Only eternity will reveal the disastrous
wreckage wrought throughout the Churches by the doctrine of Evolution. The Church of
England (Sir Edward Poulton
recalls) as a whole had accepted the fact of evolution within a quarter of a
century from the date of the publication of the Origin of the Species, so that
by 1894 Lord Sailsbury
could refer to evolutionary doctrine as having become part of the heritage of
all educated men. But Lord Tweedsmuir
reminds us:- Dr. G. J. Romanes, well known as a friend of
*
The Forum, April, 1930.
* *
*
The
inventor of Evolution is himself a forecast of its fruitfulness in
apostasy. In his Life and Letters Darwin says:-
I had gradually come by this time i.e., 1836-39
to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books
of the Hindus. By further reflecting
that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do
miracles become, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine
revelation. Thus disbelief crept over me
at a very slow rate, but was at last complete.
The rate was so slow that I felt no distress.
* *
*
Again
and again we hear that the children are being taught in day schools mans
descent from the apes. Yet there is no fossil evidence whatever (says Dr. Austin H. Clarke), that the most ancient man was not a man. There are no such things as missing
links. Fossil skulls, which have been
dug up and advanced as missing links showing connections between man and monkey, have all been shown as misinterpretations. I marvel,
said Lord Kelvin, at the undue haste with which teachers of our Universities and preachers in our pulpits are
re-stating truth in terms of Evolution while Evolution itself remains an
unproved hypothesis in the laboratories of science.
We
are constantly told that the world is millions of years old, the supposed proof
of this being that existing processes would require these vast periods to form
the earth as it is. But such existing
processes tell us nothing of the special forces in motion when God as Creator
was forming the worlds. When Christ
multiplied the loaves and fishes, His authority produced the results without
the time normally required for the formation and development of fish and wheat,
and the after-activities of fisherman and baker. By faith we
understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God. Seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom
knew not God, it was Gods good pleasure, through the foolishness of preaching,
to save them that believe WE PREACH
CHRIST CRUCIFIED
THE POWER OF GOD, AND THE WISDOM OF GOD.
* *
*
The
optimism of Evolution, which Darwin himself called the
devils gospel*, would be
amusing if it were not so tragic. The
Times (Sept 2, 1937), in its leading article on Sir Edward Poultons presidential address
to the British Association, says:- To progress from some bacterium-like organism to man has
taken a thousand million years or so.
The astronomers hold out every hope of the earth continuing habitable
for at least the same length of time in the future. In such a perspective the present lamentable
state of the world can be seen in its true light, as a temporary crisis in the
course of a slow advance, and men of reason and good will can find some abiding
hope. The leap from the man to
the angel will be another 1,000,000,000 years and more; while the actual age
of the human 6,000 years at once makes Evolution (on its own showing) a
pricked bubble. For the process of evolution as the Spectator (Sept 3, 1937)
says, is exceedingly slow, tens of thousands of
generations being needed to create any considerable change in a species.
* Life
and Letters, vol. 3, p. 331.
* *
*
Man is the product of creation, not of evolution. Professor
E. Slossan, of Washington, U.S.A., after
declaring that its amazing accuracy in verbal detail has driven him to
acknowledge in the Bible the
Word of God, points out that the
dust of the ground, out of which man was
made, contains fourteen chemical elements out of the ninety-two known to
Science, and that human flesh is composed of exactly these fourteen. Nor can the master mind of man or angel, much less any blind urge of nature, create man afresh
out of his identical dust. As a Professor of Biology has put it:- I know just exactly the
composition of this seed. It has nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon. I know the exact proportions. I can make a seed that will look exactly like
it. But if I plant my seed it will come
to nought; its elements will simply be absorbed
in the soil. If I plant the seed that
God made, it will become a plant, because it contains the mysterious principle
which we call the life principle.
The inventor of Evolution is himself a forecast of its
fruitfulness in apostasy. In his Life and Letters
* *
*
We
warmly commend to our readers the Evolution Protest Movement,
It is true that a negative attitude is
never the strongest: the direct challenge of positive Scripture is ever the
main sword-thrust of the Spirit: nevertheless a negation of popular error - and
the whole world has fallen into the grip of Evolution - often helps minds that
are not saturated with Scripture.
* *
*
Evolution
and The Fall.
By
D. M. PANTON.
Two statements of the origin of life (and especially
human life) on earth, and two only, are before the world to-day. The Scripture says: The Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground, not out of previously existing forms of
life; nor can the dust of the ground mean animals, since all animals are named
in the passage (ver.
19) as themselves created, nearly
simultaneously, out of the ground - and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became - for the first time, as the still lifeless body was
breathed upon by God a
living soul (Gen. 2: 7). IN THF IMAGE OF GOD created He - not through the image of the beast evolved He them
(Gen. 1: 27); and
out
of the ground the Lord God
formed every beast of the field,
and every fowl of the air (Gen. 2: 19).
The
alternative statement of the origin of life on the earth is that of Evolution,
a theory now almost universally held. It
is conjectured that all life sprang, in remote ages, out of dead matter,
without the hand of a Creator; the lower forms of life then gave birth, through
countless ages, to the higher forms of life; until, by its own inherent
evolving power, nature reached its crowning evolution, Man.*
* Darwin himself says, concerning Evolution:- Many of the views which have
been advanced are highly speculative, and some no doubt will prove erroneous.
