THEY FIRST WISH IT TO BE SO, THEN SOON, WITHOUT PROOF, THEY ASSERT THAT IT IS SO!
(From the Cincinnati Gazette, of June 26, 1880.)
"Prof. Huxley is assured that the doctrine of evolution, so far as the animal world is concerned, is no longer a speculation, but a statement of historical fact, taking its place along side of those accepted truths which must be taken into account by philosophers of all schools."
This statement was the summing up of an address delivered at the Royal Institution on the 19th of March. The address was specifically an account of "The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species"—it being nearly twenty-one years since Darwin's work bearing that name was first published.
The lecturer glanced at the general replacement of the catastrophic theory of geology by the uniformitarian hypothesis, claimed that many of the most important breaks in the line of the descent of plants and animals had been filled, noticed the great advance made in the science of embryology, and held that the amount of our knowledge respecting the mammalia of the Tertiary epoch had increased fifty-fold since Darwin's work appeared, and in some directions even approaches completeness. The lecture closed with these words: "Thus when, on the first of October next, 'The Origin of Species' comes of age, the promise of its youth will be amply fulfilled and we shall be prepared to congratulate the venerated author of the book, not only that the greatness of his achievement and its enduring influence upon the progress of knowledge have won him a place beside Harvey, but, still more, that, like Harvey, he has lived long enough to outlast detraction and opposition, and to see the stone that the builders rejected become the head-stone of the corner."
This is plain and emphatic speaking, but it has not been suffered to pass unchallenged.
Dr. Charles Elam, a writer who has already more than once measured swords with the school of naturalists of which Professor Huxley is a foremost champion, has been moved to respond to this latest utterance. He has contributed to the Contemporary Review a paper entitled "The Gospel of Evolution," which, whatever may be its conclusiveness, is one of the sharpest attacks recently sustained by the opposing party. Acknowledging at the start Mr. Darwin's pre-eminence as a naturalist, and Prof. Huxley's equal accomplishments in the department of biology, he yet ventures to continue his doubt regarding the evidence of their peculiar doctrines. He first cites Darwin's admissions that it would be fatal to his theory if any organs existed which could not have been evolved by minute selective modifications, and his further concession that "man, as well as every other animal, presents structures which, as far as we can judge, are not now of any service to him, nor have been so during any former part of his existence. Such structures can not be accounted for by any form of selection or by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts."
Having contrasted Darwinism proper with its exaggerations, in the system of Haeckel, who regards Darwin's admissions of an original creation as contemptible, and recognizes only one force in the universe—the mechanical, Dr. Elam compares Huxley's statement in his American addresses that belief which is not based upon evidence is not only illogical but immoral, with his last assertion that evolution is a fact, doubted only by persons "who have not reached the stage of emergence from ignorance." In 1862 Huxley also said—republishing the statements as late as 1874:
"Obviously, if the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are coeval with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just conception of the nature and the extent 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 or plants is quite incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results of a necessary process of a progressive development, entirely comprised within the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks."
Since this confession was uttered, whatever discoveries may have been made, there has not been the faintest indication of the development of any new species by artificial selection, the individuals of which are fertile among themselves and infertile with the parent stock. It may properly be alleged that there has not been time enough for such a slow process, but it yet remains as true as ever that there is no direct evidence in nature of what the Darwinians call favorable variation. It is the unwritten law of nature that one race must die that another may live, this other, in its turn, subserving the same end. Without this law nature would be a chaotic impossibility. If natural selection were a real agency, we ought to meet with frequent, if not constant, evidences of transition, and a slow and gradual, but perceptible improvement in species, especially marked in those whose generations succeed each other rapidly. But we see nothing of the kind. But did selection really exist, it would be incompetent to account for a multitude of structures and functions to which any efficient cause should be applicable, notably to the earliest rudiments of useful organs. Such organs as the eye and the internal ear are quite out of reach of any explanation by natural selection. Since the development of the eyes, due to the simultaneous growth of parts from within and without, the organ itself would be absolutely useless until it had attained such a degree of development as to admit of these separate parts meeting, and so the principle of preserving any useful variety would be quite inapplicable. The same is true of the internal ear.
