The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science

by Sir John William Dawson

There are, however, good reasons to believe that, in the plans of divine wisdom, the long periods in which the earth was occupied by the inferior races were necessary to its subsequent adaptation to the residence of man. To these periods our present continents gradually grew up in all their variety and beauty. The materials of old rocks were comminuted and mixed to form fertile soils, [96] and stores of mineral products were accumulated to enable man to earn his subsistence and the blessings of civilization by the sweat of his brow. If it pleased the Almighty during these preparatory stages to replenish the land and sea with living things full of life and beauty and happiness, who shall venture to criticise his procedure, or to say to Him, "What doest thou?"

It would be decidedly wrong, in the present state of that which is popularly called science, to omit to inquire here what relation to the work of the fifth creative day those theories of development and evolution which have obtained so great currency may bear. The long time employed in the introduction of the lower animals, the use of the terms "make" and "form," instead of "create," and the expression "let the waters bring forth," may well be understood as countenancing some form of mediate creation, or of "creation by law," or "theistic evolution," as it has been termed; but they give no countenance to the idea either of the spontaneous evolution of living beings under the influence of merely physical causes and without creative intervention, or of the transmutation of one kind of animal into another. Still, with reference to this last idea, it is plain that revelation gives us no definition of species as distinguished from varieties or races, so that there is nothing to prevent the supposition that, within certain limits indicated by the expression "after its kind," animals or plants may have been so constituted as to vary greatly in the progress of geological time.

If we ask whether any thing is known to science which can give even a decided probability to the notion that living beings are parts of an undirected evolution proceeding under merely dead insentient forces, and without intention, the answer must be emphatically no.

I have elsewhere fully discussed these questions, and may here make some general statements as to certain scientific facts which at present bar the way against the hypothesis of evolution as applied to life, and especially against that form of it to which Darwin and his disciples have given so great prominence.

1. The albuminous or protoplasmic material, which seems to be necessary to the existence of every living being, is known to us as a product only of the action of previously living protoplasm. Though it is often stated that the production of albumen from its elements is a process not differing from the formation of water or any other inorganic material from its elements, this statement is false in fact, since, though many so-called organic substances have been produced by chemical processes, no particle of either living or non-living organizable matter of the nature of protoplasm has ever been so produced. The origin, therefore, of this albuminous matter is as much a mystery to us at present as that of any of the chemical elements.

2. Though some animals and plants are very simple in their visible structure, they all present vital properties not to be found in dead albuminous matter, and no mode is known whereby the properties of life can be communicated to dead matter. All the experiments hitherto made, and very eminently those recently performed by Pasteur, Tyndall, and Dallinger, lead to the conclusion that even the simplest living beings can be produced only from germs originating in previously living organisms of similar structure. The simplest living organisms are thus to science ultimate facts, for which it can not account except conjecturally.

3. No case is certainly known in human experience where any species of animal or plant has been so changed as to assume all the characters of a new species. Species are thus practically to science unchangeable units, the origin of which we have as yet no means of tracing.

4. Though the general history of animal life in time bears a certain resemblance to the development of the individual animal from the embryo, there is no reason whatever to believe that this is more than a mere relation of analogy, arising from the fact that in both cases the law of procedure is to pass from the simpler forms to the more complex, and from the more generalized to the more specialized. The external conditions and details of the two kinds of series are altogether different, and become more so the more they are investigated. This shows that the causes can not have been similar.

5. In tracing back animals and groups of animals in geological time, we find that they always end without any link of connection with previous beings, and in circumstances which render any such connections improbable. In the work of our next creative day, the series of animals preceding the modern horse has been cited as a good instance of probable evolution; but not only are the members of the series so widely separated in space and time that no connection can be traced, but the earliest of them, the Orohippus, would require, on the theory, to have been preceded by a previous series extending so far back that it is impossible, under any supposition of the imperfection of our present knowledge, to consider such extension probable. The same difficulty applies to every case of tracing back any specific form either of animal or plant. This general result proves, as I have elsewhere attempted to show, [97] that the introduction of the various animal types must have been abrupt, and under some influence quite different from that of evolution.

These are what I would term the five fatal objections to evolution as at present held, as a means of accounting for the introduction and succession of animals. To what extent they may be weakened or strengthened by the future progress of science it is impossible to say, but so long as they exist it is mere folly and presumption to affirm that modern science supports the doctrine of evolution. There can be no doubt, however, that the Bible leaves us perfectly free to inquire as to the plan and method of the Creator, and that, whatever discoveries we may make, we shall find that his plans are orderly, methodical, and continuous, and not of the nature of an arbitrary patchwork.