Now
we are met on the threshold by an arresting and thought-provoking fact. Evolution itself frankly confesses that it is
false if the world is the age men have always supposed it, and which has in its
favour all actual historic data.
Now
the traditional age of man on earth, together with the fauna and flora that accompany
man - as distinct from the untold ages before the gigantic cataclysm that may
be indicated by Gen. 1: 2 - is not discountenanced by science. For if the Glacial Epoch corresponds either
with the profound disorder into which the primaeval
world had lapsed on the threshold of the creation of man, or with the Flood, we
are brought within actual range of historic fact. In the words of a professor of mathematics, Dr. H. W. Morris: At the present time the earth is, in winter, in that part of
her orbit where she is nearest to the sun nearer by about three millions of miles than in summer;
and this greater proximity to the sun, in winter, renders this season now
comparatively mild. But it happens that
in about every 10,000 years her winters, in the northern hemisphere, occur when
she is in that part of her orbit where she is at her greatest distance from
the sun; then, those winters are of extreme and arctic severity - in fact are
prolonged one into the other, and become continuous and form a Glacial Period. That is, the Glacial Epoch occurred less than
ten thousand years ago. A French
authority, M. Edmond Perrier, says:
It must be about ten thousand years since the
glaciers were enclosed within their present limits. So also Geology reinforces Astronomy in
bringing the age of human life on earth within the traditional limits. Sir J.
W. Dawson says: The elaborate and careful
observations of Dr. Andrews on the
raised beaches of Lake Michigan - observations of a much more precise character
than any which, in so far as I know, have been made of such deposits in Europe
- enable him to calculate the time which has elapsed since North America rose
out of the waters of the Glacial Period as between 5,500 and 7,000 years. In the Post-Glacial
Era, Professor Dawson adds,
there was a re-elevation of the continents, and a
restoration of a milder temperature. No
trace of human remains or implements belonging to a period earlier than this
has been detected. So Professor T. G. Bonney
summarises the most recent estimates on the appearance of man thus:- On this point there is still room for controversy, but it
may suffice to say that, in Europe at any rate, it was probably some time -
probably rather late - in the Glacial Period. So Cuvier had said long ago:- If
there be any circumstance thoroughly established in Geology, it is that the
crust of our earth has been subject to a great and sudden revolution, the epoch
of which cannot be dated much further back than five or six thousand years ago.
But,
for the enormous periods requisite for such enormous changes as it postulates,
Evolution has to face a new problem and one (for it) of portentous
gravity. For some geologists, compelled
by facts that have accumulated for nearly a century, are now
doubting whether fossil remains can be graded in a life-succession at
all, or were not once simultaneously alive.
In the present condition of our knowledge,
says Professor Huxley, one verdict, not proven and not provable - must be recorded against all grand hypotheses of the
palaeontologist respecting the general succession of life on the globe. For since (1) any kind of fossil may occur next to the Archean
or earths primitive bedrock; since (2)
the geological strata, superimposed one on another, can occur in any order,
with yet no trace of cataclysm between the layers; and since (3) fossil man is found mixed in with
animal fossils of remote ages, and must so have been co-existent:- it seems to
follow that the fossil world is a unit, and simply represents the ruins of an
older state of our present world; and whatever geological changes they
indicate, must have taken place since Man was on the earth, for there is no
possible line of scientific reasoning to convince us that any single type of
fossil is older than the human race.* So Professor
Huxley says: Even absolute identity of organic contents is no proof of the
synchrony of deposits, while absolute diversity is no proof of difference of
date. The different parts of one and
the same stratum, having a similar composition throughout, containing the same
organic remains, and having similar beds above and below it, may yet differ to
any conceivable extent in age. That is, Evolutions main original
foundation - a life-succession revealed by fossils from the dawn of time -
trembles in the balances, and with it Evolution must collapse. GEOLOGY, says
* Prof. G. MeGready Prices Fundamentals of Geology, p. 246, a startling work of great value. See also, especially for Mendelism,
his Q.E.D. or New Light on the Doctrine
of Creation. I need not point out how, if established, the contemporaneousness of
all fossil life (which would make the preceding paragraph on the Glacial Epoch
altogether unnecessary) revolutionises the whole problem from top to bottom,
and would bring us back (by geology alone) face to face with the Adamic creation and the Flood.
But, apart from the antiquity of man, there are three
facts, facts which none will deny, that are fatal to Evolution; and the first
is that transmutation of species has never occurred in the whole realm of nature; no example has ever been discovered
of the change of one species into another.
In all the fossil deposits of the rocks, where long epochs are recorded
in stone, not a single example of transmutation of species has ever been found,
nor a single fact leading to the conclusion that such an
evolved species has ever existed.
The intermingling of species invariably produces hybrids, which are as
invariably sterile. Thousands of species have lived alongside man for thousands
- Evolutionists say for thousands of millions - of years; yet, in untold
millions of births, that which, if Evolution is true, must have occurred at
least many thousands of times, has never been known to occur once. Though
backed by all the powers and opportunities of deliberate selection, no florist
has ever modified a rose into anything but a rose, no dog-fancier has
produced from dogs a breed that was not a dog; much less has natural selection,
working without intelligence and at hazard, left the slightest trace of an
evolved species. Gods lovely plasticity
in plant and animal, designed to adapt them to, changing conditions and climes,
has bounds as sharp and final as the ocean itself. THERE ARE TWO OR THREE MILLION SPECIES ON EARTH,
says
The
second fact fatal to Evolution is that transmutation of species is impossible. So radically distinct are the groups of
the living, that transfusion of blood is fatal to life. Among all races of men, blood-transfusion is
practicable; but so varied are the size and shape of the blood-corpuscles of
different species, and of the blood-vessels through which the corpuscles pass -
differences that are constant and permanent - that to transfuse the blood of an
animal into a man, or of a man into an animal, is followed by certain
death. THE GREAT BREAK, says Darwin, IN THE ORGANIC CHAIN BETWEEN MAN AND HIS
NEAREST ALLIES CANNOT BE BRIDGED OVER BY ANY EXTINCT OR LIVING SPECIES.
The
third fact fatal to Evolution is that no approach to the human has ever been
discovered. As far back as
extant species, living or dead, carry us, man is as human, with a brain every whit as powerful,
as he is to-day;* no remains
exist anywhere of transitional, semi-human apes. Geologists claim enormous ages, running back
into a hundred million years, for the human remains discovered; yet all
transition forms between the man and the ape are totally absent. Why?
There could have been no
such creature, else some bones of him must have been found. Haeckel says: WE AS YET, KNOW OF NO FOSSIL REMAINS OF THE HYPOTHETICAL
PRIMEVAL MAN. If our
ancestors were animal, and evolution is a law of nature, among the many races
of men, the four species of anthropoid apes, and the innumerable tribes of
monkeys, all living together, there must have been, and there must be half human, half-animal races. Yet no such super-ape exists anywhere on the
globe, nor has left his trace in the depths of the primaeval
rocks. There
is not, says Sir Alfred Russel Wallace, as often
assumed, one missing link to be discovered, but at least a score of such
links, adequately to fill the
gap between man and apes. The
fauna and flora in
*
On fossil remains and disinterred skulls
it is well to remember the warning of Huxley:- The fossil remains of man
hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that
lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he
has probably become what he is. Professor Ray Lankester
repeats (Times, NOV. 26, 1921) the
caution. It
must be carefully borne in mind that we have not at present facts which justify
more than preliminary guesses, as to the relation in time of the Java skull,
the Piltdown skull, the Broken Hill skull, and the Heidelburg
jaw to one another and to the little group of European skulls and skeletons.
Moreover,
(though this has not yet reached the general public) a law has been discovered in
biology which disposes of the whole problem. Evolution rests on the
transmission of acquired characters, without which, says Haeckel, it would be better to accept a mysterious creation of all
the species as described in the Mosaic account. Mendelism (as it is called) has proved that no characters
are acquired that are not latent in the ancestry. In the words of Professor G. M. Price: If we cross tall
yellow peas with dwarf green peas, the first hybrid generation will be all tall
yellows, both tallness and yellowness being dominant. But in the second hybrid generation, out of
every sixteen plants, we have nine - tall yellows, one dwarf green with three
dwarf yellows, and three tall greens, the last two kinds being wholly new
forms. Although these new forms will
breed true indefinitely when kept in pure lines, yet they are nevertheless cross-fertile
with the original forms, and thus the circle can be
completed back again at any time.
Innumerable repetitions of similar experiments have proved that these
principles hold good throughout the whole world of plants and animals; in other
words, we see that the principles of
heredity, as now understood, have brought us back to that great truth that each
form of plant or animal was designed by the Creator to reproduce only after its kind.
Thus, while there is remarkable elasticity, it is only elasticity, and
the variation is within unalterable law and inside unbridgable gulfs: new
species created by acquired characters, and infertile with the old, are unknown
and impossible. Negatively, Buxley had
already made the admission. There is no positive
evidence at present, he says, that a group of
animals has, by variation and selective breeding, given rise to another group,
which was in the least degree infertile with the first. Mendelism has now revealed, by the invariable and
mathematical rules of descent, that it is impossible. But this is fatal to Evolution. EITHER,
says Herbert Spencer, THERE HAS BEEN
INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS, OR THERE HAS BEEN NO EVOLUTION.
Nor
is Evolution to-day, even among men of science, secure of its once undisputed
throne. Professor William Bateson, M.A., F.R.S., President of the British Association in 1914, in his
presidential address said: We have come to the
conviction that the principle of Natural Selection cannot have been the chief
factor in delimiting the species of animals and plants. We are even more sceptical as to the validity
of that appeal to changes in the conditions of life as direct causes of
modification upon which latterly at all events
Historically, as Well as
philosophically, is a purely pagan conception; and its acceptance by the mass
of Christian leaders is only one more proof of the appalling bankruptcy of
leadership in the modern Church. It was
the Roman atheist philosopher and poet, Lucretius, to whom primitive atoms were the seeds of all
things, who gave birth to Evolution; and it is exceedingly remarkable that one
of the earliest Spiritualists, Hudson
Tuttle, almost at the same time as Darwin,
in his Arcana of Nature in 1859 stated Evolution as a
revelation from the spirit world. Professor Huxley frankly acknowledges the
pagan parentage. THE MODERN DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION, he says, IS BUT AN
EXPRESSION AND COMPLETION OF THOSE PHYSICAL THEORIES WHICH OPENED THE HISTORY
OF SPECULATION. It has been countered
once for all by the Holy Ghost: The worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen
HATH NOT BEEN MADE out of things
which do appear (Heb. 11: 3). Sir C. Lyell,
himself the teacher of
There remains a wonderful and decisive fact. The Evolutionist has not a single example of
what he assumes the change of one species into another; on the contrary, we
have, in recorded history, the very thing Genesis asserts - specific creation. He took the five loaves - the
vegetable creation and the two
fishes - the animal and
looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave (Matt. 14: 19);
five loaves and two fishes, multiplied by a direct act of creation, not by a
process
of evolution, into loaves and
fishes sufficient to feed five thousand; a specific creation, on the spot,
producing a perfected product, even to a loaf ready for human consumption. The Evolutionist is here impaled on a
hopeless dilemma. If he denies that the
incident ever occurred, he comes out boldly as an enemy of God and His Gospel;
if he acknowledges the truth of the Gospel narrative, then he admits that
specific creation has occurred within recorded history, and so acknowledges
that to take one of those fishes from the hand of Christ, and argue its descent
from countless earlier forms of life, would be absurd. The dilemma is decisive and inexorable. So all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made
that hath been made (John 1:
3).