Dr. Elam next passes in review Haeckel's Geneology of Man from the Lowest Monera to his Present Station as Lord of Creation. What the Germans call invention of species to fill troublesome gaps is illustrated in many ways, but we have room only for a single example:
"The vertebrata must be developed from something, and as yet there has been no smallest indication of anything like a spine or a rudiment of anything that could represent or be converted into one. It costs our author nothing but a stroke of his pen to invent the 'Chordonia,' and whence did they come? They were developed from the worms by the formation of a spinal marrow and a chorda dorsulis. Nothing more—the most trifling modification!—and we are at once provided with the root and stem of the whole vertebrata divisions. It is scarcely any drawback to this stroke of genius to say that there is no evidence whatever that such an order of living beings ever existed; that no one has the least conception of what they were like, or of any of their attributes. Prof. Huxley's responsibility for this imaginative science is evidenced by his declaration that the conception of geological time is the only point upon which he fundamentally and entirely disagrees with Haeckel."
It still remains true that all our positive and direct knowledge as to species contradicts the evolution hypothesis. Its evidence is purely inferential, and, as Dr. Elam quietly says, "As a psychological study it is interesting to observe how many things are deemed impossible to the infinite wisdom and power (which by the terms of the supposition, presided over the arrangements of our world) which are perfectly clear and comprehensible when considered as the result of blind chance and the operation of mechanical causes only." Omitting for lack of space his keen analysis of Huxley's claim of the evidence of evolution from the orchippus to the modern horse, we follow our author from his array of what is not proved to what is actually taught by geology. We quote:
"The succession of forms of life on our globe is demonstrably not such as ought to be the case on the theory of evolution." It was not the small and feeble species or most generalized forms that first appeared, either among mollusks, fish, reptiles or mammalia. We look in vain now for the representatives of the gigantic fishes of the Old Red Sandstone. And where are the mighty reptile tyrants of air, earth and water of the Oolite? * * * These races appeared in the plenitude of their development and power; and, as their dynasty grew old, it was not that the race was improved or preserved in consequence, but they dwindled, and were, so to speak, degraded, as if to make room in the economy of nature for their successors.
Next follows a closely linked argument that will not bear abridgement, showing the physical improbability that man, a walking animal, was descended from a climbing one, and the deplorable consequences which obliterate free will and necessitate the secularization of morals, as elaborated by Prof. Huxley's friend, Mr. Herbert Spencer. This part of the subject has a special interest to Americans, since the work in which Mr. Spencer's views are inculcated has been introduced as a manual in one of our oldest colleges, but its reproduction would widely lengthen our article. It is sufficient to say that Dr. Elam concludes that Mr. Spencer's doctrine, that "actions are completely right only when, besides being conducive to future happiness, they are immediately pleasurable," would justify him in concealing any injury done by him to a friend's scientific apparatus, provided he could attribute it to the weather, or the intrusion of a dog.
Such, in brief, are the points of an essay which, as a whole, is one of the most brilliant responses that the declarations of leading evolutionists have called forth. Of course, all its points are not new, but old objections have been skillfully refurbished and new ones brought into play.
To mourn for the dead, is to mourn for the lost casket when you still retain the jewel it held. The memories of the dead one's virtues are the jewels, and the cold clay but the casket.
AUTHORSHIPS OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
I have a few questions to put to every man who says Christianity is not true. They are these: If Christianity is not true, where did it come from? How came it into the world? What is its origin? These questions are not trifling ones. Infidels have given as many different answers to them as there are days in the week. There is no agreement among them that amounts to a settlement of the questions among themselves. The Scriptures are ancient. Porphyry, born at Tyre in 233, wrote a book against them, which was burned by order of Theodosius the Great, in the year 304. (Zell's Encyclopedia.)
The Emperor Julian, born in the year 331, and Hierocles, who lived in the fourth century, both wrote against Christianity, against the Scriptures, but did not call in question the existence of Christ, nor the fact that he wrought miracles.
Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher who lived in the second century, was the author of a work written against Christianity, entitled "Logos Aleethees," that is, "Word of Truth." To this work Origen replied. Celsus, in this work, quotes from the gospels by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and does this over and over, and shows that the Christians valued the books very highly; they suffered death rather than repudiate them.
