the artistic design and workman- ship of this and other ornaments lately discovered, hypothesis of evolution los M. Morgan declares that " the gilded heiresses of to-day have nothing daintier or richer than these articles in the way of ornaments." In the coffin of the Princess Ita, buried at least twenty-four hundred years before Christ, was found a beautiful dagger, the blade of bronze and the handle of gold, inlaid with carnelian, emerald, and lapis lazuli. Human heads, copied by Petrie from Egyptian tombs, show that the physical features of all the peoples inhabiting the surrounding countries were well known to those early Egyptians, whose draw- ings prove that they were well advanced in art scholarship. Tomkins closes a paper on the " Knowledge of Geography among the Ancient Egyptians " in these words : " The Egyptians, dwelling in their green, warm river-course, and on the watered levels of their Fayoum and Delta, were yet a very enterprising people, full of curiosity, literary, scientific in method, admirable delineators of na- ture, skilled surveyors, makers of maps, trained and methodical administrators of domestic and foreign affairs, kept alert by the movements of their great river and by the necessities of com- merce, which forced them to the Syrian forests for their building timber, and to Kush and Pun for their precious furniture woods and ivory, to say nothing of incense, aromatics, cosmetics, as- 104 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? phalt, exotic plants, and pet and strange animals, with a hundred other needful things." What is still most remarkable is the fact that, as early as the fifth dynasty, there were in use among the people of Egypt ethical treatises, some of whose maxims, recently deciphered, scarcely can be improved. Later, during the pyramid dynasty, there were composed epic poems, ex- tolling the deeds of Rameses II., " the Sesos- tris of history," that remind the reader of some of the most heroic passages of the matchless Homer. Dr. Dawson, grouping the discoveries already referred to with those of Birch and of Glaser, as summarized by Sayce, says in substance that in the art of geodesy, and in allied arts also, the Egyp- tians long before the time of Moses had attained a perfection never since excelled, so that our most approved instruments can detect no errors in very old measurements and levelings. The arts of arch- itecture, metallurgy, and weaving had attained to the highest development. Canalization and irri- gation, with their consequent agriculture and cat- tle-breeding, were old and well-understood arts. Sculpture and painting in the age of Moses had attained their acme, and were falling into conven- tional styles. Law and the arts of government had become fixed and settled. Theology and morals, and the doctrine of rewards and punish- ments, had been elaborated into complex systems. HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 105 There was also an abundance of poetical and imaginative literature. There were treatises on medicine and other useful arts. At the court of Pharaoh diplomatic correspondence was carried on with all parts of the civilized world, in many languages and in various forms of writing, includ- ing that of Egypt itself, that of Chaldea, and probably also the alphabetical writing afterward used by the Hebrews, Phenicians, and Greeks, which seems to have originated at a very early period among the Mineans, or Punites, of south- ern Arabia. There were institutions of various grades, from ordinary schools to universities. In the latter were professors of astronomy, geog- raphy, mining, theology, history, and languages, as well as of many of the higher technical arts. And a college song of earlier date than that of Moses has been preserved, another piece of evi- dence that what has been supposed to be of recent origin is really as primitive as the age of the pa- triarchs. (See " Records of the Past.") But Asia and Egypt are not alone in report- ing the early civilization of the human family. In the South Sea Islands, in Iceland, in Mexico, and in South America there are unmistakable evidences of an " early and superior people and a departed civilization." Perhaps it is hardly necessary to say that all efforts to harmonize these early civilizations with a slow or gradual evolution, or with other natural- J 106 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? istic theories, have proved utterly abortive. The theory of a " savagism," so much talked of among naturalists — the theory that the race began in a savage state, and slowly worked up to its present condition, consuming in this development at least one hundred and eighty thousand years — in the presence of established facts is an assumption as preposterous as can be imagined. There is not a shadow of foundation for it. On the other hand, a sudden emergence from a savage state to one represented by the civili- zation of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and of other countries is not an emergence now taking place anywhere on earth. It never has taken place, and, in the nature of things, never can take place, unless there is something supernatural, outside of the savage state, that comes to its aid. We may be permitted to suggest at this point that if the Bible account of the beginning of the human race is admitted as authentic, then all these difficulties vanish. If Adam had a fully endowed body and mind ; if Cain, the son of the first man, builded a city (Gen. iv. 17); if Cain's son Jubal handled the harp and the organ (Gen. iv. 21), and if Jubal's brother, Tubal-cain, was a worker in brass and iron (Gen. iv. 22), then the early civilizations of Asia and Egypt are no longer perplexing mysteries, but are precisely what would be expected. HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 107 III. MONKEYS What relation exists between monkeys and the human family is a question that has been under frequent discussion. But, as some of our readers very well know, the attempts that for a long time were making to show how man might be devel- oped from the monkey have been abandoned of late by the whole army of naturalistic scientists. This abandonment was necessitated in conse- quence of the curious fact, formerly overlooked, but now acknowledged by every scientist who has given thought to the subject, that the mon- key nature or constitution, as already suggested, is such that the more it is developed the more of a monkey and the less of a man the monkey be- comes. Professor Oskar Peschel, in his treatise on the races of man, states the case thus : " Before the change of teeth has begun the brain of the ape has usually attained its completion, whereas in the child its proper development is just then actively beginning. In the apes, on the contrary, the facial bones grow in an animal direction, so that finally the largest ape has the brain of a child and the jaws of an ox. Hence it follows that a man would never originate from the progressive evolution of the apes, for their development is directed to different ends, and the longer they 108 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? advance toward these ends the greater are the contrasts." Finding that the former theory of evolution from the monkey is no longer tenable, several naturalists took refuge under a "maybe "or "per- haps." That is, "perhaps there were other spe- cies of the ape family that could have developed into man." As a specimen of this utterly unscientific method of reasoning that too freely is indulged, we submit the following from the pen of Professor Haeckel : " Our ape-like ancestors are long since extinct. Perchance their fossil remains may some time be found in the tertiary deposits of south- ern Asia or Africa. They must nevertheless be ranked among the tailless catarrhine anthropoid apes." It is perfectly obvious why Professor Haeckel puts in this plea that a higher and distinct ape- like ancestor for the human family may some- where, sometime, perchance, be found. It is be- cause of the discovery just mentioned that, in the process of evolution, all monkeys now known to science, if they develop at all, must develop away from instead of toward the human family, and also because of another troublesome dis- covery, namely, that the same gap or gulf be- tween man and the ape, with undiminished breadth and depth, goes back to the first appear- HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 109 ance of man. The first monkey was a monkey, and the first man was a man and nothing else, a fact that is not explicable on the ground that man, who has lived on this earth only since the ice age, is a development from the monkey family. IV. HUMAN DEGENERACY What already has been said as to degeneracy and elaboration in the brute world applies almost with equal force to the human race. The modern Egyptian who lives in a mud- walled hut certainly is a backward or a downhill evolution from the Egyptian who lived in royal palaces. Some of the peoples of Mexico and South Amer- ica, who are scarcely more than half civilized, are beyond question a degeneration from peoples who give evidence of having ranked in some of the higher attainments with the ancient Greeks and Romans. Likewise the poor Eskimo of Greenland is not an elaborated monkey, but a degenerate descendant from the enterprising and noble Dane who colonized that country in 1406 A.D. The prehistoric cliff-dwellers of our southwest country, as Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing, Pro- fessor Amos P. Brown, Professor E. D. Cope, and Dr. John Harshberger clearly have shown, dwelt in communities, had tools of husbandry, dealt in the various commodities of daily life, such as corn, 110 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? cotton-seed, and wrapping-paper made of corn husks. In a word, the theory of savagism finds no support in the life and habits of the cave- dwellers ; and what is true of them is equally true of the mound-builders of our western country. Linguistic science, if possible, makes out a still stronger case in proof of human degeneracy. Wil- helm von Humboldt's putting of the matter is brief, but has in it a wealth of suggestion : " Man is man only by means of speech ; but in order to invent speech he must be already man." We may add, he must be a man of very high order. But speech is as ancient as the race. We ought not to weary the reader with too many items of evidence of what we are saying, but may call attention to one class of phenomena found in what Cannon Farrar calls the sporadic family of languages ; those, he means, that are spoken by different and scattered tribes of the human family not included among either the Aryan or Semitic families. These sporadic tongues, for the larger part, are uncivilized, but in every one of them there is unmistakable evi- dence that they had an honorable ancestry. It is the judgment of such linguists as Du Ponceau, Charlevoix, Appleyard, Threlkeld, Caldwell, Dr. Latham, and Max Miiller that many branches of the sporadic family of languages have such rich- ness of expression, and are so perfect and artistic. HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 111 in structure, that they could not possibly have been wrought into their present forms by the peoples now speaking them. The rational, and the only rational, conclusion is that those who now speak these tongues must have sprung from an ancestry who, in character and culture, were far in advance of their descendants. One of the most recent and careful authorities on the languages of the American aborigines is Mr. Horatio Hale. In a paper published in the " Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada " he announces, as the conclusion of his investiga- tions, the unqualified conviction that " the origi- nal framers or users of the languages of America were a cultivated and an intellectual people, and these tongues as they are now spoken are a clear case of race degeneration." It may not be a piece of welcome news, in the face of all the boasted progress of the world, that there are indications that human degeneracy is more extended in its blight than we had supposed, and that it still is going on. The recent discussion of this subject by Baron Nordenskiold, in proof of degeneracy, has been criticized severely, and, while some of his state- ments are questionable and some of his conclu- sions may not be sound, still that he makes out on the whole a case of considerable merit no thoughtful person will question. Degeneracy, he 112 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? insists, is not sporadic, local, and occasional, but is a tendency in every country and among every people. In proof of this he calls attention to the frequency with which brains are met that are in- capable of normal working ; to the universality of nervous irritability ; to the undue predominance of emotion ; to the feebleness of will power ; to the gradual disappearance among the masses of the sense of duty, and to the existing looseness in morals among the so-called upper classes of soci- ety. These facts, he claims, point to a backward tendency so strong that the race by ordinary re- form methods will not soon reach the ideal which naturalism places before it ; indeed, seemingly by natural agencies it never can reach that ideal. Dr. John Berry Haycraft, in his recent work entitled " Darwinism and Race Progress," from a slightly different point of view reaches conclusions similar to those announced by Nordenskiold. He divides the race into two classes : the capables and the incapables. In the first class are included enterprising, ambitious, and successful people. In the second are those having the opposite char- acteristics. And then, after pointing out the fact that imbecility, disease, and evil tendencies are passed on from one generation to another, he shows, what no one can doubt, that it is not the progeny of the first, but of the second class, that is on the speedier increase and, from some HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 113 points of view, is multiplying with an alarming rapidity. The outcome, if there is not a change for the better, or unless a merciful providence, as in other times, by some sudden catastrophe shall cut short the career of humanity, is inevitable. With prophetic forecast, the New Testament prophets, Peter in his epistles, Jude in his, and Paul in some of his, no less unmistakably make the announcement that degeneracy shall be the record on the closing pages of the world's history. And the blessed Master himself, though not un- mindful of the coming good, foresaw the reign of evil continuing and increasing to the later and latest times. Now, whatever may be our views of the imme- diate future of the human race, this will be con- ceded, that, if there are any means or agencies that can check its impending degeneracy and doom, they are not extent of territory, immense wealth, material aggrandizement, intellectual at- tainments, advancement of science, physical, mechanical, or economic, nor any other schemes of naturalism ; for all such have been tried re- peatedly, and just as repeatedly have miserably failed to accomplish the benefits looked for. As- syria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome are im- posing and solemn monuments of national degen- eracy, in spite of a high degree of civilization. 114 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? But, on the other hand, the agencies that have been helpful and that afford a measure of confi- dence are Christian enterprises and philanthro- pies, Christian education, churches, and associa- tions. And in this hour of political misrule, of lust for money and power, of evil-doing, and of irreligion, no one is in danger of overweighing the significance and importance of the Christian spirit and faith that inspire the great religious movements of the day, and that carry on the be- neficent and redemptive philanthropies of the world, without which the human race, so far as we now can judge, would make a pretty rapid plunge headlong into perdition, physical, mental, and spiritual. V. OPINIONS ANTAGONISTIC TO THE HYPOTH- ESIS THAT MAN IS THE PRODUCT OF EVO- LUTION In concluding this part of the discussion on naturalistic evolution in its application to the human family, we offer the following quotations in support of the indictment already charged against it. Dr. Wallace, while continuing to cling to the belief that man's body may have been developed from lower animals by natural selection, disclaims the possibility of any such origin for man's intel- HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 115 lectual and moral faculties. " These faculties," he says, "could not have been so developed, but must have had another origin ; and for this origin we can only find an adequate cause in the unseen universe of spirit." These words of Wallace re- mind the reader of those spoken by Sir Thomas Browne : " There is surely a piece of deity in us — something that was before the elements and owes no homage to the sun." Professor Romanes, in his " Darwin and after Darwin," in the following quotation appears to have adopted the opinion advocated by a score of other leading scientists of the present time, that " there cannot have been any such enormous reaches of unrecorded time as would be implied by the supposition of there having been a lost history of organic evolution before the time man appears upon the earth." Professor Dana speaks much in the same vein : " Man's origin has thus far no sufficient explana- tion from science. . . . The abruptness of tran- sition from preceding forms is most extraordinary, and especially because it occurs so near to the present time. In the highest man-ape the near- est allied of living species has the capacity of the cranium but thirty-four cubic inches, while the skeleton throughout is not fitted for an erect posi- tion, and the fore limbs are essential to locomo- tion ; but in the lowest of existing men the 116 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? capacity of the cranium is sixty-eight cubic inches, every bone is made and adjusted for the erect position, and the fore limbs, instead of being required in locomotion, are wholly taken from the ground and have other and higher uses." In his very latest treatise, " Manual of Geol- ogy " (1895), Professor Dana repeats in another form these same convictions : " The search for missing links has been carried forward with deep interest during recent years. But, although fossil skeletons have been found among the re- mains of Pleistocene mammals in Europe and America, none show any indication of departure from erect posture, or have smaller brain cavity than occurs among existing races of men. . . . " Whatever the result of further search, we may feel assured, in accord with Wallace, who shares with Darwin in the authorship of the theory of natural selection, that the intervention of a power above nature was at the basis of man's develop- ment. Believing that nature exists through the will and ever-acting power of the divine Being, and all its great truths, its beauties, its harmonies, are manifestations of his wisdom and power, or, in the words nearly of Wallace, that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually is the will of, one supreme intelligence, nature, with man as its culminant species, is no longer a mystery." HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 117 Professor Joseph Le Conte, in his geological treatise, is no less pronounced : " From the purely structural and animal point of view, man is very closely united with the animal kingdom. He has no department of his own, but belongs to the vertebrate department, along with quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and fishes. He has no class of his own, but belongs to the class Mammalia, along with quadrupeds. Neither has he an order of his own, but belongs to the order of Primates, along with monkeys, lemurs, etc. Even a family of his own, the Hominidae, is grudgingly admitted by some. But from the psychical point of view it is simply impossible to overestimate the space which separates man from all lower things. Man must be set off not only against the animal kingdom, but against the whole of nature besides as an equivalent. Nature the book, the revelation, and man the interpreter. " So in the history of the earth. From one point of view the era of man is not equivalent to an era, nor to an age, nor to a period, nor even to an epoch. But from another point of view it is the equivalent of the whole geological history of the earth besides ; for the history of the earth finds its consummation and its interpreter and its significance in man." The noted evolutionist, Virchow, already quoted, makes the following similar confession: 118 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? " There always exists a sharp line of demarca- tion between man and the ape. We cannot pro- nounce it a conquest proved by science that man descends from the ape, or from any other animal." Now what these authorities are saying is this : that there are no provisions yet made by natural- ism, or that can be made by it, to bridge over the mighty gulf that lies between man and all the lower orders of creation. In this and the preceding chapter we have pre- sented some of the evidence and some of the authorities in support of the assertion made near the beginning of this section, that there is not a particle of evidence that one genus or clearly marked species of animal ever has or ever can move on and up into another; and that there is not a particle of evidence that any order of ani- mal ever has or ever can reach a point where, slowly or suddenly, it can come into posses- sion of a human body or a human mind. We leave the reader to judge whether the case is made out, and whether we are justified in mak- ing this concluding statement : In view of the facts before us, it is utterly unscientific and, if we may speak all our mind, it is downright idiocy for men to parade, on the street or in the church or through the press or on the platform, these ex- ploded theories of evolution by natural selection or by the survival of the fittest as if they still HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION 119 were current in the scientific world. They are not current. They are gone to decay, or, to change the figure, they are wrecked; and men who still cling to them ought to have discovered before this time that they are not on shipboard, but are in the water and are clinging to nothing but pieces of planks, broken spars, or other wreck- age. CHAPTER VI Enterprise in Apes and Missing Links i. naturalism in close quarters OUR friends, the evolutionists of the naturalistic school, may answer back that a lack of evidence does not disprove the possibility of whatever has been claimed for evolution. That is true, and certainly we have no objection to such an answer. But if, after the presentation of the foregoing facts and opinions, the only reply which can be made is that a lack of evidence does not disprove the possibility of evolution, then naturalism must be hard pressed, and those who make such reply and still cling to naturalism have forfeited the right to stand among those who properly may be called logicians, philosophers, or scientists. The temper shown in this remark makes it quite easy to offer another rather defiant propo- sition, which is this : all efforts of the advocates of evolution to bring man and woman upon this earth through what are termed natural processes 1 20 ENTERPRISE IN APES AND MISSING LINKS 121 not only have been unsuccessful, but the reason- ing employed has been in violation of the sound- est principles of logic, and, under close scrutiny, in not a few instances has been extremely ridicu- lous. The persistence shown has been commen- dable, for not a stone has been left unturned ; but the stone-turning has resulted in nothing for naturalism except torn fingers and empty hands. To make this statement more manifest, and confining attention to the original appearance of man and woman on the earth, we note once more the three hypotheses concerning this subject. First, there were no first man and woman ; but, by numberless intermediate steps, there were gradual developments up through ape-like ani- mals, extending through millions of years, all changes being carried on, however, by such slow and gradual processes that the advance from the higher brute to the lower man and woman was unmarked and imperceptible. Second, there were a first man and woman, but they came through evolution in the following way : a certain order of brutes, when it had made sufficient attainment, suddenly was transformed by natural or supernatural agencies into the orig- inal man and woman. Third, the first man and woman appeared on the earth by supernatural creation at a definite time, having no historic or organic or vital con- 122 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? nection of any sort with any of the monkey races, or with any of the preexisting races of animals, but at the start possessed all the essential charac- teristics of the existing races of men and women. The first of these three methods, that of evolu- tion pure and simple, we set aside because already it has been shown to be destitute of any reliable foundation. The second method claims a few moments' attention, especially because it has con- siderable support from the friends of the Christian faith. It has been defended in one form or an- otherby Professor Lange, Dr. Cunningham Geikie, Professors Drummond, Dana, Winchell, and a score of others. What we propose is to relieve this compromise measure, so far as possible, of its scholastic and scientific phraseology, presenting it in plain Eng- lish ; and, according to the rules already given, if it is a wise hypothesis it will endure this test. II. SPECIFIC STATEMENT OF MONKEY EVOLU- TION At this point we do not make inquiry as to the origin of life. We assume its presence on the earth, and also assume that life took on higher and higher forms until, thousands of years ago, a tadpole, or some other animal of similar rank, came upon the stage. Having this start, the remaining steps are ENTERPRISE IN APES AND MISSING LINKS 123 supposed to be comparatively simple and easily are provided for. Once having life on the earth, as a distinguished scientist has said, " we need have no more trouble, but can go about our busi- ness." Among the race of tadpoles, according to the theory we are reviewing, one was nobler than the others, or had a more helpful environment, or per- chance possessed both these advantages. By the " use of functions and parts " he improved his two talents until he had other two. By means of an " unconscious intelligence " (see Dr. Lycock) he kept thinking that he would like to become something besides a tadpole. Be- cause of his superiority other families of inferior tadpoles after a while theoretically could not sur- vive, and in him was concentrated the genius of his race. At length there came a moment when all the improved faculties of this surviving tadpole and all his powers and nervous energies conspired to help him. Then, " having a stimulus from without and an assimilation within " (see Beneke's theory), or " by a mere functional impulse " (see Professor S. H. Carpenter), he made a jump. He cleared the gulf, got beyond his species, and found himself to be something other than he was before. In brief, we may say he became an ape of the lowest possible order. And for a tadpole that was a most commendable and really great achieve- 124 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? ment ; indeed, it was a tremendous achievement. And though muddy pools for a long time had been full of tadpoles, this was the first one that ever made such a jump; and never since that time has any other tadpole succeeded in jumping beyond a frog pond ; at least, never a one became a monkey. This, therefore, was the most enter- prising tadpole the world ever has known. And no human being should be ashamed to have on the background of his family coat of arms a tadpole. Enterprising, heroic, noble tadpole, we praise and honor thee! But whether this tadpole that became a monkey was male or female we are not told ; we presume, of course, he was male. Days and years passed in weariness and lonesomeness. How could it be otherwise ? There was no helpmeet for him. At length,- after much thought and desire, he shook himself, and, by " an ineffable cleavage " (see Lange's view as to the evolution of Eve), or by " a functional impulse," to use words familiar in scientific circles, this tadpole-monkey became male and female, and the race of which he was federal head began its career on the earth. Other ages passed. Then, by " natural selec- tion " (Darwin), and by " the survival of the fit- test " (Spencer), or by " the use of functions and parts " (Lycock), this race of monkeys improved its stock. And twenty thousand years ago, or ENTERPRISE IN APES AND MISSING LINKS 125 one hundred thousand years ago, or a thousand million years ago — it is immaterial which — there came a time when one of this improved stock of monkeys kept thinking that he would like to be- come, not a man, but a something like a man — a sort of black animal that could walk like a man, a " pithecanthropus erectus " (Haeckel), having the form but not the intellect of a man. This enterprising monkey thus got the start of other monkeys as his ancestor, the tadpole, got the start of all other tadpoles. He kept thinking and desiring, and, as " desire to see can produce an eye, and desire to walk can produce a leg " (Darwin), the hour for the transmutation came. It was an hour of tremendous importance and pos- sibilities to his monkeyship, and, for that matter, of magnificent import to humanity. It was an hour when all his faculties, powers, and nervous energies were strained to their utmost tension, and something cracked, on the principle, perhaps, of the cracking of the too small-sized shell of the crab, and in that rapturous and rupturous evolu- tion the fellow jumped ; the chasm was cleared ; he got beyond his species, and found himself, not exactly in the human family, but a something " between the Simiidae and the Hominidae " (Pro- fessor Marsh's view). Now bear in mind that, though there have been plenty of monkeys in monkey lands, — India, 126 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Malay Archipelago, Africa, and South America, — and though they have been transported to all other lands, and have had the best of environ- ments and inducements, yet that monkey was not only the first one that ever made such a jump, but, what is still more astounding, no other one, from that day to this, ever has been known to jump at all, except from one tree to another. So far as we can judge, others have had just the same chance, but the trouble and surprise are that they never thought to avail themselves of it ; and, what makes it worse for naturalism is that the thing or link into which that enterprising monkey jumped is itself now lost. That connecting link, including his female companion and all his de- scendants, is gone. None of them can be found anywhere on the face of the globe, or anywhere under the face of the globe, or anywhere in the sea. There is not a tombstone, skull, shin-bone, or toe-nail left of the whole race ; and there is nothing in the history of this world that has been hunted for by scientific men as has that thing, or some part of that thing, into which the monkey jumped. The ablest scientists in all countries have been untiring in their efforts to find it ; fortunes have been expended to find it ; lives have been sacrificed to find it. But be not discouraged or impatient, O mortals ! That thing that the mon- key became when he jumped, and from which man ENTERPRISE IN APES AND MISSING LINKS 127 descended, "possibly," "perhaps," "somewhere," " sometime " may be found. Professor Schmidt puts the case modestly : " What future times may, perhaps, discover are intermediate forms which go back to the common point of derivation of the present apes and of man." More than once the scientist, in his explora- tions, has thought that he has found this missing progenitor of the human family. The Neander- thal skull discovered in 1857 in a valley between Elberfeld and Dusseldorf, Prussia, for a time was supposed to settle this vexed question. But later Professor Owen, Dr. Hamy de Quatrefages, Dr. Pfaff, and Professor Dorsontook an opposite view ; and the opinion may be said now to be established that this famous skull is unquestionably human, though a little abnormal. Says Dr. Taylor, in his book entitled " The Aryans," " Its precise age is doubtful, and it would be entirely unsafe to re- gard it as a type of a special race, since its char- acteristics have been occasionally reproduced in modern times." In 1 89 1 the scientific world again was in a flut- ter of excitement over the discovery of some curi- ous fossils near Trinil in central Java. We wish the place were nearer home. These remains were carefully examined by Von Eng. Dubois, and pro- nounced to be unquestionably those of Mr. Pithe- canthropus Erectus, of whom for a long time 128 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? naturalists have been in diligent search. But Professor Dana and others tell us to move cau- tiously ; that at present a judgment would be pre- mature ; for the evidence as yet is not at all con- vincing or satisfactory. Alas! we have reasons for fearing that this ancestor of ours is not an ancestor at all, but only another naturalistic hum- bug. Nevertheless we will keep on hoping. In the meantime we continue our hypothetical biographic sketch of this missing link, this Simi- idae-Hominidae-go-between, this most important personage of antiquity prior to the coming of man. Soon after his elevation to the throne of this world he — we mean Pithecanthropus Erectus — began to feel his lonesomeness, as his other distin- guished ancestors had done. He was impressed by the " courtships of moths and butterflies " going on about him, that there was something for him better than loneliness. The study of nature's courtships was only an aggravation. At length the desire came to him that he would like to be- come two. Whereupon an " ineffable cleavage " followed, and Mr. Pithecanthropus Erectus be- came two, and Mrs. Pithecanthropus Erectus, his helpmeet, stood at his side. As there was no other one in the way, the courtship was brief, the espousal was consummated, and this new and noble family of missing links began its career and peopled that part of the earth — where they were ( ?). They ENTERPRISE IN APES AND MISSING LINKS 129 lived on in this condition twelve million years or thereabouts, male and female, marrying and giving in marriage, improving the stock by natural selec- tion and by the survival of the fittest through each succeeding generation. And any one who, through conceit or anything else, refuses to have Mr. and Mrs. Pithecanthropus Erectus appear on his family coat of arms does not appreciate the worthy character of his ancestry. In process of time one of the finest types of this lost family began to think he would like to become a man, be endowed with reason, have a soul, be able to worship God or to curse things, as occasion might require. These ideas made his whole being quiver with desire and expectation. The date of these emotions is variously estimated. It was either nine million years ago (Dr. Thomas Sterry Hunt, President of the Bri.ish Anthropo- logical Society), or five hundred thousand years ago (Dr. A. R. Wallace), or from two hundred to three hundred thousand years ago (Professor to Fahlrott), or one hundred thousand years ago (Dr. Joseph Beete Jukes, F.R.S.), or twenty thousand years ago (Dr. Chevalier Bunsen), or six or eight thousand years ago (Professor Alex- ander Winchell). We sincerely thank the scien- tists who have given us these generous time lati- tudes. But we were speaking of the mission of the 130 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? " link," which to us is of far greater importance than the time of the advent. As we were saying, already his eye was on the other side of the chasm. If he could but leap it he would become a man! What destinies hung on the decisions of that hour! What, in comparison, were the famous delibera- tions of Caesar on the shores of the Rubicon? There he stood — not Csesar, but Pithecanthropus Erectus. He drew a long breath. Every mus- cle and nerve was taxed to its utmost. He made a tremendous bound, and, if we may believe it, and will allow a mixed figure in harmony with the scientific liberties of our day, Mr. Pithecanthropus Erectus just by the skin of his teeth caught his foot on the other side of the chasm and — was a man; had a soul; could worship and swear. Mag- nificent! Ring the bells! But the next moment muffle and toll them. He, Mr. Pithecanthropus Erectus, looked back over the chasm. His own family, wife and children, and all the rest of his race, attempting to follow him, went down, as we have said, into the bottom of the Indian Ocean, or into some cave in Abyssinia, or, as Professor Marsh thinks, into the later Tertiary of Africa. And Pithecanthropus Erectus himself would have gone with the rest but for his complete metamor- phosis from missing link to manhood. The law of selection and of election and of the survival of the fittest had achieved, however, its most splendid ENTERPRISE IN APES AND MISSING LINKS 131 conquest; and our readers should bear in mind that these survivals and these leaps and metamor- phoses are not unscientific, at least if we may fol- low so eminent an authority as Professor Lyell. In his "Antiquity of Man," as quoted and approved by Professor Mozley in his " Bampton Lectures," he says : " If, in conformity with the theory of progres- sion, we believe mankind to have risen slowly from a rude and humble starting-point, such leaps [in intelligence] may have successively introduced not only higher and higher forms and grades of intelligence, but, at a much remoter period, may have cleared at one bound the space which sepa- rated the highest stage of the unprogressive in- telligence of the inferior animals from the first and lowest form of improvable reason manifested by man." As would be expected, this first man was lone- some. He traversed hill and dale, but there was no companion for him. More than once he longed for the fleshpots from which he and his ancestors had eaten on the other side of the gulf; unless perchance the leap that was made had "cut asun- der the identity of the being which preceded it and the being which succeeded it " (Professor Mozley). But one day this first man paused. His desire for a companion and helpmeet became desperate. 