There are, however, beliefs, in no degree less important to the moralist or the Christian than even that in the being of a God, which seem wholly incompatible with the development hypothesis. It, during a period so vast as to be scarce expressible by figures, the creatures now human have been rising, by almost infinitesimals, from compound microscopic cells,—minute vital globules within globules, begot by electricity on dead gelatinous matter,—until they have at length become the men and women whom we see around us, we must hold either the monstrous belief, that all the vitalities, whether those of monads or of mites, of fishes or of reptiles, of birds or of beasts, are individually and inherently immortal and undying, or that human souls are not so. The difference between the dying and the undying,—between the spirit of the brute that goeth downward, and the spirit of the man that goeth upward,—is not a difference infinitesimally, or even atomically small. It possesses all the breadth of the eternity to come, and is an infinitely great difference. It cannot, if I may so express myself, be shaded off by infinitesimals or atoms; for it is a difference which—as there can be no class of beings intermediate in their nature between the dying and the undying—admits not of gradation at all. What mind, regulated by the ordinary principles of human belief, can possibly hold that every one of the thousand vital points which swim in a drop of stagnant water are inherently fitted to maintain their individuality throughout eternity? Or how can it be rationally held that a mere progressive step, in itself no greater or more important than that effected by the addition of a single brick to a house in the building state, or of a single atom to a body in the growing state, could ever have produced immortality? And yet, if the spirit of a monad or of a mollusc be not immortal, then must there either have been a point in the history of the species at which a dying brute—differing from its offspring merely by an inferiority of development, represented by a few atoms, mayhap by a single atom—produced an undying man, or man in his present state must be a mere animal, possessed of no immortal soul, and as irresponsible for his actions to the God before whose bar he is, in consequence, never to appear, as his presumed relatives and progenitors the beasts that perish. Nor will it do to attempt escaping from the difficulty, by alleging that God at some certain link in the chain might have converted a mortal creature into an immortal existence, by breathing into it a “living soul;” seeing that a renunciation of any such direct interference on the part of Deity in the work of creation forms the prominent and characteristic feature of the scheme,—nay, that it constitutes the very nucleus round which the scheme has originated. And thus, though the development theory be not atheistic, it is at least practically tantamount to atheism. For, if man be a dying creature, restricted in his existence to the present scene of things, what does it really matter to him, for any one moral purpose, whether there be a God or no? If in reality on the same religious level with the dog, wolf, and fox, that are by nature atheists,—a nature most properly coupled with irresponsibility,—to what one practical purpose should he know or believe in a God whom he, as certainly as they, is never to meet as his Judge? or why should he square his conduct by the requirements of the moral code, farther than a low and convenient expediency may chance to demand?[6]
Nor does the purely Christian objection to the development hypothesis seem less, but even more insuperable than that derived from the province of natural theology. The belief which is perhaps of all others most fundamentally essential to the revealed scheme of salvation, is the belief that “God created man upright,” and that man, instead of proceeding onward and upward from this high and fair beginning, to a yet higher and fairer standing in the scale of creation, sank and became morally lost and degraded. And hence the necessity for that second dispensation of recovery and restoration which forms the entire burden of God’s revealed message to man. If, according to the development theory, the progress of the “first Adam” was an upward progress, the existence of the “second Adam”—that “happier man,” according to Milton, whose special work it is to “restore” and “regain the blissful seat” of the lapsed race—is simply a meaningless anomaly. Christianity, if the development theory be true, is exactly what some of the more extreme Moderate divines of the last age used to make it—an idle and unsightly excrescence on a code of morals that would be perfect were it away.
