The Church, the Schools and Evolution

by J. E. Conant

And well might he marvel. And well might the Church become aroused and alarmed as the logical workings of these false doctrines produce more and [p 42] more fearful results within her ranks. The whole Church is being moved away from the foundations of the faith, and this false philosophy is at the bottom of it all.

The group announcements of the Sunday services of the Los Angeles liberal churches show where all consistent evolutionists are headed. Standing at the head of these announcements are these words, the capital letters being theirs: We found our faith on the thought of EVOLUTION rather than Special Creation; on revelation through NORMAL HUMAN EXPERIENCE rather than the supernatural; on salvation through GROWTH rather than a miraculous rebirth.

And when it comes to the awful harvest that is being gathered from our churches for the forces of spiritual destruction through our colleges and universities, William Jennings Bryan has had some information given to him that will give us a hint of what is going on. He says: Having had opportunity to make a personal investigation, I feel it my duty to warn the lovers of the Bible of the insidious attacks which are being made upon every vital part of the Word of God. A father tells me of a daughter educated at Wellesley who calmly informs him that no one believes in the Bible now; a teacher in Columbia University begins his lessons in geology by asking students to lay aside all that they have learned in Sunday-school; a professor of the University of Wisconsin tells his class that the Bible is a collection of myths; a professor of philosophy at Ann Arbor occupies a Sunday evening explaining to an audience that Christianity is a state of [p 43] mind and that there are only two books in the Bible with any literary merit; another professor in the same institution informs students that he once taught a Sunday-school class and was active in the Young Men's Christian Association, but that no thinking man can believe in God or the Bible; a woman teacher in a public school in Indiana rebukes a boy for answering that Adam was the first man, explaining to him and the class that the "tree man" was the first man; a young man in South Carolina traces his atheism back to two teachers in a Christian college; a senior in an Illinois high school writes that he became skeptical during his sophomore year but has been brought back by influences outside of school while others of his class are agnostics; a professor in Yale has the reputation of making atheists of all who come under his influence—this information was given by a boy whose brother has come under the influence of this teacher; a professor in Bryn Mawr combats Christianity for a session and then puts to his class the question whether or not there is a God, and is happy to find that a majority of the class vote that there is no God; a professor in a Christian college writes a book in which the virgin birth of Christ is disputed; one professor declares that life is merely a by-product and will ultimately be produced in the laboratory; another says that the ingredients necessary to create life have already been brought together and that life will be developed from these ingredients, adding, however, that it will require a million years to do it. These are a few of the illustrations furnished by informants whom I have reason to believe.

These facts certainly furnish sufficient reason why the Church cannot compromise with the evolutionary philosophy. To do so would be to head herself toward destruction. She must stand uncompromised and [p 44] unflinching against that unproven and discredited theory, the acceptance of which destroys faith in that infallible and inerrant Word on which she was founded, and on whose “thus saith the Lord” she must rest her message to a lost world. There is no middle ground. To compromise would be to commit suicide. If the Church and the Schools are ever to come into harmony, it cannot be because the Church gives up an infallible Book and accepts a discredited theory in its place, and so it must be because the Schools give up this unscientific, because unproven, theory and get back to faith in the inerrant Word of God.

That this is the only basis on which the Church and the Schools can ever come into harmony is strenuously denied by the evolutionists in both Schools and Church. But their denial is meaningless when it is remembered that they are working night and day to capture the Church, as they have already almost done with the Schools, before we wake up to what is going on. But it can never be done. The true Church will never surrender to those who would remove her foundations and wreck her message.

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CHAPTER II

The Present Controversy—the Cure

In the previous pages we went back to the cause of the present controversy between the Church and the Schools. We found that the unproven and discredited theory of evolution lies at the bottom of it. We also concluded that no compromise that permits entrance to this theory in any form is possible, for the truth which is at once both the life and the message of the Church, and the theory of evolution, are mutually exclusive.

In this chapter we will seek to find the cure for this distressing controversy. That there is a cure is beyond all possible question. And if it is not found and applied, the controversy cannot fail to intensify until it may force a re-alignment in the Church—a thing a great company of the most earnest in the Church are fighting to prevent.