132 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? He did the only thing that scientifically could be done; he shook himself. Thereupon there was an " ineffable cleavage," and he became male and female, and in this way the human race began its magnificent and its infamous career. Now such we believe to be as rational a state- ment of the theory of human evolution, when shorn of its stilted and scholastic nomenclature, as skeptical scientists, or as good friends of religion, such as Professors Lange and Drummond, who have renounced the literal Bible account of crea- tion for a seminaturalistic one, are able to make. Sooner or later this revised theology, we are sure, will turn out to be not the slightest relief from the difficulties these men seek to evade, but will prove a trap for the unwary, and, if anything, an easier path to doubt and skepticism than is the story as told in Genesis unadorned by exegetical ingenuity. CHAPTER VII Beginnings, Periods, Mosaic Days, Types i. scientific account of the beginning of things Thus far we have been presenting objections to various naturalistic methods proposed for bring- ing man and woman upon this earth ; but the pa- rading of objections is only one part of the critic's business, and will be tolerated only for a time. Hence we ought to go no further in the path of destructive criticism without at least suggesting some world-creating and world-peopling methods or schemes in place of those we have rejected. It may not be good policy to disclose one's purpose early in a discussion, especially if the purpose is likely to arouse antagonism, but it is honest. And an open as well as a secretive policy has its advantages and compensations. The hypothesis we offer and attempt to defend is this : the story of creation as recorded in the first and second chapters of Genesis is a simple, i33 134 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? straightforward narrative of the facts as they actually occurred. We may remark in passing that we have less hesitation in adopting this hy- pothesis on account of the utter absence of evi- dence that life came upon this earth by any pro- cess known to naturalism or possible to it. But we cannot proceed in the discussion with- out first clearing the way, and even then we must advance to the main question by what is known as the method of gradual approach. There are three propositions that we presume / will be accepted by nearly all our readers : first, for a very long time the earth was fitting for human abode ; second, in the earth's history there have been six very clearly marked geologi- cal eras ; third, in the order of creation there is striking agreement between the geological periods and the six so-called " days of Moses." As to the first proposition, that the earth was a long time in fitting for human abode, there is no ground for controversy. In support of the second proposition Professors Dana and Hitchcock, Mr. Hugh Miller, Chancel- lor Dawson, Dr. Phin, and others have presented such an array of evidence showing the great lines of cleavage in the earth's history that it would be folly to enter into any dispute with them even if one were so disposed. We may be allowed, however, to refresh the minds of our BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 135 readers with certain data bearing on this particu- lar phase of the subject Starting with one of the most pronounced philosophical postulates of modern times, that " in material things there can be no effect without an adequate cause," and confining the discussion to the disclosures of astronomical science, geological history, and the chemistry of the universe, also adopting in the main the hypothesis of Laplace, which at present, at least with scientific men, is in pretty general favor, we are led directly to the inference, if not to the indisputable conclusion, that at some point in eternity an adequate First Cause filled the then existing void, or so much of it as is now occupied by the physical universe, with intensely illuminated and highly rarefied " star fire " or " star stuff." The appearance of this star fire, we still further infer, must have been instan- taneous, for all fundamental and chemical changes make no delay, but in their movements are as the twinkling of an eye. After this original creative act there was, as has been supposed, a period during which the star stuff condensed, forming rings; then the rings were broken into distinct masses of fire, that sub- sequently took on the globe shape, constituting the star universe. At that time the earth and the moon became well-defined suns, rolling through space, giving out light and heat as does the sun 136 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? which now lights and warms our planetary system. The length of the period during which light stuff was created and condensed into rings, and then into globes of fire, is past all comprehension. According to the earlier estimates of Sir William Thomson, it could not have been fewer than three hundred million years. As this first period approached its close or evening, the earth fires burned less intensely. Later the flames entirely ceased to leap from the earth's surface; they smoldered; then a solid crust began to form, and the surrounding gases condensed, forming water and acids, which were precipitated upon the earth, hastening its cooling and also corroding and dissolving much of its sur- face materials. And when the surface fires were completely out and when the crust had fully formed, though still hot enough to throw the de- scending waters back in the form of steam, and while these masses of steam and clouds were creeping over the sky, a great astronomical night of wild thunder-storms shut down upon the newly formed earth. "An overwhelming pall of clouds," says a popular lecturer, " covered the earth at this period, which at length fell in raindrops, and these, exploding on their encounter in mid-air with the vapors rising from the earth, produced a universal tempest with thunder and lightning, a tempest that lasted through a whole geological BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 137 period." The planet Jupiter, and probably the other large exterior planets, are now passing through a similar stormy period. How long this pall hung over the earth we have no reliable means of knowing. We may reason- ably conjecture, however, that its duration ex- tended through years numbered by millions. Like every other night, this one was greeted by a dawnlight, at least by a season of changed geological conditions, formations, and develop- ments. Geological science positively reports that the primitive crust of the earth was broken up, thereby disclosing those fires which had been con- cealed through the previous night. The earth, from one pole to the other and round its entire surface, was torn by earthquakes and was lighted up in every direction by volcanic fires. Huge masses of the primitive crust rocks were piled up in folds and then repeatedly were sunk into seas of liquid fire. At that time there must have been a play of physical forces so terrific and titanic that the most fertile imagination hardly can picture it. During the closing hours of that preparatory period the broken crust of the earth formed another covering for the suppressed fires. Mountain- ranges, not lofty, but extensive, made their ap- pearance and a new series of rocks was formed. Of the length of this period all judgments are conjectural. Professor Le Conte, basing his esti- 138 EVOLUTIOU OR CREATION > mate on the time needed to produce the forty or fifty thousand feet in thickness of the rocks then formed, concludes that its duration was greater than the entire subsequent history of the earth. If this is the case, then, according to the estimates of Sir William Thomson, the length of that vol- canic era was not less than one hundred million years. Such was the beginning of things. II. CLASSIFICATION OF GEOLOGICAL PERIODS We must not take time to enumerate specifi- cally the remaining geological periods, though the temptation to do so is an inviting one. We therefore take the shorter path, pointing out the essential agreement among scientific men as to the number of geological periods. Professor Marsh gives the following classifi- cation: Planetic, Archaic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Caenozoic, and, sixth, the Psychozoic. Professor Sanborn Tenney, in his treatise on geology, enu- merates the following divisions : Azoic, Paleozoic, Secondary, Tertiary, and modern or Quaternary. If we add the Planetic, of which astronomy and not geology treats, there are found the same di- visions as are given by Professor Marsh. In Professor Le Conte's classification we have the Eozoic, age of vertebrates, age of fishes, age of acrogens, age of reptiles, and, sixth, age of BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 139 mammals. Professor Dana gives the same divi- sions, with a change of names in one or two in- stances : Azoic, age of mollusks, age of fishes, age of coal, age of reptiles, and, sixth, age of mammals. Dr. Phin, in his work entitled " The Chemical History of the Six Days of Creation," gives the following classification : the calling into activity of the physical forces, arrangement of the heavenly bodies, division of the land and water and creation of plants, ordaining of the sun and moon as governors of day and night, creation of fishes, reptiles, and birds, and, sixth, creation of large mammals and man. The divisions as enu- merated by Dr. A. R. Wallace are : age of fishes, age of amphibia, age of reptiles, age of birds, and, fifth, age of mammalia. Adding the Azoic, or the age of no life, we have essentially the same classi- fication as that of the authorities just quoted. Now, while there is no agreement among scholars as to the duration of specific eons, still there is no intelligent dissent from the opinion that geological time, not to mention astronomical, extends through millions of years, and that during those eras there have been, as we have seen, re- peated and sudden introductions of new species of plants and animals in large numbers and over vast areas of the earth's surface ; nor is there any dissent from the statements that these creations have been alternately followed by the extinction 140 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? of these same plants and animals ; that there have been six very well-defined geological eras, includ- ing the preparatory or Planetic, and that it was during the last era, and late in it, that man and woman appeared for the first time upon the earth. III. BIBLE ACCOUNT AND MOSAIC DAYS Whatever view is taken of the Bible story of creation, it generally is conceded that it is self- consistent, unique in many respects, and in all respects is striking and beautiful. But, more than this, there is found in it such remarkable agreement with scientific facts that several noted writers who are well qualified to speak on the subject have called attention to this harmony with no inconsiderable emphasis. Says Dr. Dawson, who has made a protracted and critical study of these problems : " The order of creation as stated in Genesis is faultless in the light of modern science, and many of its details present the most remarkable agreement with the results of sciences born only in our own day." Professor Dana speaks thus of this same Mo- saic account : " The first thought that strikes the scientific reader is the evidence of divinity, not merely in the first verse of the record and the successive fiats, but in the whole order of creation. There is so much that the most recent readings BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 141 of science have for the first time explained that the idea of man as the author becomes utterly incomprehensible. By proving the record true, science pronounces it divine ; for who could have correctly narrated the secrets of eternity but God himself?" Elsewhere Professor Dana has happily put his thought thus : " The grand old Book of God still stands, and this old earth the more its leaves are turned and pondered, the more will it sustain and illustrate the sacred Word." Hugh Miller, the distinguished Scotch geologist, speaking of the revelations of the Bible and their anticipations of the latest discoveries of science, says : " The geological prophecies of the Bible, though they might have been read, could not be understood till the fullness of the time had come. And it is only as the fullness of the time comes, in the brighter light of increasing scientific know- ledge, that these grand old oracles of the Bible, so apparently simple, but so marvelous, pregnant with meaning, stand forth, at once cleared of all erroneous human glosses and vindicated as the inspired testimonies of Jehovah." With Dawson, Dana, and Miller also agree Baron Humboldt, Baron Cuvier, Dr. Johann H. Kartz, Donald McDonald, Taylor Lewis, Profes- sors Benjamin Silliman, Benjamin Pierce, Arnold Henry Guyot, and many other scientific men, 142 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? together with such Bible scholars as Professor Philip Schaff, Dr. John P. Lange, Dr. John Jame- son, and President James McCosh. This array of authorities who find a harmony between the Bible and scientific accounts of creation ought to inspire confidence, as it would seem, in the heart of any timid friend of Bible revelation. But unfortunately there is this drawback, that the most of the authorities just cited insist that the Mosaic account and that of science not only are harmonious, but identical, and Moses therefore is represented as describing geological periods and not ordinary days. Hence the perplexity con- fronting the Bible student may be put briefly in this form : if the word translated " day " in the first and second chapters of Genesis is taken to mean a period extending through many millions of years, then, while an agreement between the scientific and Bible accounts is secured, it is done, as will appear presently, at considerable expense ; for with this interpretation the Bible account must be regarded not as literal, but as a pictorial or symbolical representation of creation. This view, however, as we have said, is a perilous one and is in conflict with the theory of interpretation we have promised to defend. On the other hand, if the word translated " day " means simply an ordinary day, then apparently the Bible and science are in an irreconcilable con- BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 143 flict, for the successive creations' enumerated by science, as we have seen, extend through at least five hundred million if not a thousand million years instead of through a period embraced in a single ordinary week of days. Here, therefore, is a dilemma, and we can go no further without making a choice of one or the other of these ap- parent difficulties. In harmony with the position already taken, whatever the perils or consequences may be, we reject at the outset the poetic or symbolic, and adopt the literal interpretation in all its particulars. And we may add that, except to escape em- barrassment or to support some favorite theory, no one reading the Bible account would think of any periods other than those of literal sun-divided days bounded by mornings and evenings ; and therefore an interpretation that makes the day one of indefinite length is open to severe criticism. Professor Huxley puts the case of the long- period theory with delicate sarcasm when he says, " A person who is not a Hebrew scholar can only stand aside and admire the marvelous flexibility of a language which admits of such diverse inter- pretations as to allow the six periods of Genesis to be as long or short as convenience requires." While the Hebrew word yom, which in its most primitive sense means heat or temperature, some- times is used to denote an indefinite period, as in 144 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? chapter two, verse four, of Genesis, yet never is it so used when limited by the words a-rav (" even- ing ") and ba-kar (" morning "). And it should be borne in mind that this, which seems to be the most natural interpretation, is supported by some of the ablest and most criti- cal Hebrew scholars of modern as well as ancient date. Says Dr. James S. Baumgarten, "The word ' day,' the Hebrew yom, when applied to intervals of time is primarily day, and not period ; and here [in Genesis] this word is used for the first time." Says Dr. Samuel H. Turner, in his " Commen- tary on Genesis," " It is evident that all subse- quent sacred writers who take notice of the crea- tion as a work of six days do invariably assume a literal sense of the word ' day.' ' Professor Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmuller contends also that " the Mosaic account cannot possibly be made to mean other than days of twenty-four hours' length." The learned and eminent Hebraist, Kalisch, says, " It is philologically impossible to under- stand this word ' day ' in any other sense than as a period of twenty-four hours." Says Dr. J. G. Murphy, professor of Hebrew in Assemblys College, Belfast, Ireland, who is one of the best of commentators on the Penta- teuch, " The days of this creation described by BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 145 Moses are natural days of twenty-four hours each; and we should not depart from the ordi- nary meaning of the word without a sufficient warrant, either in the text of Scripture or in the law of nature. But we have not yet found any such warrant. Only necessity can force us to such an expedient. But the Scriptures, by intro- ducing ' morning and evening,' warrant us in re- taining the common meaning of the word." Says Professor Hedge, in his " Primeval World," " There is no reason to doubt that the text means literal days of twenty-four hours." Calwer, Hagenbach, Keil, and Davidson main- tain the same interpretation. Now, in view of the opinions of these eminent and scholarly authori- ties, all must feel that the theory which regards the days spoken of in the Bible account as periods of indefinite length is a makeshift, and is beset with the gravest exegetical difficulties, and that we cannot adopt it without doing violence to some of the most imperative rules of interpretation and without rejecting some of the best established laws governing a working hypothesis. IV. LAW OF TYPES In explanation of the foregoing difficulties the hypothesis we submit is this : the periods of geol- ogy and the days of Moses are not identical, but 146 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? the creations of the one are typical or prophetic of the creations of the other. The two questions of importance that this hy- pothesis suggests are these: First, do type and antitype have a prominent place in the affairs of the universe? Second, is the creative work said by Moses to have been done in six ordinary days possible and reasonable? In answer to the first question there need be no hesitation in saying that type and antitype, prophecy and fulfilment, are of the most frequent occurrence in the process of world-building, and play a very prominent part in all theories of evo- lution. In the field of pure physics we discover, for instance, that the fins of fishes, and the wings and the feet of birds, and the fore and hind feet of brutes, created before man, are now recognized as typical and prophetic of the arms and feet of man. A few years ago such scientists as Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, and Haeckel made a great stir over the fact that before reaching the human form man in the embryonic state passes through the different stages of worm, fish, reptile, and quad- ruped. These distinguished scientists claimed that this fact is unanswerable evidence that the human race has been evolved from these lower orders — the worm, fish, reptile, and quadruped. BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 147 But, instead of jumping to such a conclusion, had these scientists told us that this parallelism existing between the embryonic forms of higher and the adult forms of lower organisms, which is claimed to be one of the most remarkable of modern discoveries, is simply an illustration of a well-nigh universal law, that of type and antitype, of prophecy and fulfilment, they would have been wise and have had abundant support for their state- ment. As it has turned out, however, the conclu- sions reached are entirely destitute of foundation. Professor Cope, in some of his recent announce- ments, has declared that man has in his blood the traits of the apes, the lemurs, the pseudo-lemurs, the lowest types of hoofed animals, the opossums, the flesh-eating reptiles, the primitive salaman- ders, and, lastly, of fishes too remote to be clas- sified. Our reply is that the professor has not a single fact on which to base these claims except the ex- istence of this law of type and antitype. Likewise we have been told that in the jelly- fish, which is " a mass of pulp lazily swimming through the water," are lying dormant the defi- nite structure of the horse and all the pronounced functions of the lion, and that in time the tentacles of that mass of pulp will develop into the pectoral fin of the fish, then into the fore limb of the mam- mal, and then into the arm of a man. 148 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Now, while these lower forms of life obviously are suggestive and prophetic or, better, are types or patterns according to which higher and more elaborate and more perfect organisms are created, yet there is not a ghost of evidence that from them there ever has been or ever can be any- thing approaching evolution. Again, when, with equal confidence, natural- ists assure us that the earliest eye is a colored speck in the worm, that it passes through vari- ous changes, becoming a dot of nerve-matter in the muscle, and then the rods of the insect, and, lastly, the full-formed eye of a horse or a man, they merely are speculating. In their zeal for evolution they have been falsely presuming all the while that these recurring types are different stages of development, when in reality they are no such thing at all ; these naturalists have been mis- taking a prophecy and its fulfilment for evolution. In this connection one other of the groundless assumptions of naturalism deserves notice and criticism. It is the claim that the bones in the hinder part of the body of the boa-constrictor and certain superfluous bones in the body of the whale are remains of lost hind legs and that their presence is proof of the law of evolution. But as a matter of fact the evidence is a hundredfold stronger, indeed, is overwhelming, that the boa- constrictor always has been a boa-constrictor and BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 149 nothing else, and that the whale always has been a whale and nothing except a whale. And, further, if what these men say is true, the facts they present would be indicative not of de- velopment or elaboration, but of degeneracy, for an animal having legs is higher in the scale of creation than one not having legs ; and the whale not having teeth which is of later date than the one having teeth is a degenerate progeny of its ancestors ; and the whale, if a descendant of the polar bear, as Mr. Darwin once suggested, is an additional illustration of degeneration. Now if naturalists had said that in the lower order of animals and in the unused bones of some of the higher animals we see a prophecy of the later creations, including man, the highest of all, they would have been correct and would have added something of interest and value to the world's stock of knowledge. But as matters now stand these earlier inferences, or rather assump- tions, for that is what they are, in which Mr. Darwin, Professors Huxley and Haeckel, and many others indulge, shortly must be consigned to a place among the amusing and abandoned curiosities of speculative skeptical science. A century hence people possibly will be left to won- der whether these men really were in earnest, or were sporting with the credulity of their innocent and easily duped admirers. 150 EVOLUTION OK CREATION? Perhaps we ought not to pass this point with- out adding that, while one distinct type, through evolution or degeneration, never passes into an- other, yet the individual type is under a very efficient and far-reaching law of evolution or im- provement. The physical universe, for instance, began in fire mist and developed into suns, planets, satellites, and habitable worlds ; but all the while it was the evolution of a physical universe, and even on naturalistic grounds could not have been anything else. The same can be said of the earth, and of each plant and animal on its surface, and of every human being. In a word, the individual of any class or order may be very greatly, even marvelously, developed, or may pass into a state of decay ; yet the genus in each order is immu- table. And on this view, we may suggest, are based some hopeful, almost inspiring views of human destiny that naturalism carelessly has over- looked. That is, while in matter itself there is no evidence of " a promise and potency " of all things that are taking place on earth or of the evolution of one thing into another, yet in the human constitution, and on the ground of the evolution of the individual, there are the promise and potency of far greater and grander things for each human being than are realized in this pres- ent life. Immortality is the complement of mor- tality : "This mortal must put on immortality." BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 151 In other words, the life with which man starts in this world is the type and prophecy of a future and inconceivably magnificent life, and in some respects the present life is inexplicable on any other supposition. The more one ponders the things of the universe, the more one must be con- vinced that from the beginning of the creation there has been a plan, outcroppings of which everywhere are visible, and toward the realiza- tion of that plan the Eternal patiently and con- stantly has been working. And when worlds shall end and the physical universe shall evolve into the new conditions awaiting it, when the fittest, who are sure to be the survivors, are in- troduced into the ideal existence that the Scrip- tures reveal and that naturalism in its better mo- ments dreams of, and when those royal survivors are placed on the thrones of the universe, in no fanciful, but in the profoundest sense imaginable, then the plan that is hinted at in the lowest forms of life will reach its consummation, and the Eter- nal will be satisfied, and the survivors who wake in that perfected state also shall be satisfied. Returning from this brief digression, we note, what most of our readers well know, that the most rational, or rather the only rational, view as to the typical or prophetic correspondence be- tween the earlier and later, the lower and higher forms of life, has been advocated by not a few 152 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? scientists and philosophers whose reputation for sound and careful thinking cannot be questioned. Says Professor Mivart, in the conclusion of his article entitled " Likenesses, or Philosophical Anat- omy," " The teaching of what we believe to be a true philosophy is that the types shadowed forth by material existences are copies of divine origi- nals, and correspond to prototypal ideas in God." President McCosh, in a treatise entitled " The Development Hypothesis," illustrates the same view thus : " We see branchings in the old club- mosses and the seaweeds in anticipation of the more perfect ramifications in the tree. We notice flowers radiating like the shellfish, which come at a later date. Insects have wings, prophetical of the better wings of the birds. In the reptilian age we have monsters standing upright and fore- telling the erect form of man." Professor Owen expresses the same thought thus : " Man has had all his parts and organs sketched out in anticipation in the inferior ani- mals." Professor Agassiz, speaking of animal types, says: " They appear now as a prophecy in those earlier times of an order of things not possible with the earlier combinations then prevailing in the animal kingdom, but exhibiting in a later period in a striking manner the antecedent con- sideration of every stage in the gradation of ani- BEGINNINGS, PERIODS, MOSAIC DAYS, TYPES 153 mals." He then carries this general thought a step further, showing that types and prophecies are found in minerals. " The crystal embedded in the rock," he says, " by the little fibers and threads that go out from it anticipates the com- ing vegetable." "And vegetation," says Bishop Erastus Haven, " when it reaches perfection pre- typifies the coming animal, and the animal in its instincts pretypifies the coming reason of man." This method in nature is very strikingly illus- trated by discoveries recently made through the science of vegetable pathology. Certain plants are found to digest food much as the human stom- ach does, and can digest some things that man cannot. We are not, therefore, to say that man is "a superbly evolved vegetable," but simply that digestion in the plant is a type of digestion in man. Indeed, the law seems universal that " The swan on still Mary's lake Floats double, swan and shadow." In calling attention to this law of type and prophecy we have had in mind, as the reader will perceive, a twofold object: first, to point out an error in the reasoning and conclusions of the evo- lutionist; second, to suggest that in the creation of the universe we ought to find conformity to this law of types ; and, if w r e mistake not, it will require only a few moments in another chapter 154 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? to show that this conformity beyond any reason- able question exists. And, from what has been shown, it also must be apparent that if the six vast geological epochs which science describes are types and prophecies of the six ordinary days of which Moses writes, a thousand years being as one day and one day as a thousand years, then we shall not have to resort to forced methods of interpretation, but easily can solve a score of sci- entific and exegetical difficulties that hitherto have been paraded as fatal to the credibility of the sacred Scriptures. CHAPTER VIII The Ice Age and the Mosaic Week i. the ice age of geology It is conceded by all who have given attention to these subjects that one of the most noteworthy periods of the earth's history is the ice age. Some of the reasons for this are, that it occurred immediately preceding the coming of man, was remarkably destructive, and was attended by very great geological changes. As to the date of the ice age there has been a striking diversity of opinion. But since, in an- other connection, we are to speak more at length of this conflict of authorities on this and a kindred subject, we now call attention merely to what is especially worthy of note, namely, the growing tendency among all scientific men to bring the ice age comparatively near to modern times. The recessions of the falls of Niagara, the de- posits of the Mississippi, the origin of the Great Lakes of America, and other phenomena found *55 156 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? in the lake region and elsewhere throughout North America, together with the fossil deposits of Europe and the delta of the Nile, have been made to contribute to our knowledge of these matters ; and they all point in the same direction, and according to the most recent estimates give not over ten thousand years since the close of the ice period, though in some parts of our country, especially among the Sierras, the great mass of ice did not disappear until comparatively a very recent date, even while Europe was settling with its earlier historic inhabitants. As to the condition of the earth during the reign of ice there is among geologists very gen- eral agreement. During the glacial period in North America there is no question that the region between Maine and the St. Lawrence River was at least sixty five hundred feet under ice; that in the interior of the New England States the ice lay from two to ten thousand feet in thickness. Northern New England, New York, the region of the Great Lakes, and the entire archaean region of Canada were covered with ice having a thickness of from five to ten or twelve thousand feet. After the ice began to thaw, owing to immense ice gorges, water filled with