I may be in error in taking this serious view of the matter; and, if so, would feel grateful to the man who could point out to me that special link in the chain of inference at which, with respect to the bearing of the theory on the two theologies—natural and revealed—the mistake has taken place. But if I be in error at all, it is an error into which I find not a few of the first men of the age,—represented, as a class, by our Professor Sedgwicks and Sir David Brewsters,—have also fallen; and until it be shown to be an error, and that the development theory is in no degree incompatible with a belief in the immortality of the soul—in the responsibility of man to God as the final Judge—or in the Christian scheme of salvation—it is every honest man’s duty to protest against any ex parte statement of the question, that would insidiously represent it as ethically an indifferent one, or as unimportant in its theologic bearing, save to “little religious sects and scientific coteries.” In an address on the fossil flora, made in September last by a gentleman of Edinburgh to the St. Andrew’s Horticultural Society, there occurs the following passage on this subject: “Life is governed by external conditions, and new conditions imply new races; but then as to their creation, that is the ‘mystery of mysteries.’ Are they created by an immediate fiat and direct act of the Almighty? or has He originally impressed life with an elasticity and adaptability, so that it shall take upon itself new forms and characters, according to the conditions to which it shall be subjected? Each opinion has had, and still has, its advocates and opponents; but the truth is, that science, so far as it knows, or rather so far as it has had the honesty and courage to avow, has yet been unable to pronounce a satisfactory decision. Either way, it matters little, physically or morally, either mode implies the same omnipotence, and wisdom, and foresight, and protection; and it is only your little religious sects and scientific coteries which make a pother about the matter,—sects and coteries of which it may be justly said, that they would almost exclude God from the management of his own world, if not managed and directed in the way that they would have it.” Now, this is surely a most unfair representation of the consequences, ethical and religious involved in the development hypothesis. It is not its compatibility with belief in the existence of a First Great Cause that has to be established, in order to prove it harmless; but its compatibility with certain other all-important beliefs, without which simple Theism is of no moral value whatever—a belief in the immortality and responsibility of man, and in the scheme of salvation by a Mediator and Redeemer. Dissociated from these beliefs, a belief in the existence of a God is of as little ethical value as a belief in the existence of the great sea-serpent.
Let us see whether we cannot determine what the testimony of Geology, on this question of creation by development, really is. It is always perilous to under-estimate the strength of an enemy; and the danger from the development hypothesis to an ingenious order of minds, smitten with the novel fascinations of physical science, has been under-estimated very considerably indeed. Save by a few studious men, who to the cultivation of Geology and the cognate branches add some acquaintance with metaphysical science, the general correspondence of the line of assault taken up by this new school of infidelity, with that occupied by the old, and the consequent ability of the assailants to bring, not only the recently forged, but also the previously employed artillery into full play along its front, has not only not been marked, but even not so much as suspected. And yet, in order to show that there actually is such a correspondence, it can be but necessary to state, that the great antagonist points in the array of the opposite lines, are simply the law of development versus the miracle of creation. The evangelistic Churches cannot, in consistency with their character, or with a due regard to the interests of their people, slight or overlook a form of error at once exceedingly plausible and consummately dangerous, and which is telling so widely on society, that one can scarce travel by railway or in a steamboat, or encounter a group of intelligent mechanics, without finding decided trace of its ravages.
