Such utterances are now very common in the periodicals of Germany, it is said. It seems plain the reaction has commenced and that the pendulum that has swung so strongly in the direction of Evolution, is now oscillating the other way. It required twenty years for Evolution to reach us from abroad. Is it necessary for us to wait twenty years more to reverse our opinions? Why may we not pass upon facts for ourselves without awaiting the "Consensus of European Scholarship," which is after all so subject to perplexing reversals? It makes plain people dizzy to attempt to follow leaders of opinion who change with every wind that blows across the ocean.
Many citations will appear in the following pages which show the strong exceptions taken by leading scholars against the theory in whole or in part. Indeed, as said already, the arguments to be given herein against Evolution are drawn from the statements of leading evolutionists themselves. Some of these are earlier opinions and some their latest utterances. In every case the state of the discussion will be shown to be far from that "Consensus of Scholarship" so airily claimed by the writers on the subject and so unhesitatingly accepted by their followers.
It may be objected that some of these authorities are dead and that later scholars differ from them. Not to mention the names of still living writers named above, let us remark that all wisdom is not left to our day. Socrates and Bacon are dead, yet their opinions are still of value. Moses is dead, yet the Ten Commandments are still believed if not obeyed. Our present evolutionary writers will also one day be dead, yet they hope even then to be given some credit for sense and science. The "consensus of scholarship" ought to include wisdom past as well as present.
It is also to be remembered that there are thousands of quiet thinkers who have never given in their adhesion to this startling theory, and more, that the great masses of the church at least, have no confidence in it. Those preparing to launch their ships upon this current had better, as a matter of common prudence at least, wait a while at least till the mists have rolled away.
DISCARDED THEORIES OF THE PAST.
Prof. George Frederick Wright says, "The history of science is little else than one of discarded theories.... The so-called science of the present day is largely going the way so steadily followed in the past. The things about which true science is certain are very few and could be contained in a short chapter of a small book." (The Advance, May 12, 1902.)
It is sometimes charged to the church that it has held theories which the discoveries of science have shown to be untrue. But it must be borne in mind that these false theories were just as firmly held by the scientists of the day as by the church.
Dr. Andrew White has written two great volumes on the warfare between science and theology. He might write many and larger volumes on the wars between the theories of science. Every one of these discarded theories, and they are numbered by thousands, has been the center of terrific conflicts.
Galileo's discovery of the satellites of Jupiter was opposed by his fellow astronomers, who even refused to look at them through his telescope. Dr. J. A. Zahm quotes Cardinal Wiseman as saying that the French Institute in 1860 could count more than eighty theories opposed to Scripture, not one of which has stood still or deserves to be recorded. At a meeting of the British Association, Sir William Thomson announced that he believed life had come to this globe by a meteor. His theory lived less than a year. Mr. Huxley said that the origin of life was a sheet of gelatinous living matter which covered the bottom of the ocean. This theory had even a shorter life. Among the most recent reversals of this kind is that of a universally held theory, namely, that coral reefs are built up by the coral insects in their desire to keep near the surface as the ocean's bottom sinks. Prof. A. Agassiz has just demolished this theory.