ice, where Pittsburg now stands, was three hundred feet in depth. Over the site on which is built the city of Cincinnati there were six hun- THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 157 dred feet of glacial ice-water. In Red River County there is a territory called Lake Agassiz, very fertile and under cultivation, where during the glacial era there was an ice-floe covering more than one hundred and ten thousand square miles. The ice-sheet was a thousand feet deep over Salt Lake, and completely mantled Nevada. The Yosemite Valley and the Lake Tahoe re- gion likewise were filled with glacial ice. Ice — a reign of ice — in North America extended from the north pole, with the exception, strange to say, of parts of Alaska, southward nearly to where is now the city of Washington, west to the city of St. Louis, and on in an irregular line to southern California. During the winter of 1894-95 the cold in the United States was a little intenser than usual, though lasting only a few days ; but the results in some respects were disastrous. In large num- bers the tamer birds were found dead in several of the Southern States. In Florida shade-trees were killed, including the orange-palm and mag- nolia, and orange groves were frozen to the roots. Now, if we can imagine that degree of cold to be intensified by many degrees and continued year after year, summer and winter, for a hundred thousand or more years, without a ray of sunlight for a part of the time, and with the line of per- petual frost running, in all probability, along the 158 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? shores of the Gulf of Mexico, we can have some idea of the North American continent during the reign of ice. The picture painted by Professor Winchell is vivid and doubtless accurate : " The accumulated cold of years binds all the northern latitudes in indissoluble bonds of ice. The northern blast bears frost along the vales which had never felt its power. The limpid streams grow torpid, and then rest in a long hibernal sleep. The verdure of forest and plain, touched by the first breath of winter, shrinks away. " The ponderous tread of the mastodon turns from the withered meadows to the frozen jungle, and the shivering tapir yields himself a victim to the strange rigors of the climate. Glaciers brood over all the land, and alpine desolation reigns without a rival over half the continent." In South America the conditions were similar; the ice-sheet, in some places of immense thick- ness, extended from the south pole as far north as the thirty-seventh degree of south latitude. Turning attention to Europe, it is discovered that the British Isles, all northwestern Europe, all northern and southern Asia, were under fields of ice, which at the culmination of the glacial period extended as far south as the fiftieth degree. As it was with Alaska, so one part of northern Sibe- THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 159 ria, the low lands, owing perhaps to the internal heat of the earth, appears to have been compara- tively free from ice. In Norway and Sweden the indications are that the ice-sheet was from seven to ten thousand feet in thickness. The Australian alps were likewise filled with ice and glaciers. As the reader very well knows, these various conclusions are reached by the study of water- courses, by marks on hill and mountain sides made by icebergs loaded with their tonnage of rocks and gravel, by terraces of sand, gravel, and granite pebbles, and by boulders that were borne away from the hills in the north and brought down by glacial streams and deposited extensively over the more temperate latitudes. During the progress of the glacial period and on to its culmination many animals living in the northern latitudes retreated southward. But others, especially those that had no migratory instincts, remained north, and during the early years of the ice age perished from cold and hun- ger. Some of the larger species have been found within a few years in the north of Europe, where they were when overtaken ten thousand years ago by the cold waves that destroyed them, the food still in the stomach, and the flesh, having remained frozen, in such condition as readily to be eaten by dogs. 160 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Other animals that could better retreat before the advancing line of frost met, however, impas- sable barriers. In America they were confronted by the Gulf of Mexico. Their escape westward after reaching the gulf was intercepted by the Mississippi River, preventing such animals as could not cross the river from taking refuge on the table-lands of Mexico and in the tropical cli- mate of Central America, where they could have survived a while longer. In Europe the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, and the Caspian Sea stood in the way of retreat. In Asia migratory animals went a little farther south, but their journey to the equatorial regions was cut off by the mountain-ranges running east and west, likewise by the great Asiatic rivers that flow in the same direction. Especially is this true of such mountains as the Altai, the Par- opamisan, the Himalaya, and the Banyan Kara ranges, and of such rivers as the Indus, the Ganges, the Hoang, and the Yang-tse-Kiang. It will be a matter of surprise if the northern shores of these seas and rivers and the northern slopes of the mountains of Asia do not prove rich fields for the fossil botanist and paleontologist. It was at that time, as geologists now generally agree, that much of the earlier cave bone rubbish was accumulating. The picture drawn by Profes- THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 161 sor Le Conte is doubtless true of what was then taking place : " Animals of all sizes and kinds are supposed to have huddled together in those caves, forgetting their mutual hostility in the sense of a common danger, and perished miserably together there." Professor Dana, in describing this era, says it " was one of the most destructive and sweeping catastrophic epochs in the earth's his- tory." It is well known that the mammals of the Ter- tiary era are all extinct; that they suffered their great, at least their final, extinction during the ice and drift eras no one can doubt. Professor Le Conte states the case strongly in saying that "the mammalian fauna of the Quater- nary era was almost wholly peculiar, differing both from the Tertiary, which preceded, and from the present, which followed it." The appearance and disappearance of the so- called "true horse" affords an interesting and forcible illustration. He first appears in the Upper Pliocene, and that was considerably earlier than the reign of ice. He then freely and in great numbers roamed over North and South America ; but for some reason he became extinct, so much so that not one was to be found in either North or South America when this continent was dis- covered by Europeans. Some destructive agency or agencies, at a time between the Upper Pliocene 162 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? and the historic human period, exterminated the prehistoric American horse; and at present no valid objection can be offered to the theory that it was the glacial era that wrought this complete extinction.* The story of smaller animals and insects is like- wise full of interest. Professor Scudder has shown that in North America the fossil coleopter- ous insects (beetles) of deposits laid down in the glacial era are very nearly all of extinct species. More noticeable still is the fate of the early land- snail. The preglacial species are not the same as those now existing, and the ice age marks their disappearance. The rarity, if not entire absence, of bird fossils belonging to this same era likewise is suggestive. The bird has migratory instincts, also the means of escape, and in this regard has an advantage over wingless mammals. The bird by keeping in the air and measurably in advance of the cold waves ought to have gained the milder latitudes. If bird fossils laid down during the ice and drift eras are to be found in considerable quantities anywhere, it probably will be among the tropics. Taking all these facts into account, it must be * It is not impossible or improbable that remains of the true horse may be found among the fossils of the second elephantine age, the rough-stone age of geology ; if so, his second extinction can be accounted for. (See pp. 183, etc.) THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 163 apparent that if, amid the perils of those glacial times, a few species of animals, as some natural- ists have claimed, survived, they must have had a difficult struggle for existence. Cautious ge- ologists confess, however, that the number of these supposed survivors by no means is estab- lished, and from the nature of the case must have been extremely limited. Passing to the vegetable kingdom, we discover that it suffered scarcely less from the freeze-out than did the animal. The plant cannot migrate on short notice; in this respect the animal has the advantage ; but, on the other hand, the seed of the plant and its root have a vitality that give it an advantage over the animal. Still the disas- trous effects of the reign of ice on plant life are unmistakable. Professor John S. Newbury, who has been honored with a membership in nearly all the learned societies of our country and also in many foreign ones, clearly showed in his address before the Torrey Botanical Club of New York that the number of species before the arctic irruption was much greater than now, and that this destruction of plant life occurred at the time of the ice age. As the ice moved south plants were driven from temperate atmospheres to warmer ones, but in many places met water and land barriers they could not pass, and consequently became extinct. 164 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? A few on the American continent could go far- ther south than the same kinds in Europe ; hence there was a possible chance for their preservation and return when the ice receded. Fossil remains show that the same species existed at one and the same time in Japan and China, in Europe and America. None of them, however, are now native in Europe and only a very few in America. And it is noteworthy, as Professor Newbury shows, that no new species of flora " have ap- peared on the surface of the earth since the ap- pearance of those that followed the great ice era," and in regard to the introduction of new classes of plants in geological history the professor finds no evidence of the development of one from an- other. He can discover no link that unites the naked seed class, the gymnosperms, with the class inclosed in seed-vessels, the angiosperms — a very troublesome fact in the pathway of naturalism. The cause or causes that brought on this age of frost and ice hardly require full discussion in this treatise, but in passing and as a matter of in- terest we may call attention to two of the many assignable causes. The first is that the light and heat of our sun, which is now classed among the slightly variable stars, are supposed to have diminished ten thou- sand years ago, resulting in the glacial period. This being the case, there may be at some future THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 165 time a recurrence of diminished heat and another age of ice. Indeed, such a recurrence on scientific grounds is quite to be expected. Or a change of the earth's axis might bring its poles, and therefore an ice-sheet, where now are the tropics. And just such a catastrophe is also threatened. That is, the increasing accumula- tions of snow and ice at the north and south poles, with the thickening and hardening of the earth's crust, thereby preventing further flattening at the poles, in time must result in a slow or rapid change of the earth's axis. It is estimated by Dr. Croll that the ice-cap at the south pole, which is constantly increasing, already covers twenty- eight hundred miles in diameter and is at least twelve miles in thickness. At the north pole the accumulations of ice have been less rapid, owing probably to the thinness there of the earth's crust; still there is no question that the whole north arctic region, as well as the southern, is undergoing gradual refrigeration. It is therefore only a question of time when the ice weights will be heavy enough to tip the scales, bringing the poles of the earth somewhere on the present equator, perhaps in the Indian and Pacific oceans. Then, by sudden changes of temperature, by ter- rific tornadoes and raging floods, the end of nearly all animal and vegetable life on our planet would follow. 166 EVOLUTION OR CREAtlOU> Before closing this section we mention two or three other facts relating to the ice era that have an important bearing on the general subject under discussion. Just prior to the ice age there appear to have been what are called pluvial or very rainy periods. There also appear to have been two, or possibly more than two, glacial periods in quite close prox- imity — " one glacial period with various minor episodes," as some of our geologists state the case. The beginning of the end of the reign of ice wit- nessed the submergence of continents, the rising of the temperature, the drifting of icebergs that discharged their cargoes of gravel and boulders over lands widely separated, the giving way of ice gorges, and the overflowing of river-banks in every direction. A recent scientific writer thus describes the closing scenes of the ice age as witnessed in the central portions of our own country : " The ice- dam in the State of Ohio, which at Cincinnati was at least five hundred and fifty feet high, caused the slack water in the Ohio River to stand six hundred feet deep and to flow back as far as Grafton, Va., and Oil City, Pa. We have great spring freshets now in the Ohio River, but who can conceive the tremendous floods that poured over this dam and down through the Ohio valley during the last years THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 167 of the ice age, or when finally that great dam gave way, and the pent-up waters of the Ohio and its tributaries, and the melting ice of the so- called Lake Ohio, an extinct lake caused by this dam and at that time covering twenty thousand square miles, went surging and roaring down through the lower Ohio valley! The marks of that awful devastation long remained, some of which even now can be traced." The White Mountains of New Hampshire, ac- cording to Professors Charles Augustus Young and C. H. Hitchcock (there are no better author- ities on this subject), were out of sight under the waters of the drift* Then, too, conditions simi- lar to those which now produce the dense fogs of London and the well-nigh perpetual fogs along the northern coasts of America existed around the entire earth, and during the pluvial period the sky was heavily inswathed with dense banks of vapor and clouds. It was blackness of darkness. The description of Dr. John Phin, in his " Chemi- cal History of the Creation," doubtless is correct: * For additional authorities on the glacial and drift eras see early papers by Professor Agassiz, 1840; reports and treatises by E. Hitchcock, W. W. Mather, C. Whittlesey, James Hall, T. C. Chamberlin, Warren Upham, F. Leverett, R. D. Salsbury, Professor James Geikie, Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, G. K. Gilbert, W. J. McGee, J. C. Branner, Carrill Lewis, G. F. Wright, J. D. Whitney, Clarence King, I. C. Russell, G. M. Dawson, R. Bell, R. G. McConnell, J. B. Tyrrell, and R. Chalmers. 168 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? 11 We have all seen the sun's face darkened by thunder-clouds when their black masses were driven by fierce tempests across his disk. From the cheerful light of day the change to intense gloom was rapid. The birds sought the densest shade, the wild beasts flew to their lairs, and men's faces grew pale as they gazed upon nature and upon each other. And yet all this was produced by clouds representing at most but a few inches of water. What, then, must have been the darkness of that night when the clouds, which wrapped the earth as with a swaddling-band, contained water sufficient to have covered the whole surface of the earth to the depth of from four to five miles?" Such were the devastations and deaths of this and the preceding epochs. The world is not im- properly represented as being at that time a vast and silent burial-ground. II. THE "TOHU" AND " BOHU " OF THE BIBLE IDENTICAL WITH THE ICE AGE OF GEOLOGY Taking our beariegs once more, we note that the earth, that had had its five hundred million or its thousand million years of history, that had had its fiery period and its period of high tem- perature, when the vegetation of the coal era flourished as vegetation never since has flourished, THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 169 that had had its reptilian age and its mammalian age, was during the reign of ice frozen out, and during the great submergencies was drowned out, and during the turbulent drift epoch was wrecked and left desolate. And this wreck took place from seven to ten thousand years ago. We now return for a moment to the Mosaic account of the six days' creation. Following an exact translation, the reading is this : " In the be- ginning Elohim [the Eternal] created the heavens and the earth. And the earth had become [past- perfect tense] a waste and a void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." Tohu, translated "without form," means "confusion" or "wreck," and boku, translated " void," means " without in- habitant " ; "wi'iste tind leer" is Luther's forcible translation. And one cannot well see how a brief statement setting forth the condition of the earth at the conclusion of the drift period can be better framed to describe the wreck and desolation that geologists without an exception tell us then ex- isted than the words, " and the earth had become tohu and bohu, desolate and tenantless." III. CREATIONS OF THE MOSAIC WEEK We preface what is to be said as to the crea- tions of the Mosaic week with three remarks. First, there are comparatively only a few scien- J 170 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? tific men of note who deny the existence in the universe of an eternal, invisible, all-powerful, and infinitely wise Somewhat or Some One that stands back of all visible phenomena as the First and Adequate Cause. Second, if there is such a Somewhat or Some One, as the Bible teaches, and if he can interpose and create a few primal life-germs, which is ad- mitted by Mr. Darwin, then the most imposing difficulties urged against supernaturalism are re- moved, for when the intervention of the super- natural Being to any extent is admitted, the career of pure naturalism ends. Admit the mir- acle of an intervention, or, for that matter, admit the existence of a First Cause or an eternal Being, and it follows that it is just as possible and just as easy, by a word of command, for that First Cause, or the Eternal spoken of in Genesis, in six ordinary days a few thousand years ago to cre- ate all plants and animals belonging to the human period, together with man himself, as to consume millions of years in their creation, beginning the work at a time the most remote conceivable. Third, When all phenomena, theological, phil- osophical, and scientific, are taken into account, it will appear that the Bible story of creation ex- plains more of the difficulties involved, adequately and without exclusion, distortion, or mutilation, than any other hypothesis that has been proposed. THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 171 Now, if the geological account of creation is not identical with the Bible account, as certainly it cannot be, and if it stands related to it as a type is related to an antitype, or as a prophecy is re- lated to its fulfilment, as manifestly it seems to be, then, with the exception of the first verse of Genesis, which appears to be general and intro- ductory, the Mosaic account really begins with the dark and turbulent ice age that had rendered the earth well-nigh uninhabited and uninhabitable. According to this view, the words, " In the be- ginning the Eternal created the heavens and the earth," constitute an introduction to the more de- tailed account of creation, or else are designed to recount in brief the Bible history of the universe from the first appearance of star stuff to the frozen condition, the submergence, and the desolation of the earth just before the dawn of the human pe- riod. And the words, " Then the earth had be- come waste and void [or desolate and uninhab- itable], and darkness was upon the face of the deep," denote the time of the reign of ice and are the starting-point of what are called the six days of creation. That desolation of the ice age necessarily con- tinued until the waters were rolled back or were taken up into the atmosphere, and until such other conditions could be brought about as to render daylight possible. Naturalism, however, 172 El/OLUTION OR CREATION? is unable to give any satisfactory explanation as to what produced those changes. We may, there- fore, consult the Bible. This is its revelation: " Then the Spirit eternal was brooding upon the face of the waters. Then said the Eternal, Light be : and light was. Then the Eternal saw the light, that it was good : then the Eternal divided between the light and between the darkness. Then the Eternal called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. Then was evening, then was morning; day first." And if it is granted that the Eternal can inter- pose in the affairs of the universe, then even naturalism cannot doubt, or at least cannot give a valid reason for doubting, that this change from a blackness denser than that of a Newfoundland midnight to comparative daylight (the sun, moon, and stars remaining invisible) could have been effected by creative power in a day of ordinary duration without doing violence to modern scien- tific thought. " Then said the Eternal, Let an expanse \rakia, " a stretching or spreading out "] be in the midst of the waters, and let a dividing be between the waters to the waters. Then the Eternal formed the expanse, and divided between the water which was above the expanse and between the water which was beneath the expanse : and it was so. Then the Eternal called the expanse Heaven. THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 173 Then was evening, then was morning; day second." Fifty thousand billion tons of water, the esti- mated weight of the aqueous vapor now held in the air, were then separated, raised, and suspended in the sky. According to the account before us this was accomplished in a day of twelve hours' dura- tion. Then were brought to their close the drift period, the pluvial period, and the great submer- gence of geological history. The description that the psalmist gives of a later submergence, the deluge of Noah, with remarkable accuracy applies to the scenes of that second Mosaic day as well : " The waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled ; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go up by the mountains ; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth." And within those bounds they have been held, except during the time when, as the Bible, tradi- tion, and geology tell us, the earth again and for the last time was swept with a deluge of waters. The third day finds all things in readiness for the appearance of vegetation. But how and whence could it come? That which had existed prior to the ice age not only for the larger part had been destroyed, but, as we have seen, was quite unlike 174 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? the vegetation that followed and that now adorns the earth's surface. Whence, then, came the grasses and the herbs and the fruit-bearing trees belonging to the present or human period? Whence the first oak or the first acorn? for the modern oak and acorn are not found the other side of the drift epoch. Brofessor Tyndall and nearly all scientists now say they could not have originated by any known process of spontaneous generation. And the evolution of existing vege- tation in the limited time since the drift is out of the question. Inasmuch, therefore, as naturalism instead of answering the question places its finger on its lips, we may allow the Bible again to be our guide and authority : " Then said the Eternal, Gathered be the waters from under the skies into one place, and let the ground appear : and it was so. Then the Eternal called the ground Land; and the gathered waters he called Seas : then the Eternal saw it was good. Then said the Eternal, Grow the land grass, herb yielding seed, fruit-tree bear- ing fruit after its kind, in which is its seed, upon the land : and it was so. Then brought the land forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, in which was its seed, after its kind : then the Eternal saw it was good. Then was evening, then was morning; day third." In passing we may note that Professor Asa THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 175 Gray, who has been called " the most profoundly philosophical mind among American naturalists," says that this general classification of the world's flora found in the Bible is scientifically correct. But what we wish especially to note is a fact that even naturalism will not question ; namely, that if there is an eternal Being who creates things, he can build a blade of grass or an oak-tree, or a whole forest of oak and other trees, in one' day as easily as in two days or in a hundred days or in a hundred thousand years, and that he can build the oak without an acorn just as easily as with one, and that, therefore, this creation of grass and tree of which we read in Genesis, by an infinite and divine interposition, if possible at all, could have been accomplished in a day of or- dinary duration. We now have the fields of the earth covered with grasses and herbs, and we have magnificent forests fresh from the hand of the Eternal, spring- ing into existence by his command with the sud- denness of crystallization. But the sky still was overcast. It is supposed there had been no clear or at least no continuous sunlight since the beginning of the drift period. The earth almost might have forgotten that the sun, moon, and stars ever had shone upon it; at all events, they were great strangers. But now they must shine in their splendor, else the newly 176 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? made vegetation would begin to sicken and die the day it was made. The cloud-banks that ob- scured the sun must be lifted, and certain chemi- cal changes must be wrought in the atmosphere in order that day and night easily could be dis- tinguished from each other. In view of the profound perplexities confronting naturalism at this point, we may allow the Bible again to speak and solve for us these problems that, without a supernatural intervention, are shrouded in mystery : " Then said the Eternal, Lights be in the expanse of the heavens to divide between the day and between the night ; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years : and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to shine upon the earth : and it was so. Then the Eternal displayed \iiarthan, " to give," " to hold out," " to show," " to display "] the two great lights ; the greater light to rule the day, the little light to rule the night; and the stars. Then the Eternal displayed them in the expanse of the heavens, to shine upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide between the light and between the darkness : then the Eternal saw that it was good. Then was evening, then was morning; day fourth." The evening came, the sun set clear, and an or- dinary night of twelve hours, spangled with stars, mantled the renewed and peaceful earth, and as- THE ICE AGE AND 'THE MOSAIC WEEK 177 tronomical time, that ever since has continued, began for the earth its new mission (Gen. i. 14-18). During these four days of creation wonderful changes had taken place ; the darkness had given way to light, the atmosphere had expanded, the waters had receded, vegetation had appeared, the sun had shone forth, and everything was in readi- ness for further divine unfoldings. In a word, the forest solitudes, the grassy hillsides, the water- brooks, the rivers, the lakes, and the seas were in waiting to welcome the coming of their ordained tenants. But here we are confronted with multiplied difficulties. How could these new tenants, mi- grants from nowhere or from anywhere, come to the earth ? To employ a familiar illustration, there could have been no hen without an egg, and there could have been no egg without a hen. But before the human period there was no mod- ern hen or egg; nor are any links found with which to connect the hen with those first genera- tions, the fish-like creatures, the sand-lances or Amphioxus, or the tadpole or something else, from which the hen is supposed to have been evolved. "Spontaneous generation," " bathyb- ius," " vital fluid," " cosmic emotion," " germ- plasm," "bathmism," "growth-force," "pangen- esis," "proligerous pellicles," "plastid particles," and " parthenogenesis " all have lent a hand in try- 178 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? ing to account for an egg or a hen ; but they have made no progress at all, and are out of date. Nor is there evidence that there has been suffi- cient time, either since or before the ice age, to produce by the slow processes of development through natural selection or otherwise any form of the flora and fauna now existing. And be- sides, whatever the length of time, there is no scientific evidence, not the slightest, that animal life in any way could have had an origin or a de- velopment unaided by supernatural interposition. At the present stage of scientific knowledge the time factor hardly can be said to enter at all into the problem of the origin and development of things. But, more than this, naturalism not only has failed to account for either sand-lances, tadpole, monkey, missing link, or man ; it also has failed to produce out of existing orders a single new and clearly marked species. In view of these facts, that atheistic naturalism any longer dares to show its face in respectable company is one of the surprises of the nineteenth century. In our extremity we turn again to the Mosaic record and read : " Then said the Eternal, Let the waters swarm with swarmers \shoretzim, " rapidly multiplying creatures "], and let birds fly above the earth upon the face of the expanse of the skies. Then the Eternal created the great fishes, THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 179 and every living, breathing thing that creepeth, with which the waters abounded, after their kind, and every bird of wing after its kind : then the Eternal saw it was good. Then the Eternal blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowl multiply in the land. Then was evening, then was morning; day fifth." Hence, according to this account, between sun and sun of a single day, by the interposition and creative might of the Eternal and by a simple word of command, the waters and the atmosphere of the earth received those species of fish and fowl that remain to the present time. One more creative day completes the Mosaic week. We read : " Then said the Eternal, Let the land bring forth the living breather after its kind, cattle, and creeper, and beast of the land after its kind : and it was so. Then the Eternal made the beast of the land after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeper of the soil after its kind : then the Eternal saw it was good." And then, last of all, and at the head of all, — after vast cosmical eras had played their part; after granite had been formed and piled up in lofty mountain-ranges; after the flowing and re- turning waters had selected and borne down into the valleys the vegetable soils; after electric 180 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? shocks had interlaced the earth with metallic veins; after ancient forests had hardened into coal, and were stored by the cubic mile, having yielded also their reservoirs of petroleum; after the deposits of primeval waters had become a multitude of useful materials; after reptiles had cleared the waters of impurities and the land of its rubbish ; after birds had devoured the animal remains and enriched the soil ; after the earlier race of monster mammals, that teach the power and majesty of the Creator (Job xli.), had ap- peared and disappeared ; after the earth had be- come, during the ice and drift eras, a waste and a void ; after it had been again made habitable, and by supernatural interposition had been pro- vided with forests and a carpeting of grass and shrubs ; after the flowers had been filled with fragrance, and the trees hung with delicious fruit ; and after the animals of the present period had been called into being, — then " created the Eter- nal the man in his own image, in the image of the Eternal created he him ; male and female created he them. Then was evening, then was morning ; day sixth " (Gen. i. 27). " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day the Eternal ended his work which he had made ; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made " (Gen. ii. r, 2). THE ICE AGE AND THE MOSAIC WEEK 181 And is this the story, some one asks, that men who claim to be intelligent are expected to believe while standing on the borders of the twentieth century, which is fuller of magnificent promises than all the centuries that have preceded ? CHAPTER IX Diversity of Opinion and Meaning of Terms i. diversity of opinion as to geological PERIODS There has been, as we have seen and as might be expected, much controversy among scientists as to the duration of both astronomical and geo- logical time ; nor has there been less as to the du- ration of human history. To account for this diversity of opinion is not such a difficult task as at first might appear, for some of the data employed by different investiga- tors are very uncertain ; and, aside from that, as Lord Bacon long since remarked, " The eye of the human intellect is not dry, but receives a suffusion from the will and the affections, so that it may almost be said to engender any science it pleases; for what a man wishes to be true, that he prefers to believe." It was not far from thirty years ago that Lord 182 GEOLOGICAL PERIODS 183 Kelvin (SirWilliam Thomson) suggested that there must be an ascertainable limit to the antiquity of the earth, and that from the data then available the limit could not be fixed at less than twenty million or more than four hundred million years. Kelvin himself inclined to the lower estimate, bas- ing his view on what is termed the physical ar- rangements of the earth, especially taking into account the cooling of its surface, the age of the sun's heat, and tidal retardation. But the majority of geologists and biologists opposed this brief limitation, and several important errors in Kelvin's calculations were pointed out. Professor Perry was as successful, perhaps, as any one in showing that the age of the earth must be enormously greater than Kelvin had supposed, even when estimates are based on the very data his lordship had employed. As most of our readers may know, it was under the sway of Sir Charles Lyell's " uniformitarian ideas " that a large number of geologists and scholars in other departments of science felt at liberty to regard geological time as practically unlimited, and did not hesitate to refer the origin of vegetable and animal life back to a period not less than five hundred million years, while a thousand million years were regarded as by no means an unreasonable estimate for the entire history of our planet. 