But ere the Churches can be prepared competently to deal with it, or with the other objections of a similar class which the infidelity of an age so largely engaged as the present in physical pursuits will be from time to time originating they must greatly extend their educational walks into the field of physical science. The mighty change which has taken place during the present century, in the direction in which the minds of the first order are operating, though indicated on the face of the country in characters which cannot be mistaken, seems to have too much escaped the notice of our theologians. Speculative theology and the metaphysics are cognate branches of the same science; and when, as in the last and the preceding ages, the higher philosophy of the world was metaphysical, the Churches took ready cognizance of the fact, and, in due accordance with the requirements of the time, the battle of the Evidences was fought on metaphysical ground. But, judging from the preparations made in their colleges and halls, they do not now seem sufficiently aware—though the low thunder of every railway, and the snort of every steam engine, and the whistle of the wind amid the wires of every electric telegraph, serve to publish the fact—that it is in the departments of physics, not of metaphysics, that the greater minds of the age are engaged,—that the Lockes, Humes, Kants, Berkeleys, Dugald Stewarts, and Thomas Browns, belong to the past,—and that the philosophers of the present time, tall enough to be seen all the world over, are the Humboldts, the Aragos, the Agassizes, the Liebigs, the Owens, the Herschels, the Bucklands, and the Brewsters. In that educational course through which, in this country, candidates for the ministry pass, in preparation for their office, I find every group of great minds which has in turn influenced and directed the mind of Europe for the last three centuries, represented, more or less adequately, save the last. It is an epitome of all kinds of learning, with the exception of the kind most imperatively required, because most in accordance with the genius of the time. The restorers of classic literature—the Buchanans and Erasmuses—we see represented in our Universities by the Greek and what are termed the Humanity courses; the Galileos, Boyles, and Newtons, by the Mathematical and Natural Philosophy courses; and the Lockes, Kants, Humes, and Berkeleys, by the Metaphysical course. But the Cuviers, the Huttons, the Cavendishes, and the Watts, with their successors, the practical philosophers of the present age,—men whose achievements in physical science we find marked on the surface of the country in characters which might be read from the moon,—are not adequately represented. It would be perhaps more correct to say, that they are not represented at all;[7] and the clergy, as a class, suffer themselves to linger far in the rear of an intelligent and accomplished laity—a full age behind the requirements of the time. Let them not shut their eyes to the danger which is obviously coming. The battle of the Evidences will have as certainly to be fought on the field of physical science, as it was contested in the last age on that of the metaphysics. And on this new arena the combatants will have to employ new weapons, which it will be the privilege of the challenger to choose. The old, opposed to these, would prove but of little avail. In an age of muskets and artillery, the bows and arrows of an obsolete school of warfare would be found greatly less than sufficient, in the field of battle, for purposes either of assault or defence.
“There are two kinds of generation in the world,” says Professor Lorenz Oken, in his “Elements of Physio-philosophy;” “the creation proper, and the propagation that is sequent thereupon—or the generatio originaria and secundaria. Consequently, no organism has been created of larger size than an infusorial point. No organism is, nor ever has one been created, which is not microscopic. Whatever is larger has not been created, but developed. Man has not been created, but developed.” Such, in a few brief dogmatic sentences, is the development theory. What, in order to establish its truth, or even to render it in some degree probable, ought to be the geological evidence regarding it? The reply seems obvious. In the first place, the earlier fossils ought to be very small in size; in the second, very low in organization. In cutting into the stony womb of nature, in order to determine what it contained mayhap millions of ages ago, we must expect, if the development theory be true, to look upon mere embryos and fœtuses. And if we find, instead, the full grown and the mature, then must we hold that the testimony of Geology is not only not in accordance with the theory, but in positive opposition to it. Such, palpably, is the principle on which, in this matter, we ought to decide. What are the facts?
The oldest organism yet discovered in the most ancient geological system of Scotland in which vertebrate remains occur, seems to be the Asterolepis of Stromness. After the explorations of many years over a wide area, I have detected none other equally low in the system; nor have I ascertained that any brother-explorer in the same field has been more fortunate. It is, up to the present time, the most ancient Scotch witness of the great class of fishes that can in this case be brought into court; nay, it is in all probability the oldest ganoid witness the world has yet produced; for there appears no certain trace of this order of fishes in the great Silurian system which lies underneath, and in which, so far as geologists yet know, organic existence first began. How, then, on the two relevant points—bulk and organization—does it answer to the demands of the development hypothesis? Was it a mere fœtus of the finny tribe, of minute size, and imperfect, embryonic faculty? Or was it of at least the ordinary bulk, and, for its class, of the average organization? May I solicit the forbearance of the non-geological reader, should my reply to these apparently simple questions seem unnecessarily prolix and elaborate? Peculiar opportunities of observation, and the possession of a set of unique fossils, enable me to submit to our palæontologists a certain amount of information regarding this ancient ganoid, which they will deem at once interesting and new; and the bearing of my statements on the general argument will, I trust, become apparent as I proceed.