A TABLE OF THE ANCIENT TIMES OF TRIAL AND OF PEACE.
Date—
A.D. 64 to 68—Persecution under Nero.
95 to 96—Persecution under Domitian. Banishment of John.
96 to 104—Time of peace.
104 to 117—Persecution under Trajan. Martyrdom of Ignatius.
117 to 161—Time of peace. Apologies of Aristides,
Quadratus and Justin Martyr were written.
161 to 180—Persecution under Marcus Aurelius. Martyrdom
of Polycarp and the martyrs of
Lyons.
164—Justin Martyr was put to death.
Statistics concerning the sufferings of the first Christians show that they were in great earnest. Eternity alone will reveal the true number of the martyrs. They all suffered and died just as we would expect, in case they knew the facts of our religion. Twenty-two books of the New Testament were written before the martyrdom of the Apostles Paul and Peter. Infidels often boast, in their ignorance, that the books of the gospels were not written by those whose names they bear.
If Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did not write those books which bear their names, then are they false in fact? and if so, what did the authors die for? The sufferings of primitive Christians were great; the persecutions which they endured were outrageous, cruel and inhuman in their character. Such is the universal verdict of ancient history. Of the persecution under Nero, Tacitus, a celebrated Roman historian, who was born in the year 56, just twenty-three years after Pentecost, writes, that Nero "laid upon the Christians the charge of that terrible conflagration at Rome of which he himself was the cause." He says, "A vast multitude were apprehended. And many were disguised in the skins of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs, some were crucified, and others were wrapped in pitched shirts and set on fire when the day closed, that they might serve as lights to illuminate the night. Nero lent his own garden for these executions, and celebrated at the same time a public entertainment in the circus, being a spectator of the whole in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes mingling with the crowd on foot, and sometimes viewing the spectacle from his car." (Annals of Tacitus, 15: 44.)
Juvenal, the coarse and bitter satirist of the same time, writes of the martyred Christians as "those who stand burning in their own flame and smoke, their head being held up by a stake fixed to their chin, till they make a long stream of blood and sulphur on the ground." (Juv. Sat., 1: 155.)
Seneca also refers to their fearful sufferings: "Imagine here a prison, crosses and racks and the hook, and a stake thrust through the body and coming out at the mouth, and the limbs torn by chariots pulling adverse ways, and the coat besmeared and interwoven with inflammable materials, nutriment for fire, and whatever else beside these cruelty has invented." (Seneca's Epistles, 14.)
One of Diocletian's coins commemorates the blotting out of the very name of Christian: "Nomine Christianorum deleto." But the age of martyrdoms ended with the accession of Constantine to the Roman empire, and to-day there are more Christians in the world than ever before. Skeptic, take one long look at the unbelieving, bloody, persecuting hosts, and choose your future associates.
Strauss says: "No man knows who wrote the Gospels." Can he mean that they are anonymous books? Does he mean that they are not biographies—books containing, in their historic matter, an account of the authors themselves? Who does not know that those books are and have been called the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? And who has, in all the past centuries, produced evidence showing that those are the wrong names. No one. Insane men might say such a thing. Infidels don't like to say that; they just say you can't prove your religion, nor show that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote those books. Will any sensible man affirm that they are the wrong names? How do we judge and believe respecting the authorship of other ancient books? Why do we believe that Cæsar wrote the Commentaries on the Gallic War? And why do we believe that Virgil wrote the Æneid? No sane man ever doubted the authorship of those writings. Preoccupancy during the ages past is considered by infidels themselves a sufficient ground for belief. The fact that those books exist has certainly been known from the age of the apostles to the present time, for men quoted extensively from them in the second century. The names they bear were in the possessive case then, and it is but fair to consider them the true owners.
Why are skeptics and infidels so partial among ancient books? They doubt the authorship of no ancient books unless they are written in favor of the religion of Christ. Will some wise one tell us why this strange inconsistency? O, it is an evidence of a wicked heart—that's all! all!!—ALL THERE IS OF IT!!!