184 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? But of late there has been a marked tendency to diminish these estimates. For illustration, in the first edition of "The Origin of Species" Mr. Darwin calculated that the time required for the erasion of the Wealden deposits in England was 306,662,400 years, which he spoke of as " a mere trifle " of the time at command for establishing his theory of the origin of species through natural selection. But in his second edition he confessed that his original estimate concerning the length of geological time was rash, while in later editions he quietly omitted all mention of the subject. Sir Charles Lyell, in one of the editions of his " Principles," advanced the opinion that the close of the ice age was reached eight hundred thou- sand years ago. But in the fourth edition of his later work, "The Antiquity of Man," he changed his estimates from eight hundred thousand to two hundred thousand years, and subsequently showed no disposition to return to his earlier cal- culations. Professor George H. Darwin puts the geologi- cal period at one hundred million years. Beginning with the Paleozoic (ancient life) pe- riod, Sir G. W. Dawson allows 51,280,000 years for geological time, and an equal number of years for the previous periods. Professors Tate and Newcomb think that eigh- teen million years for the nebula cooling and GEOLOGICAL PERIODS 185 twelve or fifteen million for geological history are sufficient. Coming down to times comparatively recent, Professors Joseph Prestwick and G. Frederick Wright, who is one of the most reliable authori- ties on the ice age in America, conclude that the geological changes wrought by that age require not more than twenty- five thousand years, though the falling of the temperature may have had its beginning seventy-five thousand years earlier. Professor G. K. Spencer thinks that thirty-one or two thousand years have passed since the ice age. M. Adhemar, basing his calculations on the precession of the equinoxes, is confident that only a trifle more than eleven thousand years have passed since the glacial period ; and Professor Wright, already quoted, maintains that it came to its close between seven and ten thousand years ago. Dr. W. Upham places its close at from six to ten thousand years ago, and G. K. Gilbert at seven thousand. Dr. James Croll, who has made what may be regarded a well-nigh exhaustive study of this sub- ject, says that " the conditions favorable to glaci- ation in Canada existed eleven thousand years ago." Dr. William Andrews, in his paper on "The North American Lakes as Chronicles of Post- glacial Time," clearly demonstrates the error of 186 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? carrying the close of the ice era back, as Lyell did, eight hundred thousand or even two hundred thousand years. Dr. Andrews reduces the time even lower than does Professor Wright, placing it somewhere be- tween five thousand and seventy-five hundred years ago. Without enumerating all the author- ities, we remark, in a word, that the ablest and most careful geologists, calculating the age of the drift from the beaches of the North American lakes, from the retreat of the cataract at Fort Snelling, from the alluvions of the Sadne, and from the deposits at the mouth of the Loire, bring the drift that followed the reign of ice down to a date somewhere between five and ten thousand years ago. Professor Dana in his latest publica- tions inclines to these lower dates. II. MEANING OF TERMS EMPLOYED We find it necessary from this point on to employ certain scientific terms, but will translate most of them into common speech. The word " Azoic " (without life) is used to denote the time when there was no animal life on our globe. The word "Paleozoic" (ancient life) is used to denote the time when the lower forms of life, such as the earlier species of squids, clams, oysters, and nautilus, appeared in large numbers. It was also MEANING OF TERMS 187 the age of fishes and of a remarkable growth of vegetation from which coal was formed. The word " Mesozoic " (middle life) denotes the time when the great reptiles flourished. The word " Caenozoic " (recent life) was the period in which land-animals and man first appeared. In trying to fix the date of man's coming on the earth we have no need of going beyond the recent-life age, for among scientists there is uni- versal agreement that man or anything resem- bling man, whether monkey or baboon, does not antedate this " recent " period. And in passing we may remark that geology has not yet dis- covered the remains of any race of monkeys or apes that appeared on earth prior to the coming of man. Of the two, man, not the monkey, was first. Under this recent period falls the Tertiary epoch, in which mammals first made their appear- ance. The Tertiary is usually subdivided thus: first, the " Eocene " (daybreak) period, meaning the first part of this last great division of geologi- cal times ; second, the " Miocene " (less new), or the midday period of recent time ; third, the "Pliocene" (more new) period, or quite recent. It may be remarked incidentally that between the Eocene and the Pliocene periods, owing to ter- restrial disturbances and changes of temperature, land-animals appeared and disappeared from the 188 EVOLUTION OR CREATION 7 face of the earth no fewer than six or seven times. It is also well known that scarcely any of the species of animals now in existence lived at the beginning of the Pliocene period; but during the closing centuries of that period a large num- ber of animals never before met in geological history appeared, some of which live on to the present time. Later in this period human re- mains, not in abundance, however, have been found. Geological history next takes note of a break in the Pliocene period in consequence of some terrestrial disturbance and floods of water. Fol- lowing this break, man once more became a ten- ant of the earth and began to subdue it. And it may be of interest to note that the cereal plants, such as wheat, rice, barley, corn, and the like, which are invaluable to man, do not appear in the Eocene and the Miocene, but unmistakably and fortunately do appear at the beginning of the first human period, as if introduced for the benefit of mankind. There are a few other terms that are used to denote different epochs in early human history, such as " Pleistocene " (most new), which some- times is called the Quaternary and sometimes the Post-tertiary period. This was followed by the " Paleolithic " (ancient stone) period. The geo- logical formations of these periods are for the THE HUMAN PERIOD 189 larger part superficial gravels, clays, and fossil deposits in caverns, which in several countries have been well preserved. " Neolithic " (new stone age) denotes that period of prehistoric time when smooth and in some instances highly pol- ished stone implements were in general use. III. DIVERSITY OF OPINION AS TO THE HUMAN PERIOD Resuming at this point the main discussion, the reader anticipates, no doubt, that there would likely be the same diversity of opinion as to the history of man that there has been concerning the various geological periods. And, as also might be expected, there has been almost a constant tendency to bring man's origin from a remote antiquity down to comparatively recent times. Mr. Thomas Sterry Hunt, late president of the British Anthropological Society, announced the extraordinary opinion that man has been on this earth nine million years. M. Lalande declared (1867) that "man is eternal." Dr. A. R. Wal- lace is of the opinion that five hundred thousand years are sufficient for human history. Professor C. Fuhlrott, a German of note, estimates man's age at two or three hundred thousand years. M. Gabriel de Mostellet, professor of anthropology in Paris, argues that man appeared on the earth 190 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? two hundred and thirty thousand years ago. John S. Hittell says that man has existed forty thousand, perhaps two hundred thousand, years. Chevalier Bunsen limits human history to twenty thousand years. "The Aryans," says M. Pietre- ment, " had tamed the horse and used it habitu- ally at an epoch anterior to the year 19,337 before the Christian era." But Professor Alex- ander Winchell, who in several respects occupies positions quite antagonistic to the ones advocated in this book, does not attempt to carry the origin of the white man, from whom the present human race descended, to a date earlier than that given in the Bible. The stone-people, that is, those who worked stone instead of iron or bronze, he does not think have an origin earlier than twenty- five hundred or three thousand years before Christ. Mr. W. H. Holmes, of the United States Geolog- ical Survey, makes a very conclusive showing that the remains which once were supposed to carry the early American man back to a remote anti- quity really do no such thing, but place him al- most within hailing distance. In an effort to fix upon a somewhat definite date for man's appearance on the earth the first thing to be done is to ascertain the geological epoch to which he belongs. But authorities are so much at variance with one another that this THE HUMAN ^PERIOD 191 task is a difficult one, except in this, that all agree that man belongs to a recent geological period. Not so very long since the majority of evolution- ists confidently assumed that man belongs to the Miocene of Europe, or at least to the earlier Pli- ocene, and that those periods extend back almost countless ages. But at the present time these estimates are received with great allowance. Professor Capel- lini thought that he had found in Italy remains of Pliocene man. Professor Whitney unhesitat- ingly announced that in America he had found similar remains. But so eminent an authority as Professor Boyd Dawkins pronounces the evidence in both instances entirely unsatisfactory and claims that indisputable proof of human remains is not met with earlier than the Pleistocene (most new) era. Dr. Gandry, Professor Le Conte, Professor Henry W. Haynes, M. Favre, Dr. John Evans, late president of the Geological Society of Lon- don, and Professor Dana, who are among the ablest authorities on this subject, concur in the opinion that the existence of man in the Tertiary period earlier than the Pleistocene is unsupported by any reliable scientific evidence. Professor H. W. Haynes, after showing that human remains buried in " dug graves " easily are mistaken for those found in natural deposits, which mistake more than once has been made, 192 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? says, " The evidence for the antiquity of man on this hypothesis [the evolution theory] is purely speculative, no human remains having as yet been actually found in either the Miocene or Pliocene strata." Says Professor Le Conte, " The Miocene man is not now acknowledged by a single careful ge- ologist." And we doubt if any geologist who has regard for his reputation will venture the statement that there is what can be regarded as satisfactory scientific evidence of man's existence before or even during the true glacial era. Nor is there evidence, as we already have seen, that the close of the ice age dates back to a remote period. Professor Winchell, though quite conser- vative, and in his later writings cherishing an ex- pectation that in some of the caverns of Abyssinia and Australia or in the bottom of the Indian Ocean relics sometime may be found that will give an earlier geological date to man's origin than any- thing yet discovered, frankly confesses that there is at present no evidence at all that carries the origin of man beyond the glacial era. In his " Sketches of Creation," speaking of the antiquity of man, Professor Winchell says : " Man has no place till after the reign of ice. It has been imagined that the close of the reign of ice dates back perhaps a hundred thousand years. There is no evidence of this. The fact is THE HUMAN PERIOD 193 that we ourselves came upon the earth in time to witness the retreat of the glaciers. They still linger in the valleys of the Alps and along the northern shores of Europe and Asia, while the disappearance of animals once contemporaries of man is still continuing. Not only did contempo- raries of man become extinct during the age of stone, but some survived to the twelfth, fourteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The mammoth of North America, the dodo of Mauritius, disappeared in the seventeenth century ; the great auk of the arctic regions has not been seen for half a cen- tury ; the Labrador duck has but recently disap- peared; the beaver, elk, panther, buffalo, and other quadrupeds of North America are approach- ing extinction by perceptible steps. The fact is, we are not so far out of the dust and chaos and barbarism of antiquity as we had supposed. The very beginnings of our race are still almost in sight. Geological events which, from the force of habit in considering geological events, we had imagined to be located far back in the history of things, are found to have transpired at our very doors." And Dr. Dawson, who has spent much time in the patient study of these problems, not only concurs in the view taken by Professor Winchell, but expresses more specifically the conviction that there is no evidence worth considering that man 194 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? has inhabited this earth longer than seven thou- sand years. The so-called Paleolithic (rough-stone) age is one of great importance in settling approximately the arrival of the human family upon the earth, for prior to that time all evidence of this class is limited in quantity and exceedingly questionable in its character ; but after that time the evidence is abundant and unmistakable. Formerly it was supposed by quite an array of authorities that between the rough-stone age and the polished-stone age there is a gap of one hun- dred thousand years or more. Such a gap, of course, would be a prop and help for naturalism ; but, unfortunately for that side of the ques- tion, reputable authority claiming any extended length of time between those two stone periods is no longer to be found. That there is a gap be- tween those two ages is established beyond rea- sonable doubt, but not a gap of any extended duration. A deluge of limited time, like that of Noah, with a few hundred years for repeopling the earth, not only would fill the gap, but would answer other conditions and explain certain phe- nomena that hitherto have been exceedingly troublesome. In fixing the date of each of these stone periods we are fortunate in having the opinions of several scientists who have made this subject a very care- THE HUMAN PERIOD 195 ful study and recently have published the results of their investigations. M. M. Ferry, to the surprise, perhaps, of some of our friends who believe in a very remote an- tiquity for man, is of the opinion that the rough- stone age in Europe should not be placed earlier than somewhere between seven and ten thousand years ago. M. Morlot thinks that the polished- stone age should not be carried back earlier than sometime between four and six thousand years ago ; Ferry locates it from four to five, and M. Arcelin from three to six thousand years ago. The Danish historian and antiquary, Dr. Worsaae, fixes its termination in Denmark at twenty-five hundred years ago. And Chevalier de Rossi, speaking of the lateness of the stone age in Italy, says, " The whole evidence proves to a demonstration that the new stone age was very near that of true history." And what makes the case for naturalism all the worse is that the stone-age men by some of the highest authorities are identified with the Eskimo race, whose manner of life bears a striking resem- blance to that of the men of the stone age, and whose implements of stone and bone very closely resemble those that were in use among those earliest prehistoric peoples of Europe. But philo- logical science connects the Eskimo with the great Turanian family, to which belong the Lapp, 196 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Bush, Hungarian, and Turk. It appears highly probable, therefore, that at least one grouping of the stone men and the Eskimo are the same race and come almost within the limits of modern or recent historic times. But in this connection we ought to say that the erroneous estimates of those who claim a great antiquity for the human race have not always grown out of the mental predisposition of which Lord Bacon speaks, but out of honest miscalcula- tions and mistaken observations. The data of the more recent geological periods are so variable that confusion almost inevitably has resulted. Mr. Israel C. Russell and Mr. Grove Karl Gilbert, two of the most thoroughly scientific members of the United States Geological Survey, in a recent report refer the Eocene of the Colorado basin to the last century and the Pliocene of Utah to the last ten years. Hence when geologists and biol- ogists calculate that deposits in the Eocene and the Pliocene belong to a dim antiquity they would better designate to what Eocene and Pliocene they refer.* And again preglacial remains of certain animals have been mistaken more than once for human remains, and human remains often have been supposed to be prehistoric that were not so. * See also contributions to " Geological Laboratory" by Pro- fessor William Bullock Clarke (1894-95). THE HUMAN PERIOD 197 Artificially or by natural agencies the remains of different ages have been mixed and found in the same deposits. Therefore it follows that much of the evidence upon which opinions as to the antiquity of man have been based is scarcely more reliable than would be that of a museum consisting of the fossils of prehistoric animals and the skeletons of recent animals, with the an- tiquities and implements of ancient and modern date, which suddenly had been overwhelmed by a flood and covered with mud or gravel. In such a discovery there would be found in the same deposit relics that belong to ages that differ from one another by millions of years. In other instances the calculations that have been made are no more reliable than would be an effort to ascertain the age of a frog found at the bottom of a filled- up well by calculating the time it must have taken to form the succession of geological strata between the frog and the grass turf at the mouth of the well. Or, as Dr. South- all puts the case, " The method of some geolo- gists is the same as if we should proceed to calcu- late the time it would require to form a mountain if we should find a gold sovereign buried at the depth of three hundred feet in one of the moun- tains of Scotland." CHAPTER X Man's First Appearance on Earth i. geological research Biologists who are advocates of naturalistic evolution are greatly annoyed, and well they may be, by the more recent geological calculations. Over and over again they have expressed intense surprise that geologists fail to find human remains earlier than the ice age. Biologists have tried to spur geologists on to greater activity in their re- searches. But thus far there is neither help nor comfort nor any escape except under the plea that earlier evidences of man may yet be un- earthed in some unexplored region of Africa, Abyssinia, Australia, or somewhere else. What is still more exasperating to naturalism is the fact that all geological evidences thus far discovered not only fail to carry man back to a remote antiquity, but bring him down to a date so recent that the hypothesis of evolution by any 198 MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 199 namable natural processes is no longer entitled to a moment's consideration. Though failing in the foregoing investigations, naturalism nevertheless has a right to be heard when extending its inquiries outside the realms of geology proper and when entering that " sort of shadow-land " where geological research, archae- ological investigation, and tradition commingle. We therefore call attention next to certain fields that belong to both geological and archaeo- logical science, taking note first of certain changes that have occurred and that now are occurring on the earth's surface. The uniformitarian theory of geologists that all changes come about slowly and in a steady or a uniform manner, once very popular, no longer can be maintained. A geologist, archaeologist, or biologist who to-day should make his calcu- lations in harmony with that theory would be an object of wonder. This statement, however, should not be made without presenting reasons in its support. We therefore call attention to a few of the many facts which antagonize the geo- logical theory of the uniformity of nature's pro- cesses. It is only a few years since the human race witnessed the following terrestrial changes : The submergence of southern Europe ; the de- tachment of the British Islands and Scandinavia 200 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? from the continent; the wanderings of the great rivers of eastern Asia ; the submergence of thou- sands of square miles of the coast of China, so that the seats of ancient capitals are now rocky islets far at sea; the emergence of the ancient country of Lectonia; the drainage of the vast lake which once overspread the prairies of Illinois ; the alter- nations of forests, and many other events which once were associated with high antiquity. It is the opinion of Sir William J. Hooker, the English botanist, and Professor Asa Gray of our own country that the Falkland Islands and others in the vicinity recently formed a part of the con- tinent of South America, and that during this connection they acquired their continental fauna and flora. The Straits of Bering probably were cut through since the early migrations of man and his contemporaries, the mammoth and rein- deer. In 1 8 19 the British part of Sindree, in India, to the extent of two thousand square miles of territory, in the space of a few hours was perma- nently submerged. Later, another portion of Sin- dree was elevated, converting Sindree Lake into a salt-marsh, and forming the elevation of Ullah Bund. In the Santosin group of the ^Egean Sea new islands suddenly have appeared, the latest within comparatively a few years. MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 201 Between 1795 and 1812 a lake near Ural, Si- beria, sank two hundred and ninety-one feet. In the years 1826 and 1827 a succession of earthquakes so changed the level of the land along a coast in New Zealand that the sealers no longer could recognize the locality ; and a hull of a vessel, supposed to be the Active, lost some thirty years previously, was found two hundred yards inland, with a tree growing through its bot- tom. During another earthquake in the same group, in 1855, a tract of land equal to four thousand square miles is believed to have been raised from one to nine feet. In 1772 the volcano Papandayang, in the island of Java, had a great eruption, by which its sum- mit sunk, or lost in some way four thousand feet of its height. The famous earthquake in Lisbon is well known, by which prodigious physical effects were suddenly produced. In six minutes sixty thousand persons were destroyed, the quay of the city sunk into an almost fathomless abyss, and the shock was felt from North America to Sweden. The beach on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, has risen not less than twenty-six feet since the time the Romans ruled the country. In Scandinavia the land is now rising at the rate of three feet in a century. In Peru, in 1746, an earthquake destroyed 202 Evolution or creation? Lima, and sunk a part of the coast of Callas so as to convert it into a bay. In 1812 a series of earthquakes occurred in the region around New Madrid, on the Mississippi. So great a change of level was effected that at one place the river for a while reversed its course. Lakes twenty miles long were formed in an hour, and a region seventy-five miles long and thirty miles wide is now known as the Sunk Country. It must be perfectly apparent, therefore, to any except those who have a favorite theory to main- tain that conclusions based on the uniform pro- cesses of nature are unsafe and unsound, and that the placement of human remains, caused by these sudden convulsions on the earth's surface, sug- gests the utter unreliability of much of the evi- dence that has been introduced in support of the great antiquity of the human race. Mud deposits constitute another very unsatis- factory source of evidence for those who are at- tempting to carry the antiquity of man back to distant ages. It was only a few years since that, with great confidence, an opinion was announced by several geologists, including so eminent an authority as Professor Lyell, that human remains found in the mud deposits of the Mississippi be- yond question carried the origin of the human race back more than fifty thousand years. One piece of evidence, unearthed while digging for MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 203 the gas-works in New Orleans, was considered very conclusive. It was the skeleton of a Red Indian, discovered at considerable depth below the surface. Dr. Bennet Dowler made careful estimates and reached the conclusion that the skeleton was fifty-seven thousand years old, and according to the uniformitarian theory the con- clusion was correct. A little later, a piece of wood showing the workmanship of a high order of tools also was found at Port Jackson deeper down than Dr. Dowler's Red Indian. That venerable piece of wood more than fifty-seven thousand years old ( ?) was placed before the New Orleans Academy of Science ; it was carefully examined and was pro- nounced to be no ancient relic at all, but the gun- wale of a Kentucky flatboat. That discovery of course settled the age of the Red Indian. There is nothing surprising, however, in these findings when we learn that there are streets in New Orleans where the water less than fifty years ago flowed one hundred feet deep. Says Fon- taine, " The Mississippi undermining and ingulf- ing its banks with everything upon them, logs tangled in vines and bedded in mud, cypress stumps, Indian graves, and modern works of art are suddenly swallowed up and buried at all depths by its waters, from ten to one hundred feet in depth." 204 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? A very careful study also has been made of relics found at the outlets of some of the rivers of France in which human remains have been discovered. These remains were estimated by M. Morlot to be from ninety-six to one hundred and forty-three thousand years old ; but Dr. An- drews subsequently exposed a curious arithmeti- cal blunder, the correction of which reduces the time to within four or five thousand years. The so-called " Homer's Nile pottery," exca- vated at a depth of sixty feet and calculated to be twelve or thirteen thousand years old, and other pottery thought to be thirty thousand years old, appeared to settle conclusively the re- mote origin of the human family. But, unfor- tunately for the theory, Sir Robert Stevenson discovered in the neighborhood of Damietta, at a greater depth than Mr. Homer had reached, a brick bearing the stamp of Mohammed Ali. In view of these and many other facts, we have no hesitation in saying that at the present time a scientist who has any regard for his repu- tation would not think of estimating lapse of time from the " mud deposits " at the outlets of any of the great rivers of the Old or New World. For a half-century or more human relics be- longing to the stone age have been objects of intense interest to the scientific student. They consist of buried human bones ; stone arrow-heads ; MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 205 flint chips made in shaping stone implements ; arrow-heads and other implements made from the horns and bones of animals ; cut or carved wood ; figures of animals cut or carved in wood, bone, or stone ; fragments of charcoal and other evidence of fire for warming and cooking; and fragments of pottery. It was claimed a few years since that these " implement gravel beds" of England and else- where in Europe furnished unmistakable evidence of man's great antiquity. But careful investiga- tors like Dr. S. R. Pallison and Professor William Phipps Blake now assure us that such of these beds as contain human remains are unquestion- ably of recent origin and were formed since the close of the ice age. Dr. Traas also assigns to a recent date the various implements found in Schiissenried, Switzerland. For a time human remains discovered near Geneva were thought to establish a very remote origin for the human race. But M. Morlot reached the conclusion that they are not more than from five to seven thousand years old, and Dr. Andrews makes it quite clear that they are not more than three thousand years old. The age of the deposits at Trenton, N. J., which contain articles of human workmanship, has been a subject of hot dispute, a few geolo- gists insisting that they belong to the earlier 206 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? ice age. But a careful study of this region by- gentlemen connected with the Pennsylvania Ge- ological Survey has led to the following conclu- sions : There are in the Trenton deposits three strata of clay that belong to the Mesozoic (middle life) period. Then appears the Philadelphia brick- clay, probably derived from the melting of the ice in the glacial period. No true glacial deposits exist south of the terminal moraine, near Easton, as first pointed out by Professor G. H. Cook. After this clay three gravel deposits were laid down : the first one, found on the tops of the hills, is composed largely of pebbles of Potsdam sand- stone ; the second, a red gravel, is referred to the Champlain period ; lastly, there is the Trenton gravel or sand in which are found human imple- ments. These Trenton beds probably are of the same age as the lower-level gravels of the River Somme, in France. Hence, geologically speak- ing, they are extremely modern and cease to be of any importance in fixing a great antiquity for man. And, as these implements clearly belong to the Paleolithic (ancient stone) age, they may cause archaeologists to bring this ruder human period quite near our own times. Mr. Lewis suggests, therefore, that the name of " Eskimo period " might be used to designate the time of the formation of the Trenton gravels. A few years ago, in Charleston, S. C, human MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 207 bones and those of the mastodon were found in close proximity, and were thought to afford ample evidence of man's remote antiquity. But further investigation discovered in those same deposits, which are thin and superficial, the bones of the modern ox and the domestic hog, neither of which is indigenous to this continent and there- fore must have been introduced by European set- tlers not earlier than 1562. Speaking of this class of evidence, though still desirous of keeping up a high antiquity for man, Dr. Joseph Prestwick says, " I do not, for my part, see any geological reasons why the extinct mammalia of America should not have lived down to comparatively recent times, possibly not fur- ther back than eight or ten thousand years." And in another place he remarks that " the evi- dence seemed to me as much to necessitate the bringing forward of the great extinct animals to- ward our time as the carrying back of man in geological time/' Essentially the same uncertainty hangs over peat formations, notably those of Denmark, Scot- land, and Ireland, which a few years ago were examined and studied with intense interest. The reader will remember that Mr. Hudson Tuttle very conclusively proved to himself and his friends that human remains found in Danish peat were twenty-two thousand years old. But unfortu- 208 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? nately Mr. Tuttle's calculations were completely upset by Professor Worsaae, who at the same depth found fragments of woolen cloth of com- paratively modern manufacture. A few years since human remains found in the peat-bogs of Scotland and Ireland, in the judg- ment of several scientific men, carried the anti- quity of those who then peopled Great Britain back many thousand years beyond historic times. But, on further investigation, there were discov- ered at the same level and in the same deposits axes and knives of Roman manufacture and coins bearing the stamp of Roman emperors as late as 237 A.D. Peat-beds have proved such extremely unsatis- factory places in which to look for evidence of man's great antiquity that they are now neglected by advocates of that theory. The deposits of stalagmite in limestone caverns, like the progress of peat-bed formations, are now of no geological or archaeological value. Likewise evidence of man's antiquity based upon stone, iron, and bronze implements and utensils discovered in different geological de- posits, formerly regarded with favor, now are looked upon as altogether unreliable. In some instances these relics have proved the exact op- posite of what was expected. Among the ruins of Troy a stone age follows a bronze age. In MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 209 Mexico and Peru, from the earliest to the present times, bronze and stone have been used in com- mon. Bronzes are found in the oldest Egyptian pyramids, while in comparatively recent historic times the Egyptians made use of stone knives fixed in wooden handles, together with stone saws and stone lance-heads. Belonging to the earliest periods of Babylonian civilization have been found both stone and metal implements. Tombs and ruins on the great Chaldean plains, also the ruins of Nineveh, yield flint, iron, and bronze implements and ornaments of identically the same periods. While Europe was a metal age North America was a stone age and remained such until after the days of Columbus. Even seventy-five or one hundred years ago gun-flints in this country were used by the million. Hence, in settling the anti- quity of the human race, the stone, iron, and bronze ages in some respects are no more reliable than moonshine. The so-called " flint flakes " discovered in dif- ferent parts of Europe for a long time were sup- posed to establish the theory of a Miocene man ; but Professor Isaac G. Hayes and others have shown that man had nothing to do with them. They are extremely crude and misshapen pieces of flint ; just as perfect flakes can be produced by the action of heat and other natural agencies on 210 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? fragments of flint rock. This is true of those found in the valley of the Tagus, France, and of those taken from the auriferous gravels of Cali- fornia, which are among the most perfect speci- mens yet discovered. Mr. Frank Calvert announced in 1873 that ne had found unmistakable evidence of European Miocene man, and by reason of the announce- ment the scientific world rose on tiptoe. But Dr. George Washburn, of Hamlin College, Con- stantinople, not satisfied with Calvert's conclu- sions, went carefully over the same ground and showed conclusively that just as perfect imple- ments can be made by dropping pieces of bone found in those localities on any hard substance, such as a rock or the stump of a tree. The doc- tor actually produced " implements " formed in this way that were no more crude than the best of those discovered by Mr. Calvert. We need not dwell upon the story of the lake- dwellings of Switzerland, that once were alleged to be at least fifteen thousand years old, for sub- sequent investigations made it clear that those lake-dwellers and the armies of Caesar were con- temporaneous. This retreat after retreat from one point of defense to another, from surface changes to mud deposits, from implement gravels to Danish peat, from stone, iron, bronze, and bone implements to MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 211 the lake-dwellings in Switzerland, ought to be instructive, and henceforth naturalism less fre- quently should be betrayed into premature and absolutely false conclusions. II. ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH Having considered to some extent this source of information in a previous chapter, also having occasion in a subsequent one to say something more bearing on it, we at this point merely note that, with the possible exception of discoveries recently made by the French government in Egypt, all researches are bringing the supposed great antiquity of that country down very much nearer recent times than formerly was supposed, while explorations in the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris are carrying the antiquity of Asia far nearer to the dates assigned for the earliest his- tory of Egypt than would have been allowed so late as ten years ago. The most eminent scholars and explorers to-day are finding between the an- tiquity of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Arabians, the Abyssinians, the Persians, the Phenicians, the Chinese, and the Indians no vast and hazy difference. Scarcely an archaeologist of any reputation is known who will venture to say that there is reliable evidence of a " fabulous antiquity " for either Egypt, Asia, or Europe, or 212 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? that settlements were made in any of those coun- tries earlier than the time allowed by the writ- ings of the sacred Scriptures. III. WRITTEN HISTORY It is well known that the art of writing was practised many centuries before historians be- gan to assign dates to the events they narrated. Hence, so far as dates are concerned, the written history of the early ages is involved in great ob- scurity and uncertainty. Prior to Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, who flourished about one hun- dred years after the death of Alexander the Great, time was reckoned, in many countries, not by the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, but by gener- ations and reigns or successions of dynasties. This method of computing time was employed not only by the earlier Greek historians, but also by the writers of the Old Testament Scriptures. When, therefore, time is measured by generations of men or by successions of dynasties, and when estimates are made to depend on the average duration of human life or on the average reign of kings, with possible omissions, it must be ap- parent that absolute accuracy is out of the ques- tion. And these imperfect methods of marking the lapse of time easily explain discrepancies in the calculations of those who have attempted to MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 213 construct a chronology of the earlier periods of Greek and Roman history, and also of scholars who have given us what purports to be a Bible chronology. Three chronological tables, known as the He- brew, the Samaritan, and the Septuagint, illustrate this variation in dates. They reckon the time from Adam to the flood as follows : The Hebrew 1656 years The Samaritan I3°7 " The Septuagint 2292 " The time from the flood to the call of Abraham is given as follows : The Hebrew 367 years The Samaritan 1017 " The Septuagint 1243 " Aside from these there are upward of two hun- dred different calculations of the time between the creation of Adam and the birth of Christ, ranging all the way from 6984 to 36 1 6 years. When, there- fore, M. Jacques de Morgan claims that his recent discoveries establish a civilization in Egypt some- time between twenty-three and thirty-eight hun- dred years before Christ, and when recent Assyr- ian explorers tell us that two peoples, Semitic and non-Semitic, were dwelling in Mesopotamia from twenty-eight to thirty-eight hundred years before Christ, and that therefore those Egyptian 214 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? and Assyrian dynasties go back ten or twelve hundred years before the " purported creation of Adam," we reply that, even if the civilizations of those countries were thus early, it by no means follows that Eden was not of a still earlier date, for Hebrew chronology is not yet established. But the question may be asked, How are the foregoing chronological discrepancies possible? The reply is, they are inevitable, since the Hebrews did not seek to fill the gaps of history, having an- other purpose in mind than the giving of full chron- ological tables, while modern writers are attempt- ing to make the chronological tables complete.* * The following additional calculations of the period assigned in Genesis for the creation of man may be of interest : From creation to i8g^. Zunz (Hebrew reckoning) 5883 years Rabbinical 5655 Ussher 5899 Panodorus 73^8 Anianus 739° Constantinopolitan 74°4 Eusebius 7°94 Scaliger 5845 Dionysius (from whom we take our Christian era) 7389 Maximus 739° Syncellus and Theophanes 7396 Julius Africanus 739° Hales 7306 Jackson 732 1 It appears, therefore, that it has been at all times an open ques- tion among the most orthodox theologians at just what date the MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 215 What adds to the unfortunate limitation of our knowledge as to primitive ages is that only a few of the early historic records have escaped the ravages of time and barbarism. The annals of the early Greeks and Etruscans are irretrievably lost. The Gauls destroyed the records of ancient Rome, and the Romans extirpated the druids of Gaul and Britain, wiping out the last vestiges of their ancient traditions. The Arabs burned the libraries of Alexandria, a Chinese emperor those of China, and Cortez and Zumarraga destroyed all the picture-writings and other records of an- cient Mexico that they could lay their hands on. We have, however, the " brick records " of Nabonidus, fragments of the chronicles of Mane- tho, and inscriptions on ancient Egyptian monu- ments and papyri ; we also have the tablets, large and small, of Assyria and Babylon, and the writ- ings of the early Greek historians, and, of more value than all these so far as an authentic history of the origin and antiquity of the human race is concerned, we have the records of the sacred Scriptures. In the words of Professor David Scriptures assign the creation of man. Of the calculations above given, nine fix it at over seven thousand years ago. " There can be therefore no ground for dogmatizing," as Dr. Geikie says, " when doctors differ so strikingly, for he would be a bold man who would impugn the soundness of the worthies who offer even the highest computations quoted." 216 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Masson, " Among primitive historians the writers of the Old Testament stand alone." Turning to these Bible records, we discover that in the earliest period of the human race the people were divided religiously into two classes, one of which was composed of those who were said to fear God, and on that account might be called "the sons of God." They are spoken of by ethnologists as Sethidae (children of Seth). They were a quiet people whose occupation chiefly was the tending of flocks and the tilling of soil. The other tribe was made up of those who had no fear of God, and among scholars are desig- nated by the word Cainidae (ch ldren of Cain). These Cainidae also were divided into two classes. The first built cities, worked metals, in- vented musical instruments, and rapidly advanced in the arts of a material civilization (Gen. iv. 21, 22). The second class consisted of explorers, wander- ing nomads, who adopted the rudest forms of the hunter's life (Gen. iv. 20), and inhabited tents or caves, as one or the other might be the more con- venient. After a while the Sethidae and Cainidae inter- married (Gen. vi. 2), and mixed races arose hav- ing great physical strength and fierce passions (Gen. vi. 47). They were cruel, daring, long- MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 217 lived, and intellectual, gaining considerable mas- tery over nature and turning it to practical uses. There followed eras of violence and warfare (Gen. vi. 5). In these strifes and contentions the nomadic tribes with brutal force threw themselves upon the settled communities, and the earth be- came such a scene of both corruption and blood- shed that, in the nature of things, the extinction of the entire human family was threatened (Gen. vi. 11, 13). The Bible record goes on to say that " God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually " (Gen. vi. 5). The destruction of the human race, excepting the family of Noah, was decided upon (Gen. vi. 17; vii. 4). We read : " All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened " (Gen. vii. 1 1). The language employed seems to imply a season of earthquakes aud cloud- bursts that resulted in a deluge of water and in wide-spread devastations. The record, which originally appears to have been written by an eye-witness, subsequently being introduced into Genesis by Moses, reads thus : " Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail ; and the moun- tains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cat- 218 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? tie, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living sub- stance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creep- ing things, and the fowl of the heaven ; and they were destroyed from the earth : and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark" (Gen. vii. 20-23; comp. 2 Pet. hi. 6). After prevailing over the earth for a hundred and fifty days the waters subsided and the chil- dren of Noah began the repeopling of a desolate world. At this point we note the interesting, indeed the remarkable, harmony just discovered and that easily can be traced (see Professor Quatrefage de Breau," Hommes Sauvages ") between the Mosaic record and geological and archaeological research. It is found that the post-glacial or, as sometimes designated, the Palaeanthropic (ancient man) period in Europe furnished three races : the Truchere, of which only a single example is at present known ; this race was of medium stature, of mild features, and probably represented the Sethites ; the Canstadt, a coarse, robust, and brutal race, representing the lower type of the Cainites ; and the gigantic cro-magnon race, of great height, having prodigious muscular power, large brains, MAN'S FIRST APPEARANCE ON EARTH 219 and massive features, representing, in all proba- bility, the people who sprang from the union of the Sethites and Cainites. According to the Mosaic record the Sethites survived the deluge ; the Cainites and half-breeds perished. So, in the transition to the Neanthropic period of geology, it was the Truchere race that survived and became the basis of the Iberian and other modern races, while the Canstadt and cro- magnon types, as races, disappeared. Now, grouping the different sources of informa- tion that are classed under written history, add- ing to them the most reliable traditions and the results of archaeological science, we reach the fol- lowing conclusions: Not far from four thousand years ago the descendants of Noah's family had formed small nationalities and were scattered over the most inviting parts of widely extended terri- tories, having inherited from their ancestors some degree of civilization. They were soon engaged in laying the founda- tions of powerful empires. The Assyrian king- dom was coming into shape ; the Egyptian dynasties were taking root ; the Phenicians were deciding upon the site of Sidon ; China was being peopled ; the wise men of India were beginning to think out the Vedas ; and the Persian monarchy was soon to come into notice and achieve its bril- liant conquests. And it should be borne in mind 220 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? also that these were the first countries and the first races of men of which written history, aside from the Bible, makes any mention. Not long after there were settlements in Europe and in northeastern Asia, and we have reason to suppose that the peopling of America by those descendants of Noah who were venturesome enough to cross by the chain of islands connect- ing Asia and America, or, more likely perhaps, making the passage from the extreme eastern point of Siberia to the more westerly point of Russian America, speedily followed. Marquis de Nadaillac, who has studied carefully the early history of America, thinks he has abundant rea- son for saying that " a primeval dolichocephalic race" appears, in the first instance, to have in- vaded North America from eastern Asia. Among the leading scholars of the present time there is general concurrence in this opinion. CHAPTER XI Primitive Men and Race Unity i. rough- stone age of geology identical with the antediluvian age of the BIBLE We now turn in a direction where even our naturalistic friends will be glad to follow, calling attention to what geology and archaeology report concerning a deluge that occurred some time after Europe and America had received their earliest populations ; we mean those people called antediluvians, who preceded the descendants of Noah, of whom we have just spoken. There is no question, at least no ground for question, that before the formation of what in geology are called the " uppermost gravels " Europe and America were inhabited by a race of partially civilized people. While the deposits found in the caverns of 222 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? England, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium have furnished the largest amount of evidence on this subject, still the countries bor- dering on the Mediterranean Sea, the arctic re- gions, and some parts of North and South Amer- ica recently have been found full of interest. For information on these matters science is under special obligations to M. Edouard Francois Du- pont, who has made a well-nigh exhaustive study of the Belgium caves, more particularly those near Liege ; to Dr. Emile Riviere, who has examined thoroughly the remains found at Cro-magnon, Mentone, and elsewhere in France ; to Mr. Pen- gaily, who is one of the best authorities on the deposits in Kent's Hole and in the caverns of Brix- ham, England; to Dr. Garrigou, who has given the most reliable account of the caverns of the Mediterranean valley ; to Nordenskiold, who has carefully studied the arctic regions ; and to D'Or- bigny, whose work has been confined chiefly to South America. These specialists are our authority for the fol- lowing statements : The people inhabiting Europe during the earliest stone age, judging from the extent of territory they traversed, were of a ven- turesome spirit, and, judging from the symmetry and size of their skulls, they were endowed with a degree of intellectual power that is not surpassed in modern times; and they possessed no small PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 223 measure of artistic skill, if we may judge from the manufacture of bone and ivory implements and ornaments that are peculiar to that age. The so-called " tallies "found with human skele- tons, which are admirably illustrated in the " Re- liquiae Antiquitanicae " of Christy and Lartet, show that the oldest European men were familiar with what may be called the rudiments of writing. Furthermore, their manner of burying the dead is evidence that they believed in immortality. But that belief, according to the science of com- parative religions, carried with it a sense of moral obligation, and also a belief in some kind of Su- preme Being. On the other hand, notwithstanding their intel- lectual endowments and religious thoughts, those ancient stone men were a God-defying, violent, and brutal race. They had abundant time to in- crease in iniquity, for, judging from the wearing down of their teeth and from other unmistakable evidence based upon the condition of their bones, they matured slowly and attained extraordinary length of life. There were among them men of giant frames, bony, sinewy, and of commanding stature. Some of their skeletons measure from seven to ten feet in height. With these ancient people of the rough-stone age were contemporaneous the mammoth, the hairy rhinoceros, the elephant, the hippopotamus, 224 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? the cave-bear, the giant cave-lion, hyenas, and other extinct species of mammals. In the vast territory extending from India and the Mediterranean Sea to the arctic seas are found caverns in which are the bones of these extinct mammals, together with the relics of man. There is no question that vast herds of elephants took possession of northern Europe, arctic Asia, and Great Britain, going as far south as southern Australia. In North America the Elephas primigenius during those same periods roamed from Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Mexico on the south to Can- ada on the northeast and to Oregon and Alaska on the northwest. The mastodon covered nearly the same territory. And in these same latitudes, and contemporaneous with the elephant and mas- todon, lived the men of the rough-stone age. In South America species of extinct quadrupeds by the hundred have been classified. They in- clude squirrels, beavers, llamas, stags, mastodons, hyenas, wolves, panthers, ant-eaters, armadillo- like creatures, and the rhinoceros. And with these extinct mammalia in the caverns of Brazil Dr. Lund recently has discovered human skele- tons. It also should be borne in mind that these mam- mals of which we are now speaking were not con- temporaneous with those that were destroyed by PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 225 the ice age. These appeared after that age and disappeared about the time of the Champlain sub- mergence. " We search in vain," says Dr. Daniel Wilson, in his " Prehistoric Man," " for any con- necting link between the oldest historic races and those belonging to what Professor J. Trimmer designates as the ' second elephantine period.' ' After these different and widely scattered peoples had inhabited the earth for a period, not of indefinite but of comparatively limited dura- tion ; after they had settled in the valleys of the Nile and Tigris; after they had explored and drained the swamps of Egypt, and had built up the civilizations of those countries; after they had invaded northeastern and northwestern Asia ; after they had made a passage from northeastern Asia to northwestern America, which at that time more easily could have been done than at present ; after they had crossed the Rocky Mountains and had fought the mighty mammoth and mastodon on our western plains as they had fought them in Europe and Asia ; then those most ancient men, in the midst of their career, were destroyed, and their stone implements, as an eminent geologist states the case, " were carried forward with peb- bles washed out of the surface chalk, and were deposited by floods with sand, gravels, or mud where we now find them." In this connection the words of Ermann, in his 226 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? " Travels in Siberia," likewise are worthy of quotation : " The ground in Yakootsk, the internal condition of which was found while sinking M. Shergin's well, consists, to the depth of at least one hundred feet, of strata of loam, fine sand, and magnetic sand. They have been deposited from waters which at one time, and it may be presumed suddenly, overflowed the whole country as far as the Polar Sea. In these deepest strata are found twigs, rocks, and leaves of trees of the birch and willow kinds. Everywhere throughout these im- mense alluvial deposits are now lying the bones of antediluvian quadrupeds along with vegetable remains . . . heaped together in great masses, young and old, those feeding on vegetables and those feeding on flesh, all swept into a common grave in beds of clay, surface gravel, slate, and loam." These facts have led Sir Henry Howorth, the Duke of Argyle, Sir William Dawson, Norden- skiold, Dawkins, M. d' Archiac, Professor Cope, and the French authorities already referred to, Christy and Lartet, to the conclusion that the early or rough-stone age was brought to its close, and the mammoth, mastodon, and all the larger and un- wieldy animals were destroyed, " by tremendous and destructive inundations." And if some of the large mammals recently discovered in Siberia, whose flesh is still preserved, belong to the early PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 227 stone age, as has been claimed, then we have another strong clue ; for the blood in the capilla- ries of those animals is in just the condition it- would be if they had met death by drowning. At that time, too, certain geographical changes took place by which the land became less exten- sive than before and water channels then sepa- rated territories that had been united. Probably just prior to that time Asia and North America, at a point where now are the Aleutian Islands and Bering Strait, were undivided continents, and the British Isles were part of the continent of Europe. Nor is there any reason for doubting that the land in the south arctic circle, during the early periods of human life on the earth, had such ex- tension as to allow of easy migration between the continents and adjoining islands. At the time of this destructive deluge, or im- mediately after, the climate of Europe, Asia, and America appears to have become more rigorous and the continents took on the outlines which essentially they have retained to the present. After a period estimated all the way from one to ten thousand years, with a constant tendency to the lower estimate, there appeared in Europe a second prehistoric race of about the same degree of civilization as their predecessors, but of smaller stature, very closely resembling the modern Es- kimo, the Iberian, and the inhabitants of the 228 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Canary Islands. Whence they came science, in- dependent of the Bible account, has been unable to tell us. With this new race the reindeer and the later cave-bear were contemporaneous, as the mastodon and mammoth had been with the race that pre- ceded. Hence these two prehistoric peoples have been termed respectively men of the " mammoth " and men of the " reindeer " age; unquestionably they are not identical, and all attempts to make them so have proved utterly abortive. M. Dupont, M. de Mortillet, M. de Carlaelhuc, and Mr. James Geikie have established beyond reasonable ques- tion this " hiatus between the earlier and later European prehistoric men." Dr. Garrigou ex- plored between two and three hundred caverns in the Mediterranean region, and in every instance found a gap between the old and the new stone men. This second European race, now extinct, was not destroyed, however, by terrestrial distur- bances or by floods of water, as its predecessor had been, but appears to have been displaced or exterminated in northwestern Europe either by the historic Celts, who, on both ethnological and philological grounds, are supposed to be Asiatic in their origin, or by other invaders from Asia. Among those who are familiar with these sub- jects it no longer is questioned that between the PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 229 earlier and later prehistoric peoples of America there is also a similar " lost interval." The race of men who fought the mammoth disappeared, and later was succeeded by the mound-builders and their contemporaries. D'Orbigny, whose studies have been confined especially to South America, is authority, with others, for the statement that there is evidence from the arctic circle to Cape Horn of a flood that destroyed the larger mam- mals and the earlier race of stone men. Before reaching our conclusion two questions briefly may be considered. First, Why are there in Europe and America no remains or ruins of towns and villages in which some of these earlier people must have lived ? The absence of evidence in this case really need be no matter of surprise when we consider the length of time that has intervened, the character of building materials used, the floods that over- took the first, and the wars of extermination that destroyed the men of the second stone age. The other question until quite recently has not received a ready answer. It is this : Among the unlimited amount of ruins in Egypt and cen- tral Asia, why are there none that antedate the flood ? The reply is, that it is not clear that such ruins do not exist. The latest discoveries of Pro- fessor Flinders Petrie, one of the most distin- guished of English Egyptologists, have been made £>30 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? about thirty miles north of Thebes on the western shore of the Nile. The remains that he has un- earthed are found among gravel that geologically corresponds to the river gravels of England and France, in which are the European Paleolithic (ancient stone) remains. These discoveries of Petrie are not Egyptian in any respect. The art is ruder, and the manner of burying the dead differs from that practised among the Egyptians. The skulls are those of a race of people capable of great things, having well-developed heads, thin, hooked nose, high forehead, arching eyebrows, straight teeth, and without any trace of the negro. The women had long wavy hair of a brown color, some specimens of which are in a state of fine preservation. Now if it should be established, as Professor Petrie conjectures, that this recently discovered prehistoric race antedates the historic Egyptian by a thousand years, and that between the two there is no identity, then we may assume, until there is evidence to the contrary, that these earlier people of Egypt were antediluvian and contemporary with the earlier stone men of Europe and with the first races that overspread America. Turning our attention to that part of Asia known as Mesopotamia, there are discovered mounds of different dates, and that there is a missing period between the earliest settlement of the Tigris valley PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 231 and the period when the kings of Babylon and Assyria were fighting each other for supremacy no longer is questioned. Perhaps the most aston- ishing historic hiatus is the one occurring after the reigns of Sargon, Naram-Sin, Alusharshid, and Lasirab. For centuries and centuries following the close of these Mesopotamian dynasties the whole country was wrapped in profound silence ; " we discover no figure and hear no sound." And when those valleys more thoroughly are explored " there is a possibility, if not a probability," says Professor Rogers, " that under some of the many mounds will be unearthed the ruins of cities that were built by an antediluvian people." This part of our discussion hardly will be com- plete without calling attention to the world's tradition of a great flood such as the Bible depicts and such as, beyond question, the science of geology has now established. So much has been written on the subject that it may be sufficient to say that this tradition is found among every people on earth except one ; that the various accounts agree in these particu- lars : that the deluge was universal, that it de- stroyed all but a limited number, and that the survivors were the progenitors of all existing peoples. Since the authorities on this subject are well- nigh numberless, we shall be pardoned for allow- 232 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? ing M. Francois Lenormant, one of the most recent and distinguished writers on this subject, to speak for others. In his " Beginning of His- tory " he says : " We are in position to affirm that the account of the deluge is a universal tradition in all branches of the human family, with the sole exception of the black races, and a tradition everywhere so exact and so concordant cannot possibly be referred to an imaginary myth. It was an actual and terrible event, which made so powerful an impression upon the first parents of our species that their descendants could never forget it." A brief summary and reiteration of this historic, archaeological, and geological survey, in which the Bible record and scientific discoveries are brought together, is now allowable. According to the Bible, one family of the ante- diluvians is represented as " nomads with mova- ble tents, migrating widely over the earth and engaged in the rudest forms of a hunter's life." The other family is represented as leading a more settled and civilized life. According to geology and archaeology, the earliest people of Egypt and Asia were of various occupations ; some were ex- plorers, while others were the builders of towns and cities. The antediluvians of the Bible lived to an ad- vanced age, were defiant, filled the earth with PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 233 violence, and were giants in stature and strength. The prehistoric men of whom geology gives ac- count were possessed of the same characteristics. The antediluvians of the Bible were destroyed by a deluge of waters caused by terrestrial sub- mergences and torrents of rain. In like manner, the early stone men of Europe and America were overtaken by the submergence that followed the " second continental " period of geology, and there is no scientific evidence that that submergence is not identical with the deluge of Noah. As the case now stands, the evidence points to this conclusion rather than to any other, that the first settlers of Europe and America, and the un- Egyptian people whose remains recently have been discovered in that country, and the pro- genitors of the prehistoric races that entered the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris were contem- poraneous, were the antediluvians of the Bible, and were in common the direct descendants of Adam. II. UNITY OF THE RACE The question of race unity, at one time dis- cussed vigorously, in late years has been over- shadowed by the prominence with which other subjects, especially the origin of the species, and evolution, have been forced into notice. But very likely this question of race unity soon 234 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? will receive renewed attention, and, as it now stands in our pathway, requires at least a brief consideration. The opinion of several eminent scientists, in- cluding so noted a man as the elder Professor Agassiz, is this : Though man was brought into being by the direct interposition of the infinite Creator, yet the " unity of the origin of the race " does not follow, and instead of a single pair, as the Bible appears to teach, there were created several pairs at the same time in different parts of the earth. Still, it is believed by Professor Agassiz and his friends that all varieties of the human family are sufficiently alike to be grouped as one species. It is said, also, that this view of the origin of man is not really in conflict with the Bible account of creation, because the writers of the Bible, as is claimed, were directed not to go beyond the origin of the white races, and to con- fine attention chiefly to the history of Israel. While there are some grounds for this view, there are many and strong reasons for doubting in nearly every particular its correctness. As our readers very well know, the principal sources of information bearing on the subject are tradition, written history, archaeological re- searches, the study of language, and that part of the study of mankind which M. Broca calls " the biology of the human race." PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 235 With regard to traditional evidence, it may be said that no one who has made of it a careful and unprejudiced study can fail to see that the widely prevailing traditions of an earthly primitive para- dise, of the fall, and of the deluge, point in the direction of a common origin for the human family, and as a rule in no other direction. John Christopher Adelung, who is an unques- tioned authority in these matters, speaks thus : " Asia has been in all times regarded as the country where the human race had its beginning, received its first education, and from which its increase was spread over the rest of the globe. Tracing the people up to tribes, and the tribes up to families, we are conducted at last, if not by history, at least by tradition of all old people, to a single pair, from which families, tribes, and na- tions have been successively produced." Information as to the origin of the race from written history is confined almost entirely to the Bible, and there is no valid reason why it should not be allowed a place among our authorities on this subject. Taking the Old and New Testaments together, the view that all mankind has descended from a single pair is indisputably set forth and in the most explicit terms. In the Bible scheme of re- demption every human being is viewed as hav- ing blood relations with Adam. The Greeks and 236 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? barbarians are represented as having a common origin, and God, we are explicitly told, " made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth " (Acts xvii. 26). Passing from tradition and written history to archaeological researches, it is found that certain customs which have prevailed among peoples widely separated, such as the worship of the pre- Christian cross, phallus worship, the building of megalithic monuments, the distorting of human skulls, the depositing of flint implements and other relics in the graves of the dead, if not ab- solutely conclusive, give strong support to the theory of a common race origin. The science of comparative theology and re- ligion that brings together for study the theo- logical and religious views of different ages and nations likewise reaches a similar conclusion. Comparative philology, or the study of the lan- guages of the human family, is fuller of interest and material on this subject, perhaps, than any other of the several sources of information that are available to us. While at present there are approximately six thousand spoken languages, yet of this large number only five or six are more than one thou- sand years old. And the facts that words from tongues most widely separated easily can be in- corporated into one another, and that certain roots PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 237 bearing striking resemblances are found in tongues that in other respects are the most dissimilar, sug- gest a past brotherhood in all languages and, therefore, a past brotherhood of the entire human family. Canon Farrar, in his " Language and Lan- guages," in a passage of considerable brilliancy points out the identity of the several tongues of one of the most important of the great families of speech : " When once a few scholars had pro- foundly studied it and had published their results to the world, — when such a book as Bopp's * Comparative Grammar ' had placed side by side the facts of nine such languages as Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Sla- vonian, Gothic, and German, and when Prichard, Zeuss, Diefenbach, and others had published their Celtic labors, — it could not longer remain doubt- ful to any reasonable man that the stately Brah- man, and the gay Frenchman, and the restless Albanian, and the Irish peasant, and the Russian serf, and the Lithuanian farmer, and the English gentleman, and the Dutch boor — nay, even the poor outcast wandering Gipsy— all speak lan- guages which were once a single and undivided form of human speech, and are all sprung from ancestors who radiated from one geographical center which was their common home." Professor Max Miiller shows from certain 238 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? radicals which have been current in the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech from their earliest date that beyond any question these tongues have a common origin. Chevalier Bunsen and Professor Robert Gordon Latham, in their study of the Indo-European and the Coptic families of speech, reach a similar conclusion. Dr. John William Donaldson, after careful investigation, insists that the two great branches of human speech, the Slavonian and the Semitic, are from the same source. Dr. Joseph Edkins, in his admirable book entitled " China's Place in Philology," shows, by means of Chinese monosyllabic radicals, that the lines of affinity are so strong between the Chinese and all other lan- guages of the Old World that a common origin cannot be denied. Now from these facts and authorities it must be confessed that comparative philology presents well-nigh unanswerable evidence not only of " the unity of the human family," but also of " the unity of the origin of the human family." We pass next to a consideration of what is termed " the biology of the human race." We ask for this phrase a wide latitude, and note, in the first place, that at the present time there is scarcely any dissent from the opinion that differences in physiognomy, like differences in speech, do not present any such insurmountable PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 239 barriers to race unity as once were supposed to exist. For instance, the faces of Greeks, Italians, Germans, and Englishmen differ, but no one ques- tions that they all are of the same family stock and that the origin of the family is comparatively recent. The possible amalgamation of all branches of the human race, the same pulse-beats and inhala- tions per minute, the same average temperature, essentially the same wants and passions, are other biological evidences in favor of race unity and of a common origin. But perhaps expert opinion, showing that the physiological differences and the wide and early distributions of mankind are not such as to militate against race unity, will be more satisfactory than the grouping of facts and the drawing of infer- ences from them. We therefore allow others, who have made a specialty of these studies, to ex- press their views, and with these quotations con- clude this chapter. Dr. John Charles Hall, in his Introduction to Pickering's "Races of Men," is emphatic: "We are fully satisfied that all the races of man are, as the Bible clearly expresses it, ' of one blood ' : the black man, the red man, and the white man are links in one great chain of relationship and are children who have descended from one common parent." 240 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Buffon, in his "Natural History," says : " Every circumstance concurs in proving that mankind are not composed of species essentially different from each other ; on the contrary, there was originally but one species, which, after multiplying and spreading on the whole surface of the earth, has undergone various changes by the influences of climate, food, mode of living, epidemic diseases, and the mixture of dissimilar individuals." Dr. Prichard, in his " Physical History of Man- kind," after speaking of the higher endowments of humanity concludes thus : " When we compare this fact with the observations which have been heretofore fully established as to the specific in- stincts and separate physical endowments of all the distinct tribes of sentient beings in the world, we are entitled to draw confidently the conclusion that all human races are of one species and one family." Sir J. W. Dawson, in " Nature and the Bible," after surveying the early history of man, says : " We may so surely conclude that all the above coincidences cannot be accidental, and that what we know of primitive man from geological inves- tigation presents no contradiction to the history of his origin in the Bible, but rather gives such corroboration as warrants the expectation that, as our knowledge of prehistoric men increases, it will more and more fully bring out the force of those few and bold touches with which it has pleased PRIMITIVE MEN AND RACE UNITY 241 God to enable his ancient prophets to sketch the early history of our species." Says Bancroft, the historian : " Humanity has a common character. The scholar may find analogies in language, customs, institutions, and religion between the aborigines of America and any nation whatever of the Old World." Says Professor Winchell, in one of his latest books : " I hold that the blood of the first human stock flows in the veins of every living human being." And again: " A chain of profound rela- tionship runs through the constitution of the races, and they may be regarded as genealogically connected together." The following quotations from Professor Huxley ought to be satisfactory to his admirers, and by the friends of the Bible are certainly welcomed as a valuable contribution on this subject. In his " Critiques and Addresses " he says: " Granting the polygenist premises [he means the theory that living things sprang from many cells or em- bryos of different kinds], you may still with per- fect consistency be the strictest of monogenists [he means those who hold the opinion that all beings are derived from a single cell] and even believe in Adam and Eve as the primeval parents of all mankind. . . . The chief philosophical objection to Adam is not his oneness, but the hypothesis of his special creation." 242 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Elsewhere in the same book he says: "They [the polygenists] have as yet completely failed to adduce satisfactory positive proof of the specific diversity of mankind. . . . The assumption of more than one primitive stock for all is altogether superfluous." CHAPTER XII The Trinity and the Logos i. the trinity from a philosophical and scientific point of view How did man and woman, between six and ten thousand years ago, come upon this earth ? is still the unanswered question. It is apparently a matter forever settled that they could not have come through any of the processes of naturalistic evolution thus far proposed. So far as this question is concerned, if we may be allowed to personify naturalism, we should say that it is at the present time a wounded man, quite sick, much out of sorts and out of breath, in its fruitless endeavors to account for the origin of things. Under these circumstances it is cer- tainly the privilege of supernaturalism to offer its own hypothesis and to present whatever evidence there is in its support. But at the outset supernaturalism is confronted 243 244 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? by a very serious theological difficulty, which may be stated in the form of a question : How can the First Cause, or the supernatural, invisible, infinite, and eternal Something or Some One which supernaturalism presupposes, come in contact with a visible and finite universe? Or, to state the question in another form, How can an infinite and invisible Being create matter, make a system of worlds, handle clay and form it into a man, or into anything like a man, or into a mass of bioplasm ? In answering this question we are introduced to one of the profoundest and, in the judgment of some people, one of the most perplexing if not self-contradictory doctrines of the Christian reli- gion, a doctrine that is said to require a belief in the stupendous absurdity that three are one, and that one is three. Our reply ought to be anticipated that no one can believe a proposition that is self-contradictory. Mathematically, three never have been one, and never can be one ; and one never has been three, and never can be three. In the realm of figures such a dogma would be treason anywhere in the physical universe, and the stability of the universe would be disturbed, if not overthrown, by the in- troduction into it of such a mathematical anar- chism. Hence we are led to say that naturalistic Uni- THE TRINITY AND THE LOGOS 245 tarianism, when asserting that Trinitarianism teaches a mathematical Trinity, or that it teaches that there are at the same time three Gods and only one God, is criticizing a man of straw. Such a belief, we repeat, is impossible and unintelligi- ble, is not the faith of any Trinitarian who has given the subject serious thought, and is not found in any of the creeds of Christendom. But, on the other hand, a metaphysical Trinity may enter into the belief of the most intelligent of men, and is no more impossible or strange in the divine nature than any other mode of existence would be. Our criticism upon naturalistic Uni- tarianism, in part, is that it makes God too small and limits him where there is no need of limita- tion. It gives to him but one consciousness, while the universe, on the ground of self-consis- tency, requires in a Creator, as presently we shall see, at least a threefold consciousness. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, one of Germany's most distinguished art critics and philosophers, puts the subject, not in the cold dogmatic state- ment of theology, but in plain speech and with remarkable suggestiveness, thus : " How if this doctrine of the Trinity should, after numberless deviations right and left, bring the human under- standing finally on the way to perceive that God, in the understanding wherein finite things are one, can by no possibility be one — that his unity 246 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? must be a transcendental unity, which does not exclude a kind of plurality? " To this question of Lessing we add another; namely, May it not be just as easy or natural for God to exist with a threefold consciousness as for a human being to exist with what is supposed to be a single consciousness? After a moment's self-inspection no thoughtful person can escape the conclusion that without any stupendous difficulty even a human being might exist with a double or threefold consciousness. That good something and that bad something that every one feels within, and also that other something within that judges and decides between the other two (Rom. vii. 15-35), so f ar as we can see, might be developed until they each could have a pronounced individual distinctness, the personality of the man remaining the same as before. And, on further thought, it would seem that long ago naturalism should have suggested that this antagonistic nature of man is a sort of threefold embryonic consciousness which in an- other stage of existence, when the evolution of the human mind and soul is complete, will be per- fected. And, as a result of that perfected evolu- tion, heaven may consist partly in the harmonious working of this fully developed threefold con- sciousness, and hell may be in part a perpetual mutiny within the unregenerated man, which even THE TRINITY AND THE LOGOS 247 now, while the soul is only on the threshold of what it is to be, is bitter enough to produce the intensest misery (Rom. vii. 24). This unfolding of a threefold consciousness, with heaven in one soul and hell in another, would be far less surpris- ing than the evolution of the wonderfully endowed human body from a bit of living protoplasm, and vastly less surprising than any of the false schemes of evolution that naturalism has been trying to defend. But, returning to the doctrine under discussion, no reader of the Bible can fail to see that it teaches that there is one God, and only one, but that his nature has in it a threefoldness. To say that such a doctrine is an absurdity would be the same as to say that a sunbeam is an absurdity. It was shown by Sir Isaac Newton, and still further was established and illustrated by Professor John William Draper, that in every one of the million sunbeams which reach the earth are wrapped up three distinct forces — the illuminating force, the heat force, and the chemical force. And yet these distinct forces do not destroy, so to speak, the personality of the sunbeam. It is one thing, and always is spoken of in the singular number. In this fact is a suggestion that naturalism need not hesitate to recognize, which put in definite form is this : there is an invisible universe back of and above the visible universe, and both arc 248 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? made on the same general plan ; so that the in- visible one may be inferred from the visible. It follows, too, that if in the invisible universe there is a First Cause, his nature and character may be inferred from the natural and visible phenomena that he has created. Now, applying this suggestion or inference to the specific subject before us, the formula takes this shape : If a Trin- ity exists in the invisible universe, or if the First Cause is a Trinity, then physical nature should report the fact throughout her domains. Is this the case ? becomes, therefore, at this point a ques- tion of prime importance. So far as the threefoldness and unity of the sunbeam are concerned, there is, as we have seen, no question. But we must extend our observa- tion if we would escape the common peril of mak- ing an induction from limited data. For a few moments let us place ourselves for the purpose of observation outside the bounds of all physical existences (if there is such a place). One of the first things attracting attention would be what Professor Huxley has called " unity of substantial composition." That is to say, we are confronted by a universe of matter whose composition is essentially the same substance. Next we should discover that the universe is the theater of innumerable forces whose play is un- ceasing and whose variety apparently is without THE TRINITY AND THE LOGOS 249 limit. But in its last analysis this endless variety of forces, this universal and eternal vibration of forces, is found to be one and the same infinite power. The phrase used by Professor Huxley to designate this phenomenon is " unity of power." The third observation that we should make is de- scribed by this same professor as " unity of form." Now, is it not singular that, without any supposed leaning toward theology, this distinguished natu- ralist, as the result of his many investigations, has announced the following trinitarian formula? " Unity of power, unity of form, and unity of substantial composition " make up the one physi- cal universe. The late Professor Benjamin Peirce, of Harvard University, is the author of a scientific lecture whose subject is " The Combining of Law, Force, and Intention in the Universe." Under the title " Sociology and Cosmology," in a paper just issued, Lester F. Ward, paleo- botanist of the United States Survey, enumerates as the essentials and constants of the universe, first, " form " (worlds, plants, animals), second, "forces," and, third, "law of evolution." The words employed by these three distinguished scientists differ, but the thought they have in mind appears to be the same, and is a confession that the doctrine of a Trinity is written on the face of the universe as really as Sir Isaac New- 250 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? ton and Dr. Draper found it infolded in the sun- beam. Another illustration is a very simple one that will require no mental strain to follow. We lift our eyes from the page we are reading and look at some object, say a tree. We note that it is made up of solid matter (leaves, bark, woody fiber, etc.), which is visible. In addition there are in the composition of the tree force and law. It is force that builds the tree, and it is law that governs the building of it. Hence in its essential composition the tree is a trinity ; and these three factors, and nothing else, enter into the constitution of the tree. Still further it should be noted that the elimi- nation of either of these factors would do away with the tree. The material and the force without law would result in — well, anything you please ; it might be an earth mound or a flash of lightning, but a million chances to one the resultant would not be a tree. The material and the law without force could not build a tree. The substance of the tree would remain forever in the soil and in the atmosphere. And, too, the law and the force without matter, so far as the natural eye can see, would result in nothing but empty space. It is as Goethe say's : " The beautiful is a manifestation of the secret laws of nature, which but for this appearance had THE TRINITY AND THE LOGOS 251 been forever concealed from us." We repeat, therefore, that the tree is essentially a oneness and a threeness — a trinity. Or we may lift our eyes from the tree to the stars. Those heavenly bodies are constituted of matter, are controlled by laws, and are propelled by forces. But the laws that govern them in their stupendous orbits and the forces that hurl them through spaces of bewildering magnitude are invisible. It is the material in the composition of the stars that makes known their existence and also the existence of the laws and the forces that govern them. Everywhere in the universe, as naturalism tells us, there are these invisible laws, invisible forces, and material manifestations. Three writers of note very explicitly have set forth these thoughts, each, however, independently of the others. John Gottlieb Fichte, one of the profoundest speculative minds Germany has given to the world, after going the rounds of philosophy and theology declared that " the moral order of the world," which is a " law of the universe," is God. And we will not dispute him. Thomas Carlyle, after giving much thought to natural phenomena, exclaimed, " Force, force, everywhere force ! Illimitable whirlwind of force, which envelops us ; everlasting whirlwind, high as immensity, old as eternity — what is it?" He 252 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? stopped a moment, and then answered, " It is Almighty God ! " This is true, but not the whole truth. Professor Alexander Bain, fixing his eye on visible nature, declared, in common with all atheis- tic materialists, that " nature is God." And he is partly, at least metaphorically, right; for the material universe, when asked, " Show us the Father," could reply, as Christ did to Philip: " Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Now, what we may insist on and what no one will deny, unless very obstinate, is that in the universe there is law, which Fichte declares is God ; there is power, which Carlyle declares is God ; there is material manifestation, which Pro- fessor Bain declares is God ; and these three, as Professors Huxley and Peirce and Lester F. Ward assure us, constitute the one physical universe, all of which can mean nothing less than this : that the First Cause has builded into the material universe the doctrine of the Trinity as clearly and emphat- ically as it is revealed in the sacred Scriptures. These sayings of Fichte, Carlyle, Bain, Huxley, Peirce, and Ward are a suggestive commentary on the remarkable announcement of the apostle, " The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by THE TRINITY AND THE LOGOS 253 the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead" (Rom. i. 20). Naturalism may hesitate to take the next step, which leads still further into the domains of the- ology, but the invitation to it is extended. Christian theology teaches that the Father is the lawgiver of the universe. Law is his symbol. It teaches that the Holy Spirit is the source of power and activity in the universe. Power is his symbol. It teaches that the Logos is the mani- festation of the otherwise invisible Father and Spirit. Manifestation is his symbol. Now that there are three distinct factors con- stituting the universe (law, force, and manifesta- tion), naturalism cannot question. That each of these factors has a distinct source is a proposition that will stand the test of any amount of investiga- tion. That these sources exist in a First Cause that may be called Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Father representing law, the Son representing manifestation, the Spirit representing power, is a proposition in which we challenge naturalistic Unitarianism to point out a single thing that is unscientific or unphilosophical. And that unity of constitution, as an attribute of the threefold being called the First Cause, is possible and is as rational as the constitution of the universe, no one can dispute. In due time it may turn out, therefore, that the 254 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? words, " In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," have a depth of meaning that no naturalistic plummet has begun to sound. If the age of thinking is not past the doctrine of the Trinity will rest some day upon an intellectual basis so much more profound than hitherto has been imagined that among thought- ful men all controversy, except perhaps with re- gard to the formula employed, will come to an end. If, therefore, the First Cause has a threefold consciousness, and if it is the function or office of one of the consciousnesses to make manifest other- wise invisible existences, and, further, if one of the ways of making the invisible manifest is by creating a temporal, visible, and material universe, then the greatest, or one of the greatest, of our theological difficulties is removed, and a supernat- ural creation becomes not only possible, but, in the nature of things, reasonable and perhaps necessary. For creation is simply the manifesta- tion of the eternal First Cause by the Logos, which manifestation is as natural as is any other act that can be attributed to that First Cause, as natural as it is for a being endowed with speech to talk. II. AN APPEAL TO THE BIBLE We now have reached a point beyond which we cannot proceed without making a still more THE TRINITY AND THE LOGOS 255 specific appeal to revealed theology. And we ask naturalism to follow not blindly nor carelessly, for the path before us, every step of the way, may be tested. In these matters and at this point we first submit to naturalism the question whether the Bible, which is the source of revealed theology, has not some claims to our consideration. In this treatise we cannot present at any con- siderable length the evidence of the credibility of the Bible, but we may ask of naturalism three or four questions. Is it not remarkable that the Book of Genesis denied the eternity of matter, while other ancient writings asserted it? Is it not also remarkable that the Book of Genesis employs " a transitive verb in a species of conjugation where it is never used of human actions, and where there is no di- rect object on which its action is expended"? Such Hebrew scholars as Delitzsch, Gesenius, Aben Ezra, Miihlan and Volck, Dillmann and Ewald, have established for us the meaning of the word bara, translated in our Bible " created." That verb in the kal species as found in Genesis " has acquired," says Delitzsch in his " Commentary," " the idiomatic meaning of a divine creating which, whether in the kingdom of nature, or of history, or of the spirit, calls into being that which hitherto had no existence. It never appears as the word for human creations, differing in this from nbv f 256 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? IT, T?% which are used both of men and of God." Is it not remarkable that this same verb is used j/ to represent the creation of animal life and of the soul of man, in complete rejection of spontaneous generation, which was confidently and quite gen- erally believed until the last quarter of a century ? And is not this all the more remarkable since only a few years ago the scientific world was going mad on evolution, while now the great majority of scientists, represented by such men ./as Wallace, Romanes, Mivart, Agassiz, and Dana, have stepped out of the ranks of thoroughgoing evolutionists and have announced their belief in the doctrine of the primary creation of the human soul? Is it not remarkable, too, that the Book of Genesis four thousand years ago recorded the fact that vegetable life was created prior to animal life, while it is only a recent discovery of biology that vegetables alone can manufacture protoplasm from the atmosphere, the water, and the soils, and that animal life is dependent upon vegetable proto- plasm, and that only recently has geology made it absolutely certain that plant life preceded ani- mal life, thus confirming Bible revelation? And is it any less remarkable that long ago this same book announced the unity of the race, the origin of the species, and the dual constitu- THE TRINITY AND THE LOGOS 257 tion of man in such a way as to meet the present requirements of ethnology, physiology, and psy- chology ? Certainly there are grounds for the claim of Sir William Dawson, who, in the closing sentence of his " Nature and the Bible," says, " And finally I may state, as the conclusion of the whole matter, that the Bible contains within itself all that, under God, is required to account for and dispose of all forms of infidelity, and to turn to the best and highest uses all that man can learn of nature." And Professor Dana had thought the ground over and must have had reason for saying that " there is so much in the Scriptures which the most recent readings of science have for the first time explained that the idea of man as the author becomes utterly incomprehensible." Nor was the prophecy of the learned Duke of Argyle thoughtlessly uttered : " The time is perhaps nearer than we anticipate when natural science and theology will unite in the conviction that the first chapter of Genesis stands alone among the traditions of mankind in the wonderful simplicity and grandeur of its words, and that the meaning of these words is always a meaning ahead of science, not because it anticipates the results of science, but because it is independent of them and runs, as it were, round the outer margin of all possible discovery." 258 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Are there not also grounds forFichte's question and answer? "Who educated the first human pair? A Spirit interested himself in them, as is laid down by an old, venerable, primeval document which, taken altogether, contains the profoundest, sublimest wisdom and discloses results to which all philosophy must at last come." And the confession of the late Lieutenant Maury of the United States navy, distinguished on account of both his valuable scientific discov- eries and his published works, was not made hastily, but after years of thoughtful investigation : " I have always found in my scientific studies that when I could get the Bible to say anything on the subject it afforded me a firm platform to stand upon and a round in the ladder by which I could safely ascend." Or would it be ill becoming in us to listen at- tentively to Sir John Herschel when saying that " all human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths contained in the Holy Scriptures"? And while Professor Huxley's words do not bear especially upon the subject under considera- tion, still they are in such contrast with many of the careless and flippant sayings of infidelity that we quote them : " Take the Bible as a whole, make the severest deductions which fair criticism can dictate, and there still remains in this old liter- We trinity and the logos 259 ature a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur." Now, in all candor, we ask if we have not a sufficient number of facts and sufficient expert opinion in both quality and quantity to justify us in giving the Bible a place among other authori- ties in settling the question of the origin of the species, including the creation of man and woman. III. THE LOGOS IN HISTORY If we are now permitted to refer to the Bible, we shall discover that the Logos, called oftenest in the Old Testament the Angel of the Lord, the first visible manifestation in the universe (Heb. i. 6), was wont to appear on earth. He was in Eden before the creation of Adam and Eve, and there is reason for supposing that after they had been called into being he had frequent inter- views with this father and mother of the human race. It was from the presence of the Logos that the offending and guilty pair sought to hide them- selves among the trees of the garden. It was this Logos who walked with Enoch, talked with Noah, appeared to Abraham, wrestled with Jacob by the ford Jabbok, gave the law to Moses in the mount, and communed in the furnace with the three young Hebrews. In general it may be said that, " while the angels mentioned in the New 260 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Testament seem always to have been personal agents, yet in the Old Testament the so-called angels are, for the most part, the sensible mani- festations of Jehovah himself through the medium of some impersonal emblem " such as a flame, or a cloud, or a human body, or some other visible semblance, which was called the Angel of Jehovah. These were epiphanies of the Logos, and as really such as was his appearance in the form of Jesus of Nazareth now nearly two thousand years ago ; this difference, however, must be noted : that those variable and transient appearances re- corded in the Old Testament gave place to a per- manent incarnation when the Logos was born of a woman and dwelt among us. In other words, when that remarkable personage, called Jesus, crossed the threshold of this world other like mani- festations ceased and the highest point in the evo- lution of supernatural manifestations was reached. Among the millions of the human race, by univer- sal consent he alone stands forth as the pattern of absolute perfection, a marvel so great as to defy all naturalistic explanations. Not until Jesus of Naza- reth is accredited with being an actual manifesta- tion of the First Cause, the Logos, the Creator, do our speculative difficulties come to an end. And it is this Logos in human form who is to come again among the clouds and is to sit upon the throne of the universe to judge the people. CHAPTER XIII Christ the Creator i. creation of material forms and the gift of life The reasonableness of appealing to the Bible on all matters concerning which it speaks has been firmly enough established to justify the use we now make of its disclosures as to the author of creation. And no one who reads carefully its revelations can doubt that it teaches clearly, re- peatedly, and emphatically that Christ before he was born in Palestine appeared somewhere on earth in a place called Eden ; that there he cre- ated man and woman, and that to them, as to all other living organisms at the outset, he gave life, and endowed that life with the power of self- propagation. In the Gospel according to John are the an- nouncements that " all things were made by him ; and without him was not anything made that was 261 262 EVOLUTION Or CREATION? made " ; "he was in the world, and the world was made by him " (John i. 3, 10). In the Epistle to the Colossians we read : " For by him were all things created, that are in hea- ven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or princi- palities, or powers : all things were created by him, and for him : and he is before all things, and by him all things consist" (Col. i. 16, 17). In the Epistle to the Hebrews this same ex- altation and creative power of Christ are expanded and emphasized : " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath ap- pointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. . . . Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever : a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated ini- quity ; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And, Thou, Lord [the " God-said," the " God-word," the "Christ"], in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth ; and the heavens are the works of thine hands" (Heb. i. 1, 2, 8-10). The harmony between the Old Testament and the New is manifest when, as the Bible writers undoubtedly intended, the " God-said " of Gene- CHRIST THE CREATOR. 