Alas,
how many souls have been lost through building on an empty conjecture! Mr.
Andrew Carnegie says: When I, along with three or
four of my boon companions, was in this stage of doubt about theology,
including the supernatural element, and indeed the whole scheme of salvation
through vicarious atonement and all the fabric built upon it, I came
fortunately upon Darwins and Spencers works, The Data of Ethics, First
Principles, Social Statics, The
Descent of Man. Reaching the pages
which explain how man has absorbed such mental foods as were favourable to him,
retaining what was salutary, rejecting what was deleterious, I remember that
light came as in a flood and all was clear.
Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found
the truth in evolution. All is well
since all grows better became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his
own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his
marvel to perfection. His face is turned
to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward. Humanity is an organism, inherently rejecting
all that is deleterious, that is wrong, and absorbing after trial what is
beneficial, what is right.
But
the Great War burst upon Mr. Carnegie
as the bankruptcy of Evolution. The last
broken passage in his diary, following on a hopeful entry made in 1912, runs
thus: As I read this to-day (1914) what a change! The
world convulsed by war as never before!
Men slaying each other like wild beasts! In a touching preface to his memoirs his wife
says: Until then he had lived the life of a man in
middle life - and a young one at that - golfing, fishing, swimming each day, sometimes doing all three in one day. Optimist as he always was and tried to be,
even in the face of the failure of his hopes, the world disaster was too
much. His heart was broken. It is the tragedy of a disillusioned
world. Out of sinful humanity nothing
can evolve but sinful humanity: only by faith in the Son of God can all souls,
all nations, all the world be made over again into the
image of God.
Now
we turn from the physical creation to the spiritual significance of the Fall. Profoundly
connected are Evolution and the dynamic overthrow of all revelation. For two books of the Bible, and perhaps two
supremely, have been the objects of Satans bitterest attacks - Genesis and
Revelation; the book that betrays his origin, and the book that discloses his
destiny. But there must be a profounder
reason for the assault than mere pride or pique. The germ of all things is in Genesis, and the
clue to all mysteries is in Revelation; therefore to destroy these two books,
revelations source and goal, is the destruction of the Book. In the beginning God - are the splendid portals through
which we pass from eternity into time; - Even so come, Lord Jesus -
are the massive gateways by which we pass back from time into eternity: beyond
these Pillars of Hercules, backward, the human mind cannot travel; and through
the Gates of Pearl, forward, we catch only broken gleams of the immeasurable
glory. To overthrow Genesis and
Revelation is to destroy - at least as far as revelation is concerned - the
origin and ultimate of all things.
Now
the moral centre of Genesis is the Fall; and
apparently it is the extraordinary simplicity of the drama, though concealing
as it does a fathomless profundity, which stumbles modern thought. There was no garden
in
Upon
this organic fall of all in the one God builds the whole structure of
redemption; for He takes this very principle of solidarity, which was our ruin,
and makes that solidarity the organ of the worlds salvation. For as through the one mans disobedience the many were made sinners - sinners by a representative act, sinners by a
fouled nature inherited, sinners ourselves by active choice EVEN so -
God taking the solidarity which ruined as the solidarity which shall redeem through the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous. The helpless
fall of the race into death through the act of a lonely man is countered by a
helpless salvation for the entire race wrought by a Man as lonely and
unique. That is, God incarnate in human
flesh, the Second Man, is so organically one with the race as a race so the
Son of Man, not a son of man that His righteousness is (potentially) imputed
to all as actually and as really as in Adams sin.* The first Adam was the federal head of the race;
the last Adam is equally the federal head of the race: the first Adam, the
law-breaker, is replaced by the last Adam, the law-fulfiller: the first man
acted for all mankind, and plunged the world into ruin; the Second Man acted
for all mankind, and lifted the world into (potential) salvation: Adam was the
author of death to all; Christ is the author of life for all. Thus the doctrine of the Fall lies at the
root of all redemption
Death, says Canon Barnes, did
not come into the world through human sin: there was no first man made in the
image of God.** It is
manifest that if there be no first Adam, there could be no last. But the Holy
Ghost says:- So then as through one trespass for however often Adam sinned afterwards, we
fell only by the one act that introduced sin itself the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; EVEN SO God turning solidarity, the organ of condemnation, into solidarity,
the organ of grace through one
righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. If the first
limb of the parallel is a myth, disaster and ruin overwhelm the second limb: on
the other hand, if the Second Head of the race really died for all, it could
only be because in the First Head all had died.
As Adam ruined us through sin foreign to us, without our fault; so
Christ has saved us with a righteousness foreign to
us, without our merit: and the Holy Spirit thus rests our entire redemption on
the historical, actual, personal fall of the first man countered by the
historical, actual, personal death and resurrection of the Second.
Inconceivably
solemn and weighted with latter-day doom is the main consequence of a denial of
the Fall, which one approaches with a shudder. Though we abandon
belief, says Canon Barnes, that the Fall was an historical
event, the fact of sin remains.* Now
if sin is a fact, and a fact not chargeable to man, it must be chargeable to
God: whether through creation or evolution is immaterial - if man did not fall, the sin that is in him must have been
in him in his origin, at his creation - that is, God must have created him sinful: if sin is not mans choice,
it is Gods responsibility. The dilemma
is inexorable. This is precisely the goal at
which the Spirit saith expressly (1 Tim. 4: 1-3) we shall arrive in the last days. Once again looms on the horizon a
blundering or else a malignant Demiurge, who, handling forces he could not
control, bungled against his will into a sinful creation or else, himself an
evil being, made matter itself evil; a creator or evolver who either could not
or would not control that which he had himself created or evolved. Gnosticism
was born in an attempt to solve the problem of evil, and exactly at that spot
it will be born afresh.** It is inexpressibly startling to hear this
sentence from the chief living protagonist of a denial of the Fall:- Those of us who hold that He [Christ] was God Incarnate before His Death, and God Discarnate afterwards.*** Whether it be Docetic Gnosticism,
which regarded the Lords humanity as phantasmal, or Ebionite Gnosticism, which asserted that the Divine Being finally abandoned
Jesus upon the cross all Gnosticism insisted, and will insist again, that the
Son of God is now discarnate****: hence
the terrible words of the great anti-Gnostic Apostle, - They that confess not that Jesus Christ
cometh [R.V.] IN THE FLESH; this is the deceiver and the antichrist (2
John 7.).
The giant theosophies of the East are once again laying their octopus
arms about the
*
Record, Sept..
16, 1920.
**
The Evolutionist Le Conte says:- If Evolution be true, and especially if man be indeed a
product of Evolution, then what we call evil is not a unique phenomenon
confined to man, and the result of an accident (the Fall], but must be a great
fact pervading all nature, and part of its very constitution. Exactly so the Gnostic Celsus, the first man to compose
a written attack on the Christian Faith, says:- In this world evil is a necessary thing. It has no origin and will have no end. Matter is the source from which what we call
evil is ever springing up afresh.
***
Canon Barnes Spiritualism and the Christian
Faith, p. 27.
****
See Dean
Mansels Gnostic
Heresies, p. 111.
*****
British Congregationalist, Jan. 24, 1907.
See the sixth Present Day Pamphlet, Gnosticism: the Coming Apostasy.
So all the glory gathers at last about one lonely
Brow. The first man Adam became after the corpse was moulded, and when his nostrils were inbreathed
of God a living soul neither mortal or immortal, but simply alive, and
alive at the will of God; the
last Adam became when the
inherent Divine power to give life had been liberated by a work finished
through an atoning cross and an empty tomb A LIVING SPIRIT (1
Cor. 15: 45), a
regenerator, the Lord and Giver of life.
Christ is the Last Adam, for there are only two
Heads of the race, and to all eternity there will be no fresh Adam, and
therefore no fresh fall; but He is the Second Man, for though millions
intervened between Adam and Himself, He was a man of a new kind, the introducer of a
fresh family, the creator of a new type of humanity. Both Heads of the race have a vast following;
for to Adam belonged the power of generation, and to Christ belongs the power
of regeneration; and made one as we are with the First Man by ordinary birth,
so we are made one with the Second Man by the second birth. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy - Adams
countless unregenerate breed; and
as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly - all in
whom, after a divine birth, the image of Adam is fading and melting into the
image of Christ.
And
for both types of men the Incarnation has emptied every tomb. For since by man came
death - since: because of the right
balance of things; since death was a human product by MAN came also the resurrection of the
dead - or, more exactly, the
resurrection of dead men (Ellicott):
not by a man, in each case, though
that is true - but by man: death and
resurrection are both human products.
Taken as a race, and not as individuals, death passed on all men for the
act of Adam: so also, taken as a race, and not as individuals, resurrection
passes upon all men for the act of Christ.
When God breathed into mans nostrils the breath of life, man became a living soul - that is, simply alive;
but when He brought up Christ from the grave, the act made all men ultimately
imperishable. This puts enormous dignity
upon humanity. Conceivably, God by some
kind of external machinery could have saved men, while so humanity was left
degraded and despicable: far more wonderful truth, He has, so to speak, saved
humanity from within - it is not a salvation for man merely, but it is a salvation by man; so lifting
manhood on to the very Throne of Heaven.
Humanity is the common platform on which the first Adam and the Last
stand together: the one dissolving humanity into dust and death; the other
re-knitting humanity into spirit, soul, and body restored for ever. There is not a grave which is not a human
product; and there will never be an emptied grave which is not equally a human
product: a Man has glorified God as no other being in the universe has; a man
filled all graves, and another Man, by the same solidarity with the race,
destroys all graves for ever.