Here are the dates of the books of the New Testaments, along with contemporary landmarks:
| Books. | After Pentecost. | Contemporary Landmarks. |
| 1 Peter | 16 | Claudius Cæsar ruled from A.D. 41 to 54. |
| Galatians | 18 | |
| 1 Thess | 19 | Romans settled in England between 41 and 54. |
| 2 Thess | 20 | |
| 1 Cor | 24 | Nero ruled from 54 to 68. |
| 2 Cor | 25 | |
| 1 Timothy | 25 | Paul and Peter were martyred at Rome in or |
| Romans | 25 | about the year 63; 30 years after Pentecost. |
| James | 28 | |
| Matthew | 28 | Persecution continues under Nero until the |
| Mark | 28 | year 68. The satirist Juvenal, who lived |
| Philemon | 29 | under Nero, and his brother satirist Martial, |
| Collosians | 29 | both allude to the burnings of the Christians |
| Ephesians | 29 | in pitched shirts. |
| Philippians | 29 | |
| Luke | 30 | Suetoneus, writing of what took place under |
| Acts | 30 | Emperor Claudius, in 53, makes mention of |
| Hebrews | 30 | Christ. |
| 2 Peter | 34 | |
| 2 Timothy | 34 | Galba, Otho and Vitelleus rule from 68 to 69. |
| Titus, about | 34 | |
| Jude, about | 34 | Christians have peace from 68 to 95. |
| Epistles of St. John 1, 2, 3 | 40 | Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70. |
| Revelations of Jesus Christ to John | 64 | Vespasian rules from 69 to 79. |
CARLYLE'S ESTIMATE OF THE BOOK OF JOB, IN HIS OWN WORDS.
"I call the book of Job, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest books ever written with a pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew—such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble book! All men's book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem of man's destiny and God's ways with him here on this earth, and all in such free, flowing outlines, grand in its simplicity and its epic melody and repose of reconcilement! There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way; true eye-sight and vision for all things—material things no less than spiritual; the horse—'thou hast clothed his neck with thunder;' 'he laughs at the shaking of the spear!' Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow! Sublime reconciliation! Oldest choral melody, as of the heart of mankind! So soft and great, as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit." (Dr. Cotton's Scrap-Book.)
WHAT I LIVE FOR.
"I live to hold communion
With all that is divine,
To feel there is a union
Between God's will and mine;
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the future, in the distance,
For what'er is good and true,
For all human hearts that bind me,
For the task by God assigned me,
And the good that I can do."
THE MOLECULE GOD.
Air—The Fine Old English Gentleman.
[To be sung at all gatherings of advanced "siolists" and "scientists.">[
We will sing you a grand new song evolved from a 'cute young pate,
Of a fine old Atom-Molecule of prehistoric date;
In size infinitesimal, in potencies though great,
And self-formed for developing at a prodigious rate—
Like a fine old Atom-Molecule,
Of the young world's proto-prime!
In it slept all the forces in our cosmos that run rife,
To stir creation's giants or its microscopic life;
Harmonious in discord and co-operant in strife,
To this small cell committed the world lived with his wife—
In this fine old Atom-Molecule,
Of the young world's proto-prime!
In this autoplastic archetype of protean protein clay
All the human's space has room for, for whom time makes a day,
From the sage whose words of wisdom prince or parliament obey,
To the parrots who but prattle, and the asses who but bray—
So full was this Atom-Molecule,
Of the young world's proto-prime!
All brute life, from lamb to lion, from the serpent to the dove,
All that pains the sense or pleasure, all the heart can loathe or love;
All instincts that drag downwards, all desires that upwards move
Were caged, a "happy family," cheek-by-jowl, and hand-in-glove,
In this fine old Atom-Molecule,
Of the young world's proto-prime!
In it order grew from chaos, light out of darkness shined,
Design sprang by accident, law's rule from hazard blind;
The soul-less soul evolving—against, not after kind,
As the life-less life developed, and the mind-less ripened mind,
In this fine old Atom-Molecule,
Of the young world's proto-prime!
Then bow down mind to matter; from brain fiber, will, withdraw;
Fall man's heart to cell ascidian, sink man's hand to monkey's paw;
And bend the knee to Protoplast in philosophic awe—
Both Creator and created, at once work and source of law.
And our Lord be the Atom-Molecule,
Of the young world's proto-prime!
Punch.
Transcriber’s Note
The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
A table of contents has been generated for the HTML edition.