263 sis and the " God-word " of the gospel are made identical. Moses introduces his account with this sentence : " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." John introduces his gos- pel with the words, " In the beginning was the Word, . . . and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by him." Also we are told that when their mission is accomplished this same creating One is to bring all material things to an end, which will be at the incoming of a new dispensation : " They shall perish, but thou remainest : and they all shall wax old as doth a garment ; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up." It is as if the apostle had said, " As a vesture shalt thou, O Christ, fold up the material universe, and all visible things shall be changed ; but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail " (Heb. i. 1 1, 12). However mysterious and perplexing it may seem, still nothing can be clearer than that the Bible bestows this creative and destructive power upon Christ, and upon him alone. It would seem to follow without the need of argument that he who created the organisms of all creatures was also the one who endowed those organisms with life. And this conclusion, as one hardly need be told, is confirmed by the reiter- ated teachings of the sacred Scriptures. They represent Christ as the one, and the only one, who came down from heaven and gave life unto 264 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? the world. He is the one by whom all things consist, and he is the one who breathed the breath of life into Adam (John vi. 33; Col. i. 17; Gen. ii. 7). It will not be a wide departure from the design we have in mind to add that with special empha- sis the Bible teaches that Christ is the only source of spiritual as well as of physical life. A few of the many passages are the following : " In him was life ; and the life was the light of men" (John i. 4). " He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life " (John iii. 36). " And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. ... I am the living bread which came down from hea- ven : if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever" (John vi. 35, 51). " Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life : he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live " (John xi. 25). " And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book : but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye might have life through his name " (John xx. 30, 31). " And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life ; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life " (1 John v. 11, 12). And the sooner the world learns the source of CHRIST THE CREATOR 265 its true and eternal life the better will it be for the children of men. Churches may be built, re- ligious societies may organize and be of immense service to mankind, revolutions may purify the political atmosphere, social reforms and philan- thropic enterprises may bless the world, and cer- tainly they speak well for the nobility and charity of the race ; but none of these things can give spiritual life to humanity any more than chemistry can vitalize a piece of common clay. Spiritual like physical life finds its source in Christ, and in Christ alone, whose own life is eternal. II. CREATION OF MAN Geology, biology, ethnology, and tradition, taken together or separately, go to show that the climate of this world when man made his ap- pearance was far milder and more equitable than now. Over both Siberia and Alaska roamed large and warm-blooded animals, while the tropics appear not to have been insufferably torrid. At- mospheric conditions not now existing, or the peculiar thermal state of the interior of the earth at that time, may have been such as to account for the world's climatic conditions when man ap- peared. And since geological science assures us that species are constantly diminishing, we may infer 266 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? that there was then a larger variety of birds than now, and that songs filled the air whose like we now never hear. There was then, too, a larger variety of other animals than the world since has known. Also we have ample scientific grounds for the inference that there were territories on the earth where the climate was perfectly fitted, as were all other environments, for the comfort and happi- ness of man without resort to artificial covering or shelter; and such, we may suppose, was the garden of Eden (Gen. iii. 7). Allowing a rational play of the imagination, and at the same time maintaining strict loyalty to the Scriptures, we follow this Logos, the Christ, as in solitariness he moved among the scenes of Eden on the day of man's creation, as more than once during his incarnation in Judea he went alone among the mountains, on the sea, and in the garden of Gethsemane. The birds were there and the beasts of the field were there ; but among all the animals surround- ing him there was none that could dress and till the soil ; none that could study and appreciate the works of the Creator, or that could worship and commune with God. It is not an extravagant conjecture that Christ, while walking in the garden, felt in that lone- someness a desire for the companionship of some CHRIST THE CREATOR 267 being like himself (John vii. 24). Nor is it an unreasonable conjecture that in the quiet of Eden these words were spoken, as if Christ were talk- ing to himself or to the other two selves : " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness " (Gen. i. 26, 27). And could not Christ, who in Judea changed water into wine, raised from the dead the widow's son, and the daughter of Jairus, and his own friend Lazarus ; could not he who gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, who cleansed lepers, fed multitudes with a handful of food ; could not he who before his incarnation made worlds and filled the earth with animal and vege- table life, and who to-day is lifting the sin-cursed nations into his marvelous light ; could not he create a companion for himself? No Christian believer can doubt his ability. The only ques- tion would be one of disposition. Precisely how Christ proceeded to form the man, the Bible does not say. Therefore in this silence of the Scriptures, and in the midst of the dead silence of naturalism, we offer two conjec- tures, and the first is this : Christ took plastic clay in his hands, as he did afterward in healing a blind man ; he molded it until shaped into his own image, the image seen by the patriarchs, and then said to the clay, " Become flesh ! " and it be- came flesh. 268 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? If we should insist that man was thus formed, and that this change from non-living to living matter was effected by a word of command, nat- uralism can interpose no scientific objection. Here was the shaping of matter into a marvel- ous structure; but it was wrought by an intelli- gent author, whose intelligence is greater than that of the thing created. Here was a chemical change — clay to flesh ; but it was an instantaneous change. Here was non-living matter becoming living; but the non-living became living by the touch of a living being. In all this there is not a law of science or phi- losophy that would be violated by such a creation, provided there is a supernatural Being, and, still further, provided supernatural interposition in the scheme of creation is possible. And in this con- nection no one can fail to see a profound signifi- cance in the words : " And the Eternal formed man of the dust of the soil" (Gen. ii. 7). High as may be our ce- lestial origin and parentage, we are indebted to an earthly mother. We are of the earth, earthy. "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it" (Eccles. xii. 7), is the inscription over the entrance of all our cemeteries. Nor should the fact be overlooked that when the anatomical chemist, with his many modern CHRIST THE CREATOR 269 instruments and appliances, analyzes the human body he discovers in it nothing except what is found in the dust beneath his feet. And the geologist, taking the body of man where the physiologist finds it, in harmony with the great laws of historic continuity, carries it back to the soil, and then to the lower or foundation strata of the earth. And even the naturalistic scientist is compelled to make the confession that " from those lower strata of the earth really have come the molecular constituents of the human body." The psalmist of Israel, anticipating this recent scientific announcement, exclaims, " Marvelous are thy works ; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect ; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them " (Ps. cxxxix. 14-16). When, therefore, the skeptic sneers at what he calls the " mud man " of the Bible, he merely is making a sort of grim sport at his own expense ; and in that sport we well may leave him. But there is one other conjecture as to the method of man's creation that is not out of har- mony with the Bible record, to which we may also call attention. This second conjecture supposes 270 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? that Christ made man, not by molding him from a mass of lifeless clay, but by the agency of bio- plasm. That is, he converted a bit of non-living matter into a living bioplast, like those that now are building every part of the human organism : bioplasts that can take non-living matter and con- vert it into living tissue ; bioplasts that are so small in size that six of them can lie side by side across the edge of the sharpest razor, their mea- surement being one sixth of a thousandth of an inch. Then he created another bioplast, then another, then a million, then a billion, and massed them. And with this mass of bioplasm by a word or a touch he shaped the man perfectly, se- curing a " coordination of parts," with every phys- ical tissue of that body instinct with life. Now while creation by spontaneous gener- ation and evolution by natural selection or by the survival of the fittest, are confronted with insur- mountable scientific difficulties, such a creation at the hands of Christ as we have just supposed is antagonized by nothing that is established in the whole realm of approved science and philosophy, provided that the possibility of divine interposi- tion is granted. But Darwin and Agassiz and Dana and Beal and Lotze, and a multitude of other distinguished scientists, already have de- cided that such interposition not only is possible, but absolutely necessary in order to account for CHRIST THE CREATOR 271 the existence and arrangement of things, and for the presence of life and of man on the earth. Thus far we have been speaking solely of the physical organism of man, of which we can say it was the highest and noblest type of creation to be found in the material universe. That first man was no monkey, nor baboon, nor one of their descendants. He had the physical powers of a perfect man without defect or deformity ; he was kingly and handsome, for he was made in the image of God — the image of the prehistoric Christ. A more complete type of physical man never has appeared on the earth. In this respect, as the fathers used to say, " Aristotle was but the rub- bish of Adam." But though perfect in form and in innocence, this first man was without character and without immortality ; for character is an acquirement, and immortality is an endowment. We may conjecture that, like a new-born in- fant, Adam after his creation slept for a while in the garden. And this first sleep might have been his last, and the human race would have been unknown on the earth, but for other inter- positions that were attended with grave responsi- bilities. We are told that when Caesar advanced to the shores of the Rubicon he paused, and, after re- volving in his mind during the night the perils S 272 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? and responsibilities that confronted him, ex- claimed, " The die is cast." He crossed the river, the invader of Italy. We are told that the Lord Jesus so deeply was impressed with what was involved in the choos- ing of the twelve apostles that, alone among the mountains, he spent the whole previous night in prayer (Luke vi. 12). We are told that before he conferred the power of speech upon the man whose tongue was tied he paused, looked up to heaven, and sighed (Mark vii. 34). An eminent English divine has drawn a powerful picture of Christ praying and sighing in view of the responsibility that would come to this hitherto speechless man when his tongue was free to pray or curse, to wound or heal. Therefore we may well suppose, after Christ had fashioned the man in the garden and before waking him to consciousness, or at least before conferring upon him the power of an endless life, that he paused. Here was an act the responsibility and scope of which eternity alone could measure. Christ felt this in all its fullness and awfulness. With a divine forecast he saw everything that would be involved in the building of character and in the gift of a deathless spirit. It was more than a Rubicon that was to be crossed. In com- parison, the choice of the Twelve and the giving of speech to silent lips were nothing. One word CHRIST THE CREATOR 273 would make of that first man a free moral agent of so great power that he could defy the Deity, live forever, and in majesty and excellence, if it were his choice, he could rise above all the hier- archies of the angels. Shall Christ complete the work and confer these stupendous endowments? He knew that the character of the first man could not be developed without the trial of temp- tation. The test of the tree in the garden, or some other temptation, must be presented. He foresaw the disobedience and the fall ; he foresaw the bloody hand of Cain, the violence that was to fill the earth, one family only remaining to wor- ship God. He foresaw the deluge that was to sweep all other families from the face of the earth. He foresaw the repeopling of the world, the re- turn to it of sin and iniquity. The bloody wars among the nations, the idolatry, wretchedness, drunkenness, ignorance, crimes, vices, and mis- eries of the human family from first to last passed in review. But, on the other hand, he foresaw the devout Abel, the blameless Seth, Enoch, who walked with God, and the righteous Noah. He foresaw the efforts of the other patriarchs to please God, the faithfulness of Abraham, the purity of Joseph, the trustfulness of Job, the greatness and gentle- ness of Moses. He foreheard the confessions and songs of David and the prayers of Daniel. 274 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? There passed before his vision the fearless and noble John the Baptist, and the disciple of the same name who is known as the beloved, and the other apostles, and Stephen and Paul and the martyrs and reformers. Before his eye passed in review the holy men and women in all the walks of life, in all countries and in all ages. He fore- saw the people who now bear his name, and who in tenderness and love commemorate in every part of the world his death and sufferings. Shall he, therefore, complete this work and send the human family onward across the continents to its mission of combined degradation and glory ? But this is not all. The primal responsibility of what might happen to man was Christ's. The pleasure that would come to him from human companionship was offset in his vision by the grief that would come on account of man's dis- obedience. The one who creates and endows with endless life also must make provision for all consequences and contingencies. The fall and degradation of the race Christ knew would neces- sitate a scheme of redemption. But redemption requires sacrifice in obedience to the universal law that one thing lives by the death of other things. Christ knew all this. In equity he, and not another, must face the sacrifice. The saving of any part of the human race meant for Christ, therefore, a miraculous conception ; a life of hu- CHRIST THE CREATOR 275 miliation, suffering, and death. What complex and startling visions passed before him : the hunger, the thirst, the betrayal, the arrest, the denial, the trial, the CROSS! He foresaw it all there in the garden of Eden as clearly as if the scenes already were enacting, and he felt the agony as keenly as when the nails were driving into his hands and feet on Golgotha. Then for a moment the vision of Eden and of Jerusalem and of the mountains and seas of Gali- lee, and of the whole earth, gave place to other scenes that are to be when the earth is no more. Then the almost oppressive stillness of the garden seemed as if broken, and Christ foreheard " the voices of harpers harping with their harps," and he foreheard songs so majestic that the mountains trembled. It was as the voice of many waters and as the voice of mighty thunderings, and the wonderful chorus came as from the lips of re- deemed multitudes so vast that they could not be numbered. And this was their song: " Alle- luia!" " Great and marvelous are thy works." '*' And the seventh angel sounded ; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ ; and he shall reign for ever and ever." (Rev. xv. 3; xi. 15.) The song ceased. Adam was not yet fully en- dowed with all that constitutes manhood. Shall 276 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? the work be completed ? Shall the earth have its king ? Shall all the prophecies in nature, extend- ing from the earliest crystal, lichen, and moss to the monster mammals, be fulfilled? Shall the Rubicon be passed ? Shall the apostles be chosen ? Shall the motionless lips be endowed with speech ? Shall man live forever? As Elijah bowed over the body of the dead child of the Zidonian widow, so Christ stooped down and breathed into the nostrils of this fresh- formed body of Adam, and there began a life as deathless as that of God himself. This miracle of bestowing endless life was wrought mouth to mouth, as if Christ had designed to wake man to this higher consciousness with a kiss on his lips. And all history shows that with the tenderness of that act Christ ever since has fol- lowed the children of men. Then, as we may suppose, Christ raised him- self, took in his own the hand of this first man, and said, " Adam, arise and stand upon thy feet ! " Adam arose and looked into the face of Christ. They were companions, the Creator and his first disciple and friend. III. CREATION OF WOMAN Adam was created, and endowed with endless life, but for him there was no helpmeet. There CHRIST THE CREATOR 277 could be no family, or, as it sometimes is called, no social trinity of father, mother, and child, un- less there were a woman. Therefore a new prob- lem, no less perplexing than the creation of Adam, is presented. In the presence of this problem, after fifty years of lispings, with occasional boastings, naturalism to-day, with her finger on her lips, is silent. In brief, the following is the difficulty presented : there can be no first child without a woman; there can be no first woman unless she grows from a child or at the outset is full formed. But the first female child or the first full-grown woman could not have made herself. The man could not have made her. There is not a shred of evi- dence of any kind that by natural processes she could have had a beginning in spontaneous gen- eration or have been evolved from any of the lower orders or from man. We defy the whole world of naturalistic scien- tists to throw a solitary ray of light upon the cre- ation of the first woman, apart from divine and miraculous interposition. We are not unmindful of the fact that the order of creation as given in the Bible has been called in question ; that is, several morphologists have taken exception to the Mosaic account, on the ground that in order of time the creation of the male ought not to have preceded that of the female. 278 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? While the order as given in the Bible seems to have some justification owing to the superiority of the male, both among men and among many of the higher animals, yet from a morphological point of view the female seems to be the far more important and the more ancient ; and therefore it is said that the Bible should have reported that the rib was taken from Eve instead of from Adam. Professor Ward remarks upon this at some length in his " Psychic Factors," and argues that " the female is the race, the main central stock, while the male is but secondary and accessory." For obvious reasons we enter into no contro- versy, at least on scientific grounds, with our morphologistic friends. We leave the women of the race a clear field to defend the priority rights and privileges to which, according to the fore- going view, they are entitled. But we are com- pelled to say that, all things considered, the sci- entific reasons thus far adduced are not sufficient to outweigh the revelations of that Book that has challenged the admiration of the world. We therefore turn again to the sacred Scriptures, selecting passages from the first and second chap- ters of Genesis, bearing in mind that the second * chapter is a restatement of the first, a form of speech quite common in Hebrew composition. We read : " These are the generations of the heavens and the earth on their being created. CHRIST THE CREATOR 279 And not a plant of the field was yet in the land, and not an herb of the field yet grew, and there was no man to till the ground. And a mist went up from the land, and watered the whole face of the soil. And the Eternal formed the man of the dust from the soil, and breathed into his nos- trils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul. " And the Eternal planted a garden eastward in Eden ; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Eter- nal to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. . . . And the Eternal took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. . . . " And the Eternal said, It is not good that the man should be alone ; I will make him a help meet for him. And the Eternal formed out of the soil every beast of the field, and every fowl of the skies. . . . And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the skies, and to every beast of the field ; and for the man there was not found a help meet for him. " And the Eternal caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept ; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the Eternal built the rib which he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her unto the man. And the man said, This is now v/ 280 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh : she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of a man. " Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife : and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." This Eve of the Bible, like the Eve of archaeo- logical science, was no female baboon. A woman of greater or more striking perfection of form or features no man ever has looked on. In history and in rank she was the first of her sex, queenly and beautiful ; but as yet her character was un- formed. "' Character in her case, as in that of Adam, could not be conferred ; it must be devel- oped through temptation and trial. In all other respects Eve was immaculate, with the expression of an angel and the innocence of a child. But some one is on the point of saying, this story of the " rib " is what casts discredit on the entire record. It savors too much of myth for credence, and is a descent from the dignity of the rest of the narrative. If the woman only had been made of clay, or of bioplasm, the story more easily could be believed. This criticism is natural. But according to the rules by which we promised to be governed, the narrative must be followed in its literalness. To CHRIST THE CREATOR 281 treat the account of man's creation as literal, and that of the woman as pictorial or poetical, would be one of the rankest violations possible of the fundamental rules of interpretation. The make- shift view likewise that takes refuge under the scientific phrase, " ineffable cleavage," is as mis- taken a method of Bible exegesis as well can be imagined. No one doubts that the Creator could have made woman in some other way as well as in the way recorded. He could have made her from a cloud in the atmosphere, or out of foam from the sea, or, for that matter, even from a piece of mountain granite, or in the same way as he made Adam. Or he could have formed Eve first, or have reversed the Bible process and have taken Adam out of Eve. But the trouble is that none of these possible methods has any scientific evidence, nor do any of them conform to the Bible account, and therefore they must be rejected. For a moment let us examine the details of this remarkable Bible narrative. Heroic treat- ment was the one best known to the ancients. They would have had the gods bind Adam on a rack, and then have had a bone wrenched from his side with such force that the man's outcry of pain could have been heard through all the groves and among all the hills of Paradise. But Christ was a skilled surgeon, and afterward was known v/ 282 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? as the great Physician ; his method and treatment, therefore, would be wise. In the Public Garden of Boston is an expensive granite monument, commemorative of the dis- covery in that city of ether as an agency for re- lieving pain during surgical operations. In the creation of the first woman is anticipated this most merciful discovery of modern medical sci- ence. Christ " caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man," as the record goes on to say ; or, employing medical phraseology, the man was " etherized." The words translated "deep sleep" mean entire unconsciousness. The divine One then removed some part of the flesh and bone of the man near the breast, closing up the place thereof with other flesh, and out of that flesh, bone, and blood of Adam, with the bioplasts still alive in it and upon it, he made the woman, and endowed her, as he did Adam, with endless life. And he who a few thousand years later adorned with his presence a marriage ceremony, and beautified it with his first miracle, wrought in Cana of Galilee, now in the garden of Eden pronounced the union of these two souls in a marriage ceremony, brief and beautiful, which in the original text reads thus: " And he builded up the woman and brought her to the man." Here was the birth of society. Unity of blood literally is maintained. Here is CHRIST THE CREATOR 283 the " real presence " and a divine succession in the human family. By taking the woman almost from the heart of man, Christ in no other way so well could illustrate and sanction the intended and ordained union between husband and wife — a union so well established in the nature of things that a departure from it always is found destruc- tive of the highest individual and national pros- perity. And thus this criticized story of the " rib " is luminous and beautiful, even radiant as compared with the lispings and stammerings of naturalism. We may listen at this point for a moment to the tinkling sounds and symbols uttered by those who claim to have the knowledge of nearly all things at their fingers' ends. The following is Herbert Spencer's account of the building of our universe: " The different groupings of units, and the combination of the unlike groups, each with its own kind and each with other kinds, have pro- duced the kinds of matter we call elementary." Evidence, Mr. Spencer! There is not a par- ticle of evidence for what you say, and your meaning is distressingly unclear to common people. This distinguished philosopher then proceeds to show how organic life, including man and woman, can come from inorganic materials ; 284 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? " Certain of the ethereal waves falling upon them" (referring to carbonic acid, water, and ammonia), " there results a detachment of some of the combined atoms, and a union of the rest. And the conclusion suggested is that the induced vibrations among the various atoms, as at first arranged, are so incongruous as to produce in- stability, and to give collateral affinities the power to work a rearrangement, which, though less stable under other conditions, is more stable in the pres- ence of these particular undulations." With calm assurance Mr. Spencer should have added these words : " Some day human ingenuity mechanically will induce vibrations among the various atoms, produce instability, work a rear- rangement, build a world, and people it with liv- ing creatures." There is just as much evidence for one of these statements as for the other; and neither one nor the other by a scientific mind is worth a second reading. This entire paragraph of Mr. Spencer reminds one of the following words of Plutarch, who stands among the earliest naturalists whose words have been preserved : " The insecable bodies or atoms, by a wild and fortuitous motion, without any governing power, incessantly and swiftly were hurried one against another, many bodies being jumbled together; CHRIST THE CREATOR 285 upon this account they have a diversity in their figures and magnitude. After this manner the principal parts of the earth were constituted." Does this language call forth a smile ? But the statement is as clear, at least as satisfactory, as anything spoken during the last forty years by naturalists concerning the origin of things. As an illustration of the excessive wisdom of Colonel Robert Ingersoll, we quote the following from his book entitled " Some of the Mistakes of Moses " : " The monar is said to be the simplest form of animal life that has yet been found. It has been described as an organism without organs. It is a kind of structureless structure, a little mass of transparent jelly that can flatten itself out, and can expand and contract around its food. It can feed without a mouth, digest without a stomach, walk without feet, and reproduce itself by simple division." Aftergivingthe foregoing account of the monar, which thing he borrowed from Dr. Haeckel, — at least it unmistakably has Haeckel's earmarks on it, — he continues thus : " By taking this monar as the commencement of animal life, or rather as the first animal, it is easy to follow the development of the organic structure through all the forms of life to man himself." 286 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Easy! What does Mr. Ingersoll mean? Has he ever followed this development? We answer for him that he never so much as has tried to fol- low it or he would not talk as he does, if honest and truthful. Or has he ever asked this question, Whence came the monar? He very well knows that such a wonderful thing as the monar is not a product of chance. And for any one to invent and construct a monar, an organism without organs, a structureless structure, a thing that feeds without a mouth, digests without a stomach, walks without feet, reproduces itself at will, makes animals and man and a whole race of men and women, is one of the most marvelous and stupen- dous enterprises imaginable. The monar is a God, or a God made it. And this talkative man must know, if he ever has given one hour's serious thought to the subject, that a Being who can create such a self-propagating, prolific, all-pro- ducing monar, with the same effort and in the same time could make a universe. And in the light of modern science, Mr. Inger- soll ought to know that his statement that " by taking this monar as the commencement it is easy to follow the development of the organic structure through all the forms of life to man him- self," is a stupendous falsehood, as well as an in- sult to modern intelligence. We do not blame this eloquent lawyer for his CHRIST THE CREATOR 287 masterly ignorance, but we condemn him for his conceit and for his careless or intentional misrep- resentation of facts. By the side of Ingersoll's words let us place those of the late J. Clerk Maxwell, one of the most distinguished mathematical physicists in the history of science, professor of experimental phys- ics in the University of Cambridge, England, of whom Professor Huxley says, " He is a philoso- pher as remarkable for the subtlety of his intel- lect as for his vast knowledge." After noting by the means of the subtlest mathematical processes that physical molecules of various kinds have identically the same vibra- tions, and that while untold variations are possi- ble, yet none of them ever has arisen in any of the processes of nature, he proceeds thus : " The formation of the molecule is, therefore, an event not belonging to that order of nature under which we live. It is an operation of a kind which is not, so far as we are aware, going on on earth or in the sun or the stars either now or since these bodies began to be formed. . . . " Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing. We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that, because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent, it must have been created." 288 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Or compare the assurance of Mr. Ingersoll with the words of Professor Tyndall in a recent num- ber of the "Fortnightly Review": "If asked whether science has solved or is likely in one day to solve the problem of the universe, I must shake my head in doubt. Behind and above and around us the real mystery of the universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution." The following specimen of what Mr. Stead, in a late number of the " Review of Reviews," calls " scientific tom-tom," is found in Dr. Haeckel's recently published " Monism," and probably for the next half-century it will be regarded as the expiring gasp of atheistic naturalism : " The real maker of the organic world is in all probability an atom of carbon, a tetrahedron made up of four primitive atoms. The human soul is only the sum of these physiological functions, whose ele- mentary organs are constituted by the microscopic ganglion-cells of our brain ; in this respect it is identical with the soul of the lowest single-celled infusoria. . . . Consciousness is a mechanical work of the ganglion-cells, and as such must be carried back to chemical and physical events in the plasma of those cells." " That which is true is plain," say the Germans. Tested by this rule, what must be one's judgment of the foregoing explanations of the origin of CHRIST THE CREATOR 289 things, and indeed of much of the talk that in late years has been passing current in the fields of naturalistic science and philosophy? The picture painted by the rough but keen Thomas Carlyle does not misrepresent what nat- uralism has come to in its vain attempts to ac- count for man and woman, thought and con- science : " Ah, it is a sad and terrible thing to see nigh a whole generation of men and women professing to be cultivated looking around in a purblind fashion, and finding no God in this universe. . . . And this is what we have got to: all things from frog-spawn ; the gospel of dirt the order of the day. The older I grow — and I now stand upon the brink of eternity — the more comes back to me the sentence in the catechism which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes : ' What is the great end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.' No gospel of dirt, teaching that men have de- scended from frogs through monkeys, can ever set that aside." CHAPTER XIV Man i. solitariness of man The Bible story of creation naturally suggests this question : Among the infinitude of visible worlds, is our earth the only one that is the abode of man, or of any being like man ? As with most kindred questions, this often dis- cussed and variously answered one has its theo- logical or scriptural as well as its scientific side. While the sacred Scriptures do not state ex- plicitly that the earth is the only abode of man, or of rational, ethical, physical beings like man, still, after making a critical examination and analysis of the Bible, there can be no reasonable ground of doubt as to the impression it must naturally and inevitably leave on the mind of the reader. The Book of Genesis, the Book of Job, the Psalms, several passages in the prophets and others in the New Testament that speak of the 290 SOLITARINESS OF MAN 291 creation of the earth and of the stars, and also passages that speak of the nature and extent of the atonement and of the number and character of the redeemed, do not so much as remotely hint at the existence of any humanity except that in- cluded in the seed of Adam. The thought expressed in the first chapter of Genesis, that for human convenience the heavenly bodies were ordained " to divide the day from the night," and to be " for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years," is the thought that runs through the entire volume. This Bible view of the design of God in creat- ing the universe especially for man generally prevailed until the science of astronomy began to disclose the magnitude of the heavenly bodies and the extent of the celestial spaces. It was in con- sequence of these disclosures that the earth lost for a time much of its significance, and the earlier Bible view met with such pronounced opposition that serious damage threatened the whole system of theology. Still theology is so much a part of human life and thought that, amid all the discus- sions that followed, it held its position, adjusted itself to the remarkable discoveries that had been made, and suffered no harm, even though the new theories worked themselves into quite universal favor. Between the years 1800 and 1850 nearly all 292 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? scientific men maintained the opinion that the earth is only a speck in the universe and that a countless number of worlds in the astronomical heavens are peopled with beings who, like man, have physical bodies, consciousnesses, and con- sciences, some of whom physically and mentally are as far superior to man as the planet Jupiter is larger than the earth. Theologians vied with scientists and philoso- phers in the advocacy of these views, contending that the silence of the Scriptures on this subject ought not to be urged either against their credi- bility or against the conclusions of science. But, as is well known to those who are familiar with these matters, the pendulum, during the last twenty-five years, has been swinging far the other way. The increased power of the telescope, the erection of observatories in favorable localities, the science of spectrum analysis, by which the chemi- cal composition of planets and stars beyond ques- tion is made known, and the theory of an essential unity in the physical universe, together with rea- sonings from analogy, in large measure are re- sponsible for this change of view. By these new appliances