The Apostle now re-states the amazing truth so that it
may not be missed. For as in Adam all die - the
total race condemned to death in the fountain of their blood SO ALSO
- with an identical universality shall all be made alive - in an
exact antithesis to the death; that is, restored in physical resurrection. The truth here skirts dangerous precipices;
but it is all the more precious and vital for that - a lamp shining in a dark
place. The resurrection here is not spiritual resurrection, for our Lord never rose out of
spiritual death: He rose out of the
grave, and it is out of the grave that He lifts the whole of humanity. Adam dug a grave for every one of us: for
every one of us Christ will burst that grave.* And this is because He has become so organically one with
the race, so really human, that He has become identified with our common
fate. As little as the sun could move
from its place without disintegrating, or reintegrating, the whole solar
system; so little could the Eternal Christ descend from heaven to become man
without affecting as profoundly our entire humanity: so organically is He one
with the human, so fathomless a fact is the Incarnation, so effectual is it in
counterworking the entrance of death, that all humanity sprang like one man
from the grave - however the fact may be delayed - when the Syrian stone was
rolled away. The Power that revives all,
stood self-revived: being a self-resurrection, it stands alone as a monument of
the inherent power of life: in words as astounding as ever fell even from the
lips of the Son of God I AM RESURRECTION, and life (John 11: 25); a Resurrection which, entering humanity, bursts every grave. For by man came the resurrection of the dead: it is not by the regenerating Deity, but by the
resurrecting Humanity, that all mankind, by physical revitalising, is made
immortal: eternal Heaven and eternal Hell lie beyond each emptied grave, but
every grave will be emptied. O DEATH, I WILL BE THY PLAGUES; 0 GRAVE, I WILL BE THY
DESTRUCTION (Hosea 13: 14).
*
So far from general resurrection proving
Universalism, it is one of the most appalling disproofs
to be found in the whole range of revelation; for it is the resurrection of the
body, made inevitable by the Incarnation,
which renders the human personality immortal in Gehenna. Death itself is to be destroyed for the whole
race, and with it all possibility of cessation of
existence.
So
the Apostle now summarises all resurrections that will ever be: the whole resurrection of the human race is represented as
one prolonged fact, of which the resurrection of Christ is the first beginning
(Dean Stanley). But - lest any should think
that resurrection is simultaneous each - of all the vast hordes of mankind in his own order - in his
own band or class (Ellicott): Christ the firstfruits - Christ is, to all humanity, what the first ripe
ear, gathered by the hand, is to the whole harvest; and the sun which ripened
the first lonely ear has warmth and life to quicken the vastest wheatfield; then they that are Christs at
His coming- in His Parousia; a
Parousia which lasts at least three and a half years, and during which
different batches of saints are reaped; for some escape the Tribulation by
rapture (Revelation 7: 9), while, years after, martyrs under Antichrist are
seen standing on the Crystal Sea (Revelation 15: 2): then cometh the end of resurrection,
when the Millennial Kingdom over, all the graves of the wicked are destroyed
before the Great White Throne. The last enemy that shall be, destroyed - for all mankind is DEATH. Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in
which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth;
they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have
done evil - for our Lords Voice
ultimately empties all graves unto the resurrection of judgment
(John 5: 28). So we stand
at last upon the
* *
*
THE
1. THE CREED OF EVOLUTION
The
doctrine of Evolution is directly antagonistic to that of Creation. Evolution, if consistently accepted, makes it
impossible to believe the Bible. - Prof.
T. H. HUXLEY.
Evolution
is a theory universally accepted, not because it can be proved to be true, but
because the only alternative, Special Creation, is clearly incredible. - Prof. D. M. S. WATSON,
at British Association, 1929.
No
conscious Creator can be conceived who made man in his present stage; certainly
as has been made plain by
2. SCIENTISTS WHO REJECT EVOLUTION
PHYSICISTS: Ambrose Fleming, L. T. More. ZOOLOGISTS:
A. Fleischmann, L. Vialleton, E. G. Dehaut, G. B. OToole, W. Bell Dawson, Douglas Dewar, V. Diamare, D. Carazzi. PHYSIOLOGISTS: G. Fano, L. S. Beale. BOTANISTS: J. Reinke, J. P. Lotsy, W. B. Scott. GEOLOGISTS: L. M. Davies, G., F. Wright, G. McCready
Price. ARCHAEOLOGIST: Charles Marston. BIOLOGISTS: L. S. Berg, A. H. Clark, E. W. MacBride,
Sergi, D. Rosa, DArcy Thompson, H. F. Osborn, R.
Broom, V. Kellogg, E. Dennert.
3. SCIENTIFIC
CRITICISMS OF EVOLUTION
For
the moment the Darwinian period is past; we can no longer enjoy the comfortable
assurance which once satisfied so
many of us that the main problem had been solved - all is again in the
melting-pot. By now, in fact, a new
generation has grown up that knows not
We go to
The
whole hypothetical pedigree of man is not supported by a single fossil genus or
a single fossil species. I should like
to commend this scientific truth to the serious consideration of all those who
regard the descent of man from beasts as actually proved or who hope that it
will be actually proved in the near future.
I am bound to express my fears that the upholders of this theory will
find themselves disappointed. - ERICH
WASMANN.
There
is no fossil evidence whatever that the most ancient man was not a man. There are no such things as missing
links. Missing links are
misinterpretations. Fossil skulls which
have been dug up and advanced as missing links, showing connections between man
and monkey, have all been shown as misinterpretations.
