EVOLUTION AND ETHICS.
Evolution has a system or systems of Ethics. It traces the beginning of the sense of right and wrong to the instincts of animals, such as the parental instinct, the recognition of marital rights, and the right to respective properties such as nests and burrows. So that the animal, or man, came to see that it was best on all accounts to be good to oneself and others. So Mr. Spencer's definition of right is the happiness of oneself, one's offspring and others. Acts are good or bad as they increase happiness or misery. He ignores the moral instinct and exalts expediency and utility. This is the level of the uncivilized or savage races.
Dr. James Thompson Bixby of Leipsic, makes humanity the goal of Evolution's ethics. "The test of what is morally good is the tendency of the given motive to help forward the progress of the race toward the ideal humanity." (Ethics of Evolution, p. 212.) Every Bible believer will see how far short these fall of the standard of holiness and happiness the Bible places before us. But when or where did any people ever aim to help forward the "ideal perfection of humanity" who did not have the mighty impulse which the Bible, and only the Bible, gives to that object? There is not even the sense of brotherhood necessary for the motive. To point natural man to that is to ask him to act outside his nature.
The law of the Struggle for Existence never taught Christian ethics. The self-sacrificing Christian has something which never came from Evolution. The Cross is the final test of Evolution. By it that theory and all other false theories are weighed in the balances and found wanting. The struggle for existence is the law of self and is the antithesis of the Cross, which is the very opposite of the struggle for existence. Nor is the struggle for existence the law of the lower creature. That law is to bring forth fruit, to propagate their species. That is the plant's goal; when it has so done it retires or dies. The little bird will struggle more fiercely for its young than for its food, or even for its life, which it imperils often to save its brood. Below the unfallen creation and regenerated humanity is the unregenerated selfish man. Not Evolution but Revolution can create Christian ethics. History does not present an instance of progress in ethics save as aided by the Bible.