it has been ascertained beyond any reasonable doubt that multitudes of the heavenly bodies are not and never have been inhabited or inhabitable by any form of life resembling that of man. SOLITARINESS OF MAN 293 Some of the comets, for instance, are of incon- ceivable magnitude, but they are known to be un- inhabitable. The sun, though the largest body in our planetary system, is a globe of flames. The same may be said of all the stars that twinkle in the midnight heavens ; their twinkling is the flash- ing of flames that leap out of the most appalling conflagrations imaginable. Under recent and careful scientific inspection even the planets of our solar system for the larger part are found unfit for habitation. Jupiter, the grandest of them all, but lately has passed from a condition of flames to its present nearly red-hot state, which actually or measurably is the case with the other large exterior planets. Mars is still thought by some of our astrono- mers to be in a habitable condition ; and specula- tive writers of vivid imagination every now and then give their readers glowing accounts of what the inhabitants of Mars are like and of what they are doing. But with increased facilities for making obser- vations the evidence in support of the view that Mars is inhabited is yearly becoming less and less satisfactory. In the white spots at the poles of that planet one astronomer sees banks of snow and ice, another only masses of steam and cloud. In certain lines on its surface one astronomer sees a system of artificially constructed canals, another 294 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? sees belts of vegetation made green by artificial irrigation, while another sees evidences only of a mountain-making era, or some other natural agen- cies at work which are of such a character as to place the planet almost beyond the possibility of habitation. And even if land and water in fitting proportions clearly could be made out to exist on Mars, that fact would not go far in proving that it is the abode of life like ours. The occurrence of such life is a matter depending on the nice ad- justment of various conditions that are not likely to coexist, geologically speaking, for more than a very limited time on any planet ; and astronomy is a long way from proving that such conditions ever have existed in the entire period of the evo- lution of the planet Mars. Probably it is with that planet as with the earth, which quite early in geological times looked as Habitable from a dis- tance as it now does, though it is only of late that it really has been suitable for anything like human life. About twenty-five years ago the late Professor Richard A. Proctor, one of the most eminent of English astronomers, wrote a book entitled "Other Worlds than Ours." In it he unquali- fiedly and emphatically advocated the theory that the other planets of our solar system as well as the earth are inhabited. He says, " When I wrote that work I set out with the idea of maintaining, what SOLITARINESS OF MAN 295 then generally was believed, the theory that all the eight known planets of the solar system are inhabited." As any one easily can imagine, an author does not like to change his published views, and, unless he has reasons the most urgent, will not be likely to do so. Eight or ten years after the publication of the volume just referred to Professor Proctor, in the meanwhile having been a most diligent student of astronomical science, wrote thus : " The new evidence, when properly examined, is found to oppose fatally instead of supporting the theory I had hoped to establish. I find abundant evidence that Jupiter cannot be the abode of any of the forms of life known on earth, or even of any akin to these. I find that Saturn too, upon recent evi- dence, is unfit for life. The analogies in which I had trusted as to the other planets I find in every instance to point in the reverse way from that in which I had been looking." While Professor Proctor yielded all these points, yet in fairness we ought to say that he continued to hold the opinion that the time may come when the exterior planets, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the others, will be inhabitable, and that the time may have been when the interior planets, Mercury and Venus, were inhabitable. Still he did not for a moment waver in the conviction that at the 296 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? present time both the exterior and the interior planets of our solar system are as destitute of in- habitants as is the fiery heart of the earth, or the blazing surface of the sun, or the desolate, water- less, and airless mountains of the moon. At this point a question may be raised, whether it is not probable that some of the suns in the stellar universe have planets that, like the earth, are inhabitable. It is impossible to say that such is not the case, and, reasoning from analogy, there are grounds for supposing that such really is the case. But, on the other hand, there is no positive evidence for such a conclusion, and the analogies are far less convincing now than formerly they were thought to be. It is absolutely certain, so far as analogies can lead to a conclusion, that organized life by no possibility can exist in some of the sun systems with which science has made us familiar. One in every forty or fifty of the so-called fixed stars or suns is variable to such a degree that, in limited periods, it passes through the most re- markable changes, causing, as we are forced to believe, such variations of temperature that pla- netic life anywhere within the limits of those vari- able sun systems is out of the question. Recently, in a lecture on these subjects before an audience of university professors and students, a scholar who has given careful thought to these SOLITARINESS OF MAht 297 questions pointed out, in the following words, the improbability of inhabitants inother solarsystems : " Variation of heat and light, such as we know to occur to a great extent in not a few stars and to a very considerable extent, probably, in a very large number besides, would be fatal to an atten- dant planet as an abode of life ; so, also, would the formation of a system composed of two or more nearly equal components (double stars), of which there are many instances known, and prob- ably many more which we cannot detect. " Even the dark bodies of stellar dimensions, which we know to exist in quite a number of cases and to be the cause of some of the apparent vari- ations in brightness of the brilliant stars, do not appear likely to be uniformly or spherically shaped bodies, and on an irregularly shaped mass the con- ditions of life could not be well arranged." Now, without going further into details, we may say, in a word, that every year the advocates of a plurality of inhabited worlds find, in the varied and remarkable results of scientific investigation, less and less encouragement. Nineteen twentieths of the beautiful bodies that glimmer in the heavens which, a few years since, by some scientists were thought to be inhabitable, are now transferred, with scarcely a dissenting voice, from the positive to the negative side of this question. Hence the suspicion, even with naturalistic scientists, is gain- 29S EVOLUTION OR CREATION? ing ground that among the infinitude of worlds our earth is the only one on which physical, intel- ligent, and moral beings like the human race find their abode, and that the Creator has selected this small material world, and not any other, as an arena on which to work out some of the grandest prob- lems that ever have been or ever will be submitted to the universe ; and that all the planets and all the star systems, as the Bible implies, were created to regulate for man the earth's motions, to aid him in his otherwise perilous navigations, and by study and contemplation to awaken in him thoughts of the skill, power, and grandeur of the infinite Being who made them. Let us listen for a moment to certain leading scientists of a class certainly not blindly prejudiced in favor of Bible revelation, who speak neverthe- less concerning the design of God in creation much in the same vein as did the Jehovah prophets. Not very long since, in a magazine article, Pro- fessor Tyndall used these words: " It would ap- pear as if one of the ends of the Creator in setting these shining things [the stars] in heaven was to woo the attention and to excite the intellectual activity of his earth-born child." Lester F. Ward, a pronounced evolutionist, who, at least in one of the branches of natural science, is perhaps at the present time the most noted writer in the world, has also spoken words SOLITARINESS OF MAN 299 that show on this subject what appears to be the present drift of scientific thought. In a contribu- tion to " Social Philosophy " he says : " So far as can be judged from what we know of the essen- tial conditions to life, the earth is highly favored among the planets of our system, and it may well be that this is the only one out of them all on which the conditions to a high development exist. It seems impossible that the great planets Jupiter and Saturn can be inhabited by any such beings as have been developed on our globe ; and care- ful studies of temperature that must prevail on Venus and Mercury seem to negative such an as- sumption for either of them. If Mars possesses life, it must be inured to somewhat severer condi- tions than generally prevail with us. . . . If Jupi- ter radiates his own internal heat he may render some of his swift-flying moons inhabitable, but most of the satellites of the solar system are doubtless as dead as our moon, which has neither water nor air. The sun is an enormous mass of matter four hundred thousand times as large as the earth and containing 99.866 per cent, of the matter of the whole solar system. Yet it is known to be in a state of such intense heat that some of the metals which require great heat to melt are not only melted, but volatilized. No one, there- fore, conceives that there can be any life or intel- ligence on the sun. But our sun is only one of 300 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? the lesser fixed stars, and it may be assumed that similar conditions prevail throughout the universe." In an interesting and instructive book entitled " The Destiny of Man," Dr. John Fiske, a distin- guished philosophical and scientific writer who classes himself anions Darwin evolutionists, has spoken words so strongly confirmatory of what we have been saying as to the change of attitude among scientists and philosophers that at consid- erable length we quote from him : " In our day it is hard to realize the startling effect of the dis- covery that man does not dwell at the center of things, but is the denizen of a tiny speck, quite invisible amid the innumerable throng of flaming suns that make up our galaxy. To the contem- poraries of Copernicus the new theory seemed to strike at the very foundations of Christian theology. If the earth is not the center of the universe, then the career of humanity cannot be the sole object of God's creative forethought and fostering care, was the reasoning, and the elaborate scheme of human salvation is found to be based upon a false assumption. When we bear this in mind, we see how natural and inevitable it was that the church should persecute such men as Galileo and Bruno. But all these matters are outgrown. The specu- lative necessity for man's occupying the largest and most central spot in the universe is no longer SOLITARINESS OF MAN 301 felt, and is recognized as a primitive and childish notion. With our larger knowledge we see that these vast and fiery suns are, after all, but the Titan-like servants of the little planets that they bear with them in their flight through the abysses of space. Out from the awful gaseous turmoil of the central mass dart those ceaseless waves of gentle radiance that, when caught upon the sur- face of whirling worlds like ours, bring forth the varied forms . . . that make up what we can see of life. And as, when God revealed himself to his ancient prophet, he came not in the earthquake or the tempest, but in a voice that was * still ' and 1 small,' so that divine spark, the human soul, as it takes up its brief abode in this realm of fleeting phenomena, chooses not the central sun, where elemental forces forever blaze and clash, but selects an outlying terrestrial nook, where seeds may germinate and where the forms of organic life may come to take shape and thrive." It is quite a claim in behalf of the position we have taken, but we venture to make it ; namely, that at the present time these words of Professors Proctor and Tyndall, of Professor Ward and Dr. John Fiske, fairly represent the attitude of nearly every scientist and philosopher who has given thought to these subjects and who has not en- tirely gone over to atheistic naturalism or has not fallen a victim to an unalterable predisposition. 302 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? Thus, according to the most recent scientific opinion, it not only turns out to be the wisest thing the Creator could do to place man on the earth, small and insignificant as it is, where he can see the sun and the other flaming stars without being enveloped in their terrific conflagrations, but also this placement of man on the earth seems to be in strict harmony with the entire creative economy. Oftener than otherwise it is the small object that is selected for special and great pur- poses. As compared with the planet Jupiter, the human skull is insignificant, but that majestic orb does not begin to match the workmanship done by the Creator in the building of a human brain that weighs only a few ounces, or in fashioning the house of bone that protects it. With solemn reverence and justly so we take in our hands a human skull, a kind of vacated temple of God, where once echoed divine invitations to be great and grand, pure and holy. In these relations the human skull is larger than the whole physical uni- verse, and the thought evolved in it can fly be- yond the remotest bounds of space. In moments of our better thinking the entire gulf of stars and the whole magnificent mileage and tonnage of the universe seem to pale into insignificance before one of those little ones whom our Saviour took in his arms and blessed. Who has not felt that one glance from the glowing, inquiring eye of a beau- MAJESTY OF MAN 303 tiful child is more significant than the brilliancy for a whole night long of the morning and even- ing star, and are we not taught that when every glistening sun shall fall from its place in the sky the little child will only have begun its journey? II. MAJESTY OF MAN From the closing paragraph of the foregoing section, also from much else that has been said in other chapters of this book, the relative greatness of humanity easily can be inferred. But, as the subject has an important bearing on the entire discussion of man's creation, it may receive in these closing paragraphs a fuller and more explicit statement. In determining the relative rank of man in the universe, we call attention first to the supreme importance placed upon him in the sacred Scrip- tures. As already hinted, the teaching is that it was for man the world was made; for him the Bible was given ; for him Christ died ; and for him heaven is preparing. De Quincy, speaking of man's creation, interprets the opening chapters of Genesis in these words : " Is not man there found to be the central figure, or, to speak more truly, the only figure? All besides serves but as a background for him. He is not one part of the furniture of this planet, not the highest merely in 304 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? the scale of its creatures, but the lord of all ; sun, moon, and stars, and all the visible creation, bor- rowing all their worth and all their significance from the relations in which they stand to him." With equal forcefulness the apostle brings out the same thought when he says to his Roman brethren, " For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. . . . For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now " (Rom. viii. 1 8, 22). The implication is that the physical uni- verse, because of its anxiety for humanity, is measurably out of sorts and is troubled on account of man's misfortune and sin even to the point of groaning. In another suggestive passage the apostle re- iterates the same thought by personifying the entire physical creation and representing it as watching the human race with intensest interest as if it must stand ready to contribute aid when- ever possible toward man's evolution and eleva- tion : " For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." In the same passage men are said to be " heirs of God " and " joint-heirs with Christ," which terms, it must be confessed, are suggestive of magnifi- cent relationships (Rom. viii. 14-17; comp. Gal. iv. 7). MAJESTY OF MAN 305 And, too, as already has been shown, man originally was created in the image and likeness of Christ ; higher honor than that could not well be paid the human race. Our Lord, in one of his controversies with the Pharisees, incidentally hints at man's greatness and supremacy in these words : " And he said unto them, The Sabbath [the day God especially had honored] was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath " (Mark ii. 27). Had occasion required, with equal fitness might not Christ have said, " The world, the stars, and everything else in the physical universe have been made for man, and not man for them " ? The Apostle Peter, at least by implication, teaches that the prophets of the Old Testament and the ministers of the New are better acquainted with some things than are the angels (1 Pet. i. 12), and it is expressly announced in the Epistle to the Hebrews that God has not put the world to come in subjection to angels, but to man, and that noth- ing is left that is not to be put in subjection to him (Heb. ii. 5, 8). There are other passages which, in their bear- ing on the subject, cannot fail to arrest attention. In one instance the kingdom of heaven is repre- sented as resounding with rejoicings over even one fallen man who repents of sin and enters upon a new life (Luke xv. 7). 306 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? In another passage the thought is suggested that the several pathways of humanity are thronged with interested observers of what men do and say, suffer and think (Heb. xii. i). Other passages represent the angelic hosts as being the servants of man : they visited and fed Elijah ; they were present to protect the imperiled Daniel; they delivered the imprisoned Peter; are commissioned to keep the righteous in all their ways (Ps. xci. 11); are sent to accompany pious and afflicted men on their flight to heaven (Luke xvi. 22) ; and to them is assigned the care of little children (Matt, xviii. 10). The Apostle Paul asks the explicit question, " Are they not all minister- ing spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" (Heb. i. 14.) The implication in these words almost bears out the thought that the angels were not created for their own sakes, but were created to help and serve man, and but for that might not have been created at all. Now, taking the Bible as a whole, the statement cannot well be questioned that, with the excep- tion, or rather apparent exception, of two pas- sages, it places man above the hierarchies of the angels and on a throne above all other intelli- gences and next to that of the Creator himself. The first of these two apparently exceptional passages reads thus : " Whereas angels, which are MAJESTY OF MAN 307 greater [or which excel] in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them [them- selves] before the Lord " (2 Pet. ii. 11). In these words it is extremely doubtful if the apostle had any intention of instituting a comparison between men and angels ; but even if he had it will be noticed that the only superiority of the angels mentioned is that of "power and might." And the connection clearly shows that the apostle is speaking of fallen men who have weakened what strength they originally had by walking" after the flesh in the lust of defilement" (verse 10; comp. verses 1 1-20). There does not appear to be the slightest ground for the supposition that he had in mind men in their resurrection and glorified bodies, or men in this present life who are " strengthened with all might, according to his [Christ's] glorious power" (Col. i. 1 1 ; comp. 1 Pet. v. 10); and if not taught here, then in no passage in the New Testament are redeemed and glorified men represented as inferior in strength, knowledge, or wisdom to any created intelligences in the visible or invisible universe. Turning to the Old Testament, we find the other exceptional passage. In the Authorized Version we read, " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that thou 308 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? visitest him ? for thou hast made him a little lower than the angels" (Ps. viii. 3-5). Now the fact that these two passages are the only ones in the entire Bible that hint that any created thing in the universe outranks man very naturally rouses the suspicion that the passage before us may have another than the ordinary meaning attributed to it ; and it requires only a brief critical study to change the suspicion into a certainty. The word here translated " angels " — a little lower than " angels " — is elolieim, which pri- marily means " God." The distinguished Hebrew scholar, Gesenius, accordingly translates the pas- sage thus : " For thou hast caused him to lack but little of God." The Revised Version reads, " For thou hast made him but little lower than God." A strictly literal translation is, " For thou hast created him but a shaving from God." Now with this rendering, as will be noticed, the entire psalm is harmonious with itself, which is not the case according to the reading of the English version. The following, therefore, is the more exact translation : 4< O Lord our Lord, how ex- cellent thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon MAJESTY OF MAN 309 and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man ? Thou art mindful of him. And the son of man ? Thou visitest him, and hast caused him to lack only a little from being God, and hast crowned him with honor and glory. Thou mad- est 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 fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent thy name in all the earth! " This psalm, therefore, instead of diminishing our estimate, teaches that the Creator came just as near making man like himself as he could. Be- tween man and the King there is a shaving, but above man, in the possibilities of his nature and in his future possible attainments, there is nothing except the King. But, as perhaps the reader need not be told, science in the advocacy of the superiority of man is no less pronounced than the Bible. The most profound scientists of our time are answering the question, What is man ? by asking another : What is he not? A few years ago scientists raised the speculative question whether some new and more noble being may not yet be created and outrank man, as man now outranks the brute. That question repeat- 310 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? edly has been answered, but always in the negative. From a scientific point of view Professor Agas- siz was one of the first to make reply. He called attention to the fact that the spinal column of the first vertebrates, the fishes and serpents, is hori- zontal ; in the next higher organization, the birds, it stands in an oblique position, while in man it is perpendicular. He accordingly argued that the perfection of the animal creation is reached in man, and that any change in his attitude and car- riage would be not an elevation, but a declension. From another and distinct point of view Hugh Miller, the eminent Scotch geologist, reasoned that man is the highest order of being that ever will stand on the earth, inasmuch as he " crowns the long series of animal creations whose fossils are embedded in the successive geological strata, as we ascend from the fire rocks to the alluvium on which we dwell." Dr. John Fiske, in his recent work already re- ferred to, while expounding Professor Darwin's theory says : " As we thoroughly grasp the mean- ing of all this, we see on the Darwinian theory that it is impossible that any creature zoologically distinct from man and superior to him shall ever at any future time exist upon this earth. In the regions of unconditional possibility it is open to any one to argue, if he chooses, that such a crea- MAJESTY OF MAN 311 ture may come to exist; but the theory of Dar- win is utterly opposed to any such conclusion. " According to Darwinism, the creation of man is still the goal toward which nature tended from the beginning. Not the production of any higher creature, but the perfecting of humanity, is to be the glorious consummation of nature's long and tedious work. . . . The whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of God's handiwork, the human soul. . . . Science now forces us to the conclusion, much more clearly than ever before, that man is the chief among God's creatures. . . . The modern theory of evolution enlarges tenfold the significance of human life, places it upon even a loftier eminence than poets or prophets have imagined, and makes it seem more than ever the chief object of that creative activity which is manifested in the physi- cal universe. As Darwin himself explicitly has said, ' Man is the wonder and glory of the uni- verse.' " We shall be pardoned for quoting once more from Professor Dana's latest admirable " Treatise on Geology " : " Man was the first being, in the geological succession, capable of an intelligent survey of nature and a comprehension of her laws ; the first capable of augmenting his strength by bending nature to his service, rendering thereby 312 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? a weak body stronger than all possible animal force ; the first capable of deriving happiness from truth and goodness, or apprehending eternal right, and of reaching toward a knowledge of self and God. . . . There is in man, therefore, a spiritual element in which the brute has no share. His power of indefinite progress, his thoughts and desires that look onward even beyond time, his recognition of spiritual existence and of a Divinity above, all evince a nature that partakes of the infinite and divine." Dr. A. R. Wallace, writing in the same vein, declares that " man is the culmination of all na- ture." And Professor Joseph Le Conte, speak- ing from the psychical point of view, says, " Man must be set off, not only against the animal king- dom, but against the whole of nature besides as an equivalent." Now, taking Professor Agassiz, Hugh Miller, Charles Darwin, Dr. John Fiske and Professor Dana, Dr. Wallace and Professor Le Conte, as representatives of the attitude of scientific and philosophical thinkers, we have the verdict that man is king everywhere within the scope of scientific observation, and we also discover, what often has happened and, indeed, always is happen- ing, that science and philosophy, when they have done their most thorough work, are found to teach nothing that is at variance with the revelations of MAJESTY OF MAN 313 the Bible, if those revelations have received care- ful and wise interpretation. But there is still another viewpoint from which we are enabled to estimate the relative greatness of man. It is by taking note of what he already has achieved and in the future is likely to achieve. On all sides it is acknowledged that during the last fifty years human discoveries, inventions, and progress, especially in the various arts of civiliza- tion, are well-nigh bewildering; and yet all feel that the possibilities of human achievement are a long way from being reached. Indeed, it occa- sionally strikes the more thoughtful minds that there are continents within the range of man's at- tainment that not only have not been traversed, but hardly have been touched even by the most enterprising explorers. It now and then is asked, and with good reason, if there can be greater dis- coveries, more marvelous inventions, more beau- tiful or more useful works of art, more entrancing music, sublimer and more symmetrical architec- ture, than already have appeared as the product of man's genius. The answer to-day is, Yes ; a thousandfold more marvelous, beautiful, and sublime, if the nature of things will allow of such improvement and if man works no harm to himself. For all limitations seem to be with the clay, not with the potter. If in the nature of the clay, or of things, it is possible to 314 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? build " courts of honor " a hundred or a thousand- fold more extended and more imposing than the one encircled by the public buildings that made up the White City in Chicago, they will be built. For all indications go to show that in every human mind there are wrapped up designs of cities with courts, palaces, and walls compared with whose vastness, magnificence, and transcendent beauty all things earthly are cheap as wooden blocks and toys. The undeveloped skill and power of man will yet actualize these dreams and ideals if he becomes holy, has the will, and if the clay permits. But more ; if, in the nature of things, it is pos- sible for some invention to be thought out and built that will bear the tourist over the earth's surface at the rate of a thousand miles per minute, it will be done. If, in the nature of things, it is possible to con- struct an ocean ship that can cross the Atlantic in a day or night, it will be done. If, in the nature of things, it is possible to build an air-ship to fly among the clouds with the speed and safety of an eagle, it will be done. If, in the nature of things, it is possible to talk with friends a thousand miles away without the use of the telegraph or telephone, it will be done. If, in the nature of things, it is possible, by means of a camera obscura, to throw upon the MAJESTY OF MAN 315 sky or clouds gigantic pictures that can be wit- nessed by ten millions of people, it will be done. If, in the nature of things, it is possible to gen- erate, chemically or mechanically, cyclonic and volcanic forces, and harness them, as we now do the magnetic and electric ones, it will be done. For all possibilities, we repeat, are involved in the mind of man, and simply are waiting the call of some necessity or purpose to bring them out. If the human race does not sink into that decadence which results from neglect of religion, from dis- obedience and iniquity, those who live a hundred years from now will wonder much that we of to- day were wont to boast extravagantly of our at- tainments and achievements. Man scarcely has begun to show his skill or do his work. Even in the presence of the miracles of Christ, it may yet be said, " Greater works than these " shall man be able easily to do (comp. John xiv. 12). And in that other unexplored world it does not yet appear what man is to be, but we are told that when he, the Christ and Creator, shall appear man is to be " like him," not merely in outward form and glory, but in the sweep and scope of a divine and deathless intelligence. And psychological science already is hinting that in these exhaustless stores and boundless oceans of knowledge that now largely are dormant in the human mind is the promise of an evolution which, as the ages of 316 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? eternity pass, shall place man in power, know- ledge, and wisdom on a plane only a step below where dwells the infinite God. And all this is in harmony with the well-nigh bewildering disclosures of the Bible as to the future of man. The inspired revelator represents Christ as saying, " To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne" (Rev. iii. 21). "Know ye not that ye shall judge angels?" (1 Cor. vi. 3.) At different times the prophetic eye has been permitted to look into what is called the heavenly world. With remarkable uniformity this is the discovery that has been made : a type of human- ity of the most dazzling brightness is seen to oc- cupy the throne of the invisible God, and to hold the scepter of supreme authority. " I saw thrones," says the writer of Revelation, " and the saints of God sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them" (Rev. xx. 4). "And above the firma- ment that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone : and upon the likeness of the throne was the like- ness as the appearance of a man above upon it " (Ezek. i. 26). There is, therefore, no mistaking the family coat of arms that, according to the sacred Scriptures, is inherited by man. But, on second thought, the vision is blurred. MAJESTY OF MAN 317 The drunkard, the felon, the harlot, the liar, the miser, the murderer, the scoundrel, pass in review, and it is asked, Is this your magnificent humanity ? Yes — wrecked ! After the frost has touched and blighted the rose can one judge of its native fragrance and beauty? Looking at the blind, helpless, and misshapen animal forms that, through inaction or bad action, have fallen under the curse of degeneration, can one judge of what those animals were before their fall ? No better can one judge of man after the curse of sin has taken the crown from his brow and trailed his royal robes in the mire. Wait till the crown is restored ; wait till the robes are washed ; wait till Christ is put on; wait till the resurrection is accomplished; wait till the coronation is celebrated, then judge. The human race, that now often seems to be half wolf, or rather " half serpent, not yet extracted from the clay," will begin under the divine touch and transformation an evolution whose outcome is comprehended by God alone. No wonder the revelator implored one of the churches to which he was writing, saying, " Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." In the year 1648, in Westminster, England, by imperial command were gathered a number of pious and scholarly divines who at their nineteenth ses- sion approved what is known as the Assemblies' Shorter Catechism. 318 EVOLUTION OR CREATION? In church and home from that day to this, though less frequently of late years, have the Assemblies' questions and answers been repeated by multitudes who have been made, as Carlyle suggests, wiser and better by their study and contemplation. The first question propounded reads, " What is the chief end of man? " The answer is, " Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for- ever." But were those distinguished scholars in session now, and were they as well versed in the recently established facts of science and philosophy, of tradition and history, as in the theology of their day, they would add to the catechism two other questions that are no less suggestive and profound than those they published to the world. The first of the new questions would be this : Who created the universe and all things in it? God, in the person of Christ, would be the answer. The second question would be, What is the chief end in all Christ has done? Recalling the garden of Eden, and the cross on Calvary, with its background of universal his- tory, and forecasting the evolution and enthrone- ment of man, and his song of redemption, there can be but one answer : The chief end in the crea- tion of the universe and in all else Christ has done is to glorify man and enjoy him forever, P ||ffi»fl»iIi h iii?iS?K,! 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