- DR. AUSTIN H. CLARK.
4. THE BLOOD-TEST
Human
Blood is the same in every race of the human family. The corpuscles that impart to the blood its
red colour float in a watery, colourless fluid called the serum. But
there are other, colourless, corpuscles
larger and less numerous than the red ones. These latter, according to the unanimous
agreement of physiologists, contain the principle of life, for they have an independent power of contraction and dilation. Thus it is a proof of the Scripture statement
that the life of the flesh is
in the blood. It is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is for the life thereof (Lev.
17: 11, 14).
The
microscope now shows that the blood of mankind is invariably the same in all
its races: and the experiments carried out at the Exhibition in
In
men and in animals the hair-like capillary blood-vessels are also respectively various. In each species the blood-vessel is specially
adapted for the proportionate sizes of the blood corpuscles which have to pass
through them. These differences are constant and permanent: and necessarily so. For, the blood of one species, if transfused
into that of another, proves poisonous and destructive to life. Another Scripture states that, All flesh is not the same flesh: but there
is one kind of flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, another of
birds (1 Cor. 15: 39). The flesh of
one kind is not the same as that of another kind,
because the capillary vessels, through which the blood is conveyed to every
part, vary in their size, in proportion to the size and nature of the
colourless corpuscles in the blood. So
different are these kinds of
flesh, that the transfusion of the blood
of one kind into another is followed by certain death. But this may well constitute another point.
THE TRANSFUSION
OF BLOOD. Among all
races of mankind this can be done, though not without some danger incidental to
the experiment. But it is absolutely fatal when the blood of a human being is
transfused into an animal: or when that of an animal is transfused into a
bird. Their flesh is different; and the
blood corpuscles of one kind do not fit the capillary blood vessels of another kind.
The injection of the circular blood-corpuscles of the animal into the elliptic blood-vessels of the bird produces
instantaneous death! The
blood is the life, and the life cannot be conveyed in vessels of a
disproportionate size. Death, therefore,
necessarily ensues on the experiment being tried.
In
each kind, species that are closely allied are not so suddenly affected but the blood of one kind
(or genus) cannot be transfused into that of
another without fatal effect. These
phenomena are constants in the different kinds of flesh, and show,
therefore, that there cannot be an evolution of one kind into the other. - E. W. BULLINGER, D.D.
5. CHRISTIAN
CRITICISMS OF EVOLUTION
In
the present state of our knowledge, all that Science can truthfully say is that
it knows not when, where, nor how, man originated. - D. DEWAR, F.Z.S.
I
marvel at the undue haste with which teachers in our Universities and preachers
in our pulpits are restating truth in terms of Evolution while Evolution itself
remains an unproved hypothesis in the Laboratories of Science - LORD KELVIN.
We
are confronted with such an overwhelming series of mistakes in the name of
science (particularly in the scientific investigation pertaining to mans
origin and history) that we are being driven to the conclusion that, whereas
hosts of recognized scientists have denounced the theory of mans animal
ancestry or accepted it only as an unproved theory, many others are so eager to
bring man back to the brute that they knowingly or unknowingly colour and
contradict the facts. The doctrine of
the divine and special creation which called man into existence in the image
and likeness of God is a basic, essential part of our Christian faith. It cannot be removed without destroying the
authority of the Bible, the blessing of Christian faith and the happiness of
human life. - PROFESSOR W. A. MAIER.
*
* *
EVOLUTION
1
We
are absolutely forced by science to admit and believe with absolute confidence
in a directive power - in an influence other than physical, dynamical,
electrical forces. There is nothing
between absolute scientific belief in creative power and the acceptance of the
theory of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Was there anything so absurd as to
believe that a number of atoms by falling together of their own accord could
make a crystal, a sprig of moss, a microbe, a living animal? Scientific thought is compelled to accept the
idea of Creative Power.
- LORD KELVIN, May 1, 1903.
2
The
origin of species by accidental germ variations, fostered by the struggle for
existence, was called by
Another
very serious difficulty in the path of the Darwinian theory
is the sterility of hybrids. A species
is defined as a group of very similar animals which can inter-breed with each
other and produce offspring like themselves.
Thus cats breed cats and dogs breed dogs, but dogs never generate
cats. In some cases different species
can inter-breed, but then the offspring are sterile - that is, cannot
inter-breed. Thus the horse and ass are
different species, they can inter-breed and produce
mules. But mules are sterile.
Now
many naturalists hold that this law, called the sterility of hybrids, is a
fatal difficulty in the way of
- SIR AMBROSE FLEMING, F.R.S., The Sunday School Times.
3
First
there is what may be called ordinary fluctuating variation. No two plants and no two animals of the same
species are exactly alike. It was on
these minute differences that
But
then there do occur in cultivated plants and domestic animals marked deviations
from the type which notoriously are heritable, and it is upon these deviations,
which they have named mutations, that modem
mechanistic biologists fall back when they strive to account for
evolution. But these mutations have
proved to be - one and all - expressions of lessened vigour and damaged life
force, and they are not stable. So long
as they are bred in the conditions which produced them they are inherited, but
transplanted to healthy conditions (like the domestic pig in
- E. W. MAcBRIDE, F.R.S., The Times, Sep.
19, 1936.
* *
*
THE BANKRUPTCY OF EVOLUTION
By Dr. RALPH
HOOPER
1.
Evolution has failed to
explain the existence of the material universe.
