The Story of Creation as Told By Theology and By Science

by T. S. Ackland

2. That such causes do not at all account for cases in which an entirely new organ is developed, such as mammary glands—or for the case of man, in which intellectual superiority is accompanied by a loss of physical power.

3. That from the nature of the case it is impossible for us to ascertain that natural or sexual selection has ever acted to produce a single modification, however small, and that the results of man's superintendence have not as yet passed beyond certain narrow limits, so that there is no justification for the assumption that such modifications are capable of being carried to an unlimited extent.

We see that in the only case in which change is known to have been brought about, it has been the result of choice and design. If then there is a probability that choice and design may have been exercised by a power higher than man, there is no longer any reason to doubt but that results much greater than any to which man can attain may have been brought about by the same means. And in fact the advocates of the theory of development do virtually admit the existence and action of such a power, whenever they have recourse to assumed "laws" to account for phenomena for which their naked theory can give no reason. For, as has been shown, law, if it is to be assigned as an efficient cause, and not merely as the statement of observed facts, can only be regarded as the expressed and enforced will of a higher power. And there was no reason why those minute variations themselves, which are the basis of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, should be considered casual. Instead then of natural selection, or sexual selection, let us suppose that the selection took place under the superintending care of the Creator, and was directed towards the carrying out of His designs, and then we shall have no reason to doubt but that all results which consisted only in the modification of existing organs may have been obtained by the operation of those laws which we term natural, because they express modes of operation with which we are so familiar that we look upon them as automatic.

But there are other results for which no natural laws with which we are acquainted will thus account. Just as no mechanical laws within our knowledge will account for the rotation of the earth, so no physiological laws yet discovered will account for the changes when totally new orders of being came on the stage—when the course of life took, as it were, a new point of departure. But it is precisely at these points that the Mosaic Record points to a special interference on the part of the Creator. How that interference took place we are not informed. Very possibly it may have been the result of other laws which lie wholly out of the reach of our powers of observation. But whatever may have been its character, it does not in any way imply change or defect in the original plan, unless we know, (what we do not know, and cannot ascertain) that such interference formed no part of the original design. Everything bears the marks of progressive development, and there is nothing improbable, but rather the reverse, in the supposition that such a plan should include special steps of advance to be made when the preparation for them was completed.

The Mosaic Record tells us nothing about the method by which God created the different varieties of plants and animals. All that we read there is just as applicable to a process of evolution, as to any other method which we may be able to imagine. But it is remarkable that what Moses does say is just what is required to make Mr. Darwin's theory possible. So far then as the lower orders of creation are concerned, the hypothesis of development, modified by the admission of uniform superintendence and occasional special interferences on the part of the Creator, may be accepted as being the most satisfactory explanation that can be given, in the present state of physiological science, of the Scriptural Narrative.

But we have yet to consider this hypothesis as applