But the fact must here be emphasized and continually kept in mind that the story of Eden and the fall is substantially found in the annals of many nations anterior to the existence of the Jewish tribes, varied only in trivial matters. The story of the serpent in Eden is probably of Aryan source, to which the conception of the satanic origin of evil was attached after the Jews came into close contact with Persian dualistic ideas. To doubt which was the original and which the copy, shows, regarding the well-established facts of history, a want of information so great as to make argument on this matter quite useless.
The conclusion is inevitable that if the fall of Adam is a fiction, then the entire system of evangelical theology is based upon a fiction; and the fruit must be natural to the tree—a fictitious tree can only bear fictitious fruit. Orthodox theologians, especially of the logical Presbyterian stamp, realize that if they give up Adam and Eve as progenitors of the entire human race, they give up the very foundation-stones of the “redemptive scheme.” This accounts for Presbyterian opposition to the doctrine of evolution. They are logical enough to see that the second Adam as a Saviour in the evangelical sense must share the fate of the first Adam; and so Professor Woodrow of South Carolina has recently been degraded on account of his theory of evolution.
The world moves, and, as Professor Marsh of Yale College has well said, “The doctrine of evolution is as thoroughly demonstrated as the Copernican system of astronomy.”
In the Popular Science Monthly for October, 1890, we have a very able article from Andrew D. White, LL.D., ex-president of Cornell University, showing how completely science contradicts theology in regard to the Edenic story. He shows that the tendency of the race has always been upward from low beginnings. He further shows that Archbishop Whately and the Duke of Argyll championed the Bible story, but were so conclusively answered by Sir John Lubbock and Tylor that the views of the archbishop were seen to be untenable, while the duke, as an honest man and a sound thinker, was obliged to give up his former views and adopt the scientific theory. The light thrown upon this subject by Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Max Müller, and scores of other great scholars is among the glories of the century now ending. The public declaration of the celebrated Von Martius, of his conversion to the scientific view of the story of the Fall, ought to make smaller men less confident of their views on a subject they have never studied.
In 1875, Commodore Vanderbilt endowed a university in Tennessee, and it was put in charge of the Methodists. Dr. Alexander Winchell was called to the chair of Geology. He was distinguished in his specialty by his successful labors in another university. He openly taught “that man existed before the period assigned to Adam, and that all the human race could not have descended from Adam.” The Methodist bishop told him “that such views were contrary to the plan of redemption.” The Methodist Conference resolved “that they would have no more of this,” and Professor Winchell was summarily dismissed from the chair, and the position, with its salary, assigned to another. The State University of Michigan recalled him to his former chair in that institution, where he could teach science regardless of the impotent thunders of theology.
The fall of Adam is really the pivotal principle in dogmatic theology of the orthodox variety. If the entire human race are not descendants of a real, genuine, historical pair miraculously created (a pair almost divine in perfections), and who by disobedience fell from their high estate, and by their federal or representative character involved all their countless descendants by natural generation and descent in the same ruin,—if these things are not true, then what is called the evangelical scheme is based upon a fiction, and is to be so treated, regardless of the effect upon other theological doctrines. The dogma of a sudden, special creation of a perfect man is not sustained by the facts of history nor the science of palaeontology. Scientific investigators find man, so far as the evidence of his remote existence can be traced, very nearly allied to apes; and there is abundant evidence to show that man has been improving in every respect as years and cycles of years have rolled away. It is thus absolutely demonstrated that the history of our race shows the rise or ascent of man from a very low estate, instead of his “fall” from a condition of high perfection.
But it does not follow, because man as we first find him was very much like the anthropoid ape, that he is a lineal descendant of the ape. The more rational hypothesis is, that both apes and man were evolved from still lower animal forms by divergent lines, so that there is a relation of a very distant cousinship existing between them. There is many a fool-born jest about man and the monkey, oft repeated by adcaptandum
theologians who have never read Darwin’s Origin of Species nor his Descent of Man, and who therefore do not know that there is nothing in these writings to justify such caricatures.
The fact is, the evolution of man by slow and long-continued processes, instead of his sudden miraculous creation on a certain day, is now as well established as the law of gravitation, in the judgment of scientists who are not hampered and blinded by preconceived theological dogmas. It cannot be denied that the weight of scientific testimony is very largely in favor of the development of man, instead of a miraculous and complete creation at a particular period of time. The true ground will be found to be creation by evolution; and if our purblind sacerdotalists had accepted this doctrine, as the brightest of them have privately done, they would have saved themselves the disgrace of becoming the laughing-stock of the scientific world. If man was brought to his present high estate by a system of evolution, it is no less the work of the Supreme Creator of the universe than if he had been made from clay in an instant of time; and if the character of man, mentally and morally, is admitted to be based on the degree of his development, it would solve many a knotty question in theology and morals. At any rate, the evolution hypothesis has many advantages over the Church dogma, manifestly founded on a pagan fable. The fact is, sacerdotalists have always been their own worst enemies, and have always been defeated in their battles with science and a true philosophy.
It is not intended to ignore the fact that legends of a paradisiacal period, a real “golden age,” are found among all ancient peoples, also of periods of general demoralization; but these legends can easily be accounted for. It is a natural instinct in man to praise the past, and to think that “the former times were better than the present.” We see this among aged men and women to-day. Then it is well known that the stream of human history has never run in an unbroken channel. Our race has ever had its “ups and downs,” and, comparatively speaking, mankind has had many falls and ascents, while the general or ultimate tendency and result have been ascending higher and higher. Moreover, the golden age of Adam in Eden must have been very short, according to the fable of Genesis, as the fall occurred before he had any children. What a pity that Adam and Eve could not have maintained their innocence by blind obedience until at least a son and daughter could have been born to them! This may be considered irreverent, but everybody knows that, outside of the pulpit and the Sun-day-school, the story of Adam and Eve is hardly ever mentioned except as a huge joke, and that witty preachers often take part in laughing at it. It is difficult to write about a fiction otherwise than facetiously.