2. Evolution has failed to explain
the origin of mechanical and Chemical energy.
3. Evolution has failed to prove
the spontaneous generation of life from dead matter.
4. Evolution has failed to prove that the one‑celled
protozoa is the originate of the many‑celled
animal.
5. Evolution has failed to prove the
transmutation of species.
6. Evolution has failed to prove
that any one species has fundamentally changed throughout the centuries of
life.
7. Evolution has failed to prove
that natural selection and the survival of the fittest have
evolved the species, or that acquired characteristics are hereditary.
8. Evolution has failed to prove
that one cell can produce cells different from itself in function.
9. Evolution has failed to bridge
the gap between cold-blooded reptiles and warm-blooded animals.
10. Evolution has failed to
produce one missing link between man and the apes, or between any two distinct
species.
11. Evolution has failed to
explain the existence of some form of mentality in all animal life.
12. Evolution has failed to explain the existence of intelligence,
rational power and spiritual inclination in man.
The
repudiation of Evolution is shown by the testimony of distinguished scientists.
Prof. J. S. R. Agassiz (1807-1873)
There is not a fact known to science, tending to show that a
single kind has ever been transmuted into any other. Any man who accepted the doctrine of
evolution ceased thereby to be a scientist.
Prof. T. H. Huxley (perhaps the greatest exponent of evolution in his
day) There is no positive evidence at present that
a group of animals has, by variation and selective breeding, given rise to
another group which was in the least degree fertile with the first.
Sir J. Arthur Thompson (1861-1933),
Prof. Albert
G. P. Fleischmann,
Prof.
Prof, H. H. Newman,
Prof. T. H.
Morgan, California Institute of
Technology- The theory of natural selection is no
longer tenable. To-day the theory has few followers among
trained investigators, but it still has a popular vogue that is widespread and
vociferous.
Within the period of human history we do not know of a
single instance of the transformation of one species into another. It may be claimed, therefore, that the theory
of descent is lacking in the most essential feature that it needs to place the
theory on a scientific basis.
Prof. H. W. Conn,
Prof. J. LeConte (1823-1901), University of California The evidence of geology to-day is that species seem to come
into existence suddenly and in full perfection, remain substantially unchanged
during the term of their existence and pass away in full perfection. Other species take their place apparently by
substitution, NOT by transmutation.
Lt. Col. L.
M. Davies, F.G.S., F.R.S.E. It would puzzle any geologist to produce the least shred of
evidence which could stand the test of rigid examination by a capable critic.
Prof. L. T. Moore,
Dr. Robert Etheridge, F.R.S. (1903), Palaeontologist to the
Dr. H.
President C. W. Elliott (1854‑1926),
Robin, the French infidel Evolution is a
fiction, a poetical accumulation of probabilities without proof, and of
attractive explanation without demonstration.
Dr. J. B. Warren, University of California If
the theory of evolution be true, then during the many thousands of years,
covered in whole or in part by present human knowledge, there would certainly
be known at least a few instances of the evolution of one species from
another. No such instance is known.
Professor Karl Vogt,
Dr. Friedich
Pfaff, Professor of Natural Science
in
What
then is the explanation of Evolution? We
quote from Prof. Graebner:- The warfare of philosophy
against Christian faith is readily explained.
Man is corrupt. He loves
sin. He is conscious of his guilt and fears
the penalty. Hence every avenue of escape
is welcome, if only he can persuade himself that there is no God, no
judgment. Man is proud, he desires no
Saviour. Hence the effort to prove that
no Saviour is needed, that there is no guilt attached to sin, that there is no
absolute right and wrong. Hence too the
doctrine of the Agnostic that we can ascribe no attributes to God. When we read the Synthetic Philosophy of Spencer
we are apt to believe that the agnosticism there set forth is the result of
deep philosophical speculation. Nothing
can be farther from the truth. Man, even
cultured philosophical man, wants to have no restrictions placed upon pride and
selfishness; hence it is necessary to rid the mind of the fear of Divine
justice; hence the desire to
demonstrate that God has no attributes, such as that He is just for instance. The Psalmist
describes this attitude in the words, - Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
No one who has grasped the inner motive of all Scientific effort to
demolish faith, can fail to understand why many greet
with such jubilant acclaim every new attack upon the Biblical narrative. No one who has pondered this motive can be
snared in the net of science
falsely so called. He has seen its inwardness,
he knows its fatal bias.
- The
Evangel.
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THE REDEMPTION OF THE ANIMAL WORLD
The
redemption of the animal world will come as a result of the reinstatement of
man. The animal creation was subjected
to the fall unwillingly and will receive a regeneration
in the coming glorious new age. Before the fall animals were not ferocious
but were docile and subject to the tender care of un-fallen man, but after the
fall the nature of Satan was implanted within them. Their present plight is described by Paul. For the earnest expectation of the creature
waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity,
not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because
the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now. And not only they,
but we ourselves, also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we
ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting
for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body (Romans
8: 19-23). The present nature of the creature will
undergo a radical change, for Isaiah says,
The wolf also shall dwell with
the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the
young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their
young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole
of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the cockadices
den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my
holy mountain*
(Isaiah 11: 6-9).
-
Wm. F. BRIRNES.
* Keep in mind: A Mountain
in Scripture represents a Kingdom: The rock that struck the statue became a huge MOUNTAIN and filled the whole earth:
(Dan. 2: 35).
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