It may be that theologians also are needed who shall be fit to take the place of Moses to our generation, in teaching it again the very elements of natural theology; but let them not look upon science as a cold and godless demon, holding forth to the world a poisoned cup cunningly compounded of truth and falsehood; but rather as the natural ally and associate of the gospel of salvation. The matter is so put in one of those visions which close the canon of revelation, when the prophet sees a mighty angel having the “everlasting gospel to preach;” but he begins his proclamation by calling on men to “worship Him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters.” Men must know God as the Creator even before they seek Him as a benefactor and redeemer. Thus religion must go hand in hand with all true and honest science. In this way only may we look forward to a time when a more exact and large-minded science shall be in perfect accord with a more pure and spiritual Christianity, when the natural and the spiritual shall be seen to be the necessary complements of each other, and when we shall hear no more of reconciliations between science and theology, because there will be no quarrels to reconcile. Already, even in the present chaos of scientific and religious opinion, indications can be seen by the observant, that the Divine Spirit of order is breathing on the mass, and will evolve from it new and beautiful worlds of mental and spiritual existence.
PRIMITIVE MAN. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO MODERN THEORIES AS TO HIS ORIGIN.
The geological record, as we have been reading it, introduces us to primitive man, but gives us no distinct information as to his origin. Tradition and revelation have, it is true, their solutions of the mystery, but there are, and always have been, many who will not take these on trust, but must grope for themselves with the taper of science or philosophy into the dark caverns whence issue the springs of humanity. In former times it was philosophic speculation alone which lent its dim and uncertain light to these bold inquirers; but in our day the new and startling discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology have flashed up with an unexpected brilliancy, and have at least served to dazzle the eyes and encourage the hopes of the curious, and to lead to explorations more bold and systematic than any previously undertaken. Thus has been born amongst us, or rather renewed, for it is a very old thing, that evolutionist philosophy, which has been well characterised as the “baldest of all the philosophies which have sprung up in our world,” and which solves the question of human origin by the assumption that human nature exists potentially in mere inorganic matter, and that a chain of spontaneous derivation connects incandescent molecules or star-dust with the world, and with man himself.
This evolutionist doctrine is itself one of the strangest phenomena of humanity. It existed, and most naturally, in the oldest philosophy and poetry, in connection with the crudest and most uncritical, attempts of the human mind to grasp the system of nature; but that in our day a system destitute of any shadow of proof, and supported merely by vague analogies and figures of speech, and by the arbitrary and artificial coherence of its own parts, should be accepted as a philosophy, and should find able adherents to string upon its thread of hypotheses our vast and weighty stores of knowledge, is surpassingly strange. It seems to indicate that the accumulated facts of our age have gone altogether beyond its capacity for generalisation; and but for the vigour which one sees everywhere, it might be taken as an indication that the human mind has fallen into a state of senility, and in its dotage mistakes for science the imaginations which were the dreams of its youth.
In many respects these speculations are important and worthy of the attention of thinking men. They seek to revolutionise the religious beliefs of the world, and if accepted would destroy most of the existing theology and philosophy. They indicate tendencies among scientific thinkers, which, though probably temporary, must, before they disappear, descend to lower strata, and reproduce themselves in grosser forms, and with most serious effects on the whole structure of society. With one class of minds they constitute a sort of religion, which so far satisfies the craving for truths higher than those which relate to immediate wants and pleasures. With another and perhaps larger class, they are accepted as affording a welcome deliverance from all scruples of conscience and fears of a hereafter. In the domain of science evolutionism has like tendencies. It reduces the position of man, who becomes a descendant of inferior animals, and a mere term in a series whose end is unknown. It removes from the study of nature the ideas of final cause and purpose; and the evolutionist, instead of regarding the world as a work of consummate plan, skill, and adjustment, approaches nature as he would a chaos of fallen rocks, which may present forms of castles and grotesque profiles of men and animals, but they are all fortuitous and without significance. It obliterates the fine perception of differences from the mind of the naturalist, and resolves all the complicated relations of living things into some simple idea of descent with modification. It thus destroys the possibility of a philosophical classification, reducing all things to a mere series, and leads to a rapid decay in systematic zoology and botany, which is already very manifest among the disciples of Spencer and Darwin in England. The effect of this will be, if it proceeds further, in a great degree to destroy the educational value and popular interest attaching to these sciences, and to throw them down at the feet of a system of debased metaphysics. As redeeming features in all this, are the careful study of varietal forms, and the inquiries as to the limits of species, which have sprung from these discussions, and the harvest of which will be reaped by the true naturalists of the future.
Thus these theories as to the origin of men and animals and plants are full of present significance, and may be studied with profit by all; and in no part of their applications more usefully than in that which relates to man. Let us then inquire,—1. What is implied in the idea of evolution as applied to man? 2. What is implied in the idea of creation? 3. How these several views accord with what we actually know as the result of scientific investigation? The first and second of these questions may well occupy the whole of this chapter, and we shall be able merely to glance at their leading aspects. In doing so, it may be well first to place before us in general terms the several alternatives which evolutionists offer, as to the mode in which the honour of an origin from apes or ape-like animals can be granted to us, along with the opposite view as to the independent origin of man which have been maintained either on scientific or scriptural grounds.
All the evolutionist theories of the origin of man depend primarily on the possibility of his having been produced from some of the animals more closely allied to him, by the causes now in operation which lead to varietal forms, or by similar causes which have been in operation; and some attach more and others less weight to certain of these causes, or gratuitously suppose others not actually known. Of such causes of change some are internal and others external to the organism. With respect to the former, one school assumes an innate tendency in every species to change in the course of time.[AV] Another believes in exceptional births, either in the course of ordinary generation or by the mode of parthenogenesis.[AW] Another refers to the known facts of reproductive accelleration or retardation observed in some humble creatures.[AX] New forms arising in any of these ways or fortuitously, may, it is supposed, be perpetuated and increased and further improved by favouring external circumstances and the effort of the organism to avail itself of these,[AY] or by the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest.[AZ]