[Footnote J: Gen. I: 11, 12, 21, 24, 25.]
How do these facts affect the theory of evolution? Let us remember upon what that theory rests. It rests upon the principle that lower forms producing favorable variations and these being preserved by the process of natural selection amount finally to the production of distinct species; but we have seen that varieties cannot produce what may be called the great characteristic of species—infertility to each other; then also we have seen there is a check to variation in the sterility of species and hybrids. Add these facts to that other fact that neither in living nature nor in the geological records can be found the intermediate transitional forms linking together by fine gradations the species, and the theory of evolution lies stranded upon the shore of idle speculation.
II.
There is one other objection to be urged against the theory of evolution before leaving it; it is contrary to the revelations of God. I have not in mind, at present, the revelations respecting the creation of the earth and of vegetable and animal life; but rather the revelations which speak of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. According to the revelations of God contained in the Bible, man was created just and right—"sufficient to have stood, yet free to fall." He transgressed, in some way, the holy commandment given him, and by that transgression became fallen man, subject to sin and death, and entailed the same evils upon his posterity. Both he and they were powerless to extricate themselves from the consequences of that violation of law; but a sacrifice was prepared, a Redeemer was provided, both for Adam and all his posterity. In the meridian of time that Redeemer appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who eventually was offered up a sacrifice for sinful man—he suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.[A] That this was the mission of Jesus Christ is evident from the whole tenor of the scriptures.[B] But if the hypothesis of evolution be true, if man is only a product evolved from the lower forms of life, better still producing better, until the highest type of intellectual manhood crowns with glory this long continued process—then it is evident that there has been no "fall," such as the revelations of God speak of; and if there was no fall, there was no occasion for a Redeemer to make atonement for man, in order to reconcile him to God; then the mission of Jesus Christ was a myth, the coinage of idle brains, and Jesus himself was either mistaken, or one of the many impostors that have arisen to mock mankind with the hope of eternal life.
[Footnote A: I. Peter iii: 18.]
[Footnote B: See the chapters in "The Gospel" on General Salvation, where this idea is treated at some length.]
Such is the inevitable result of accepting the philosophy of evolution, after which all the world is now running—it is destructive of the grand central truth of all revelation; as well ancient as modern; as well the revelations given to Moses and the prophets, as those given to the apostles of the New Testament; as well those given in Asia, as those given in America; for the central truth of all revelation is the fall of man, and the redemption through the atonement of Jesus Christ. All things else contained in the revelations of God to man are subordinate and dependent for their strength and force upon this leading truth.
I am aware that there is a class of men who profess to be "Christian evolutionists," and who maintain that Christianity can be made to harmonize with the philosophy of evolution. But how are they made to harmonize? We are told that Jesus is still a Redeemer, but in this sense he gave out faultless moral precepts, and practiced them in his life; and inasmuch as people accept his doctrines and follow his example they will be redeemed from evil. But as to the fall of man and the atonement made for him by the Son of God—both ideas are of necessity rejected; which means, of course, denying the great fundamental truths of revelation; it is by destroying the basis on which the Christian religion rests, that the two theories are harmonized—if such a process can be called harmonization. It is on the same principle that the lion and the lamb harmonize, or lie down together—the lion eats the lamb.
It was stated in the first part of this writing that the follies of those who profess a belief in the theory of creation as revealed in the Bible, were largely responsible for the existence of the theory of evolution; that their exegesis of the revelations on the subject were so manifestly absurd, and contradicted so many well known and indisputable facts, that scientific men sought for other explanations of the origin of things. The theologians in the apostate churches of Christendom have maintained that God created the heavens and the earth—the universe—out of nothing, in six days. A statement than which it is impossible to conceive one more absurd, or one which contradicts more completely every fact demonstrated by the experience of man. Every sense, every possible conception of the mind bears witness that from nothing, nothing comes. The idea of creating the universe out of nothing, however, is rapidly passing away from the minds of the present generation; and it is conceded by many theologians that there is no warrant for such a doctrine in the scriptures; but that it became generally accepted through a misconception of the meaning of the word create. "The meaning of this word," says Rev. Baden Powell, of Oxford University, "has been commonly associated with the idea of 'making out of nothing.' But when we come to inquire more precisely into the subject, we can of course satisfy ourselves as to the meaning only from an examination of the original phrase." The learned professor then proceeds to say that three distinct Hebrew verbs are in different places employed with reference to the same divine act, and may be translated respectively, "create," "make," "form or fashion." "Now," continues the professor, "though each of these has its shade of distinction, yet the best critics understand them as so nearly synonymous that, at least in regard to the idea of making out of nothing, little or no foundation for that doctrine can be obtained from the first of these words." And, of course if no foundation for the doctrine can be obtained from the first of these words—viz., the verb translated create, then the chances are still less for there being any foundation for the doctrine in the verb translated, "made," "formed" or "fashioned."
This is in harmony, too, with the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He says "You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing; and they will answer, 'Don't the Bible say he created the world? and they infer, from the word create that it must have been made out of nothing. Now the word create came from the word baurau, which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize, the same as man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos— chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time he [God] had."[C]