The Church, the Schools and Evolution

by J. E. Conant

And then the sentiment that follows in the next sentence [p 87] is shared increasingly by multitudes in the Church in proportion as these destroyers become increasingly aggressive in their work of destruction. The editor continues: Mr. Mangasarian delivers infidel lectures every Sunday in Orchestra Hall and no one is shocked, but when the professed defenders of Christianity jump on it and assassinate it, the public—even the agnostic public, cannot but despise them.

Either be scientific enough, cry believers to the evolutionists, to accept the challenge of Christ’s formula with all its implications, or be honest enough to cease destroying the faith in an inerrant Bible you have sworn to defend but refuse to accept!

The Church is also hurling the challenge of Christ’s formula at every other form of aggressive unbelief. No unbeliever, from destructive Higher Critic to agnostic and infidel, has the shadow of a right to make contrary pronouncement on the inerrancy and infallible authority of the Bible, for he has refused to put Christ’s word to the test,—his unbelief proves it,—and he is therefore utterly incapacitated for passing any judgment whatever on that Book which unfolds its meaning to faith alone.

And as to the controversy between the Church and the Schools, the evolutionists must quit either evolution or the Christian schools, or the controversy can in no way be cured. For how can faith in an inerrant Bible and unbelief in its inerrancy abide in harmony in the same house? In the very nature of things, two groups who hold such absolutely antagonistic positions must either part company or continue [p 88] the controversy born of the antagonism. The true Church always has believed, and always will believe, in an inerrant Word of God, and she cannot harbor within her ranks any group of people, no matter by what name they go, who do not take their stand without equivocation on that same ground.

If reason for this intolerance is asked, it will appear in the light of some questions asked by Dr. Joseph Parker. These questions are: If the Bible is wrong in history, what guarantee is there that it is right in morals? If the Bible is not a reliable guide in facts, how do we know that it is a trustworthy guide in doctrine?

However he may have arrived at his conclusions, it is extremely significant, in the light of these questions, that Dr. E. D. Burton, being willing to admit that the Bible is not infallible in history or in matters of science, has also concluded that it is not wholly consistent and therefore not ultimately and as a whole inerrant in the field of morals and religion.

What reason more can the Church want to justify her for intolerance of a theory that will do this to a man’s faith? Is it not correct reasoning to conclude that if one man suffers such a collapse of faith after accepting evolution, others are likely to suffer the same thing? And when the Church observes this [p 89] collapse taking place in every quarter, and then discovers that back of it lies the theory of evolution, is she not justified for being intolerant of that thing which is gnawing at the vitals of her faith? What can she say else than that the teachers of evolution, at least in the Christian schools, must either give up evolution and come back to faith in an infallible Bible, or part company with the Church?

It may be that one reason why the evolutionists are so loth to get out of company they do not belong in is because they fear that thereby they may lose their coveted reputation for scholarship. Prof. Howard W. Kellogg, formerly of Occidental College, hints as much when he says: Science has again and again set aside as untrustworthy the so-called discoveries of evolution, has compelled the great German evolutionist, Haeckel, to confess that his drawings of missing links were from imagination rather than from objects found, has driven him from his university chair, and has compelled him to admit that "Most modern investigators of science have come to the conclusion that the doctrine of evolution, and particularly of Darwinism, is in error and cannot be maintained,"—and yet in spite of such admissions from men recognized as authorities in their respective lines, the doctrine of evolution appears to rule as absolutely in the educational world as if it were not a moribund hypothesis, already discarded by many, and to be discarded by others when scientific evidence rather than reputation for scholarship is allowed the deciding voice.

But whatever the actuating motive may be that has kept the evolutionists from giving up their unscholarly [p 90] and unscientific theory, true believers in the Word long to see them do what Henry Drummond, that brilliant scientist, did before he died. On his deathbed he said to Sir William Dawson, as reported in this country in the writer's hearing by Dr. John Robertson directly from the lips of Dawson: I am going away back to the Book to believe it and receive it as I did at the first. I can live no longer on uncertainties. I am going back to the faith of the Word of God.

When both the Church and the Schools consistently and sincerely take this attitude toward the Bible, the controversy will be ended in the one way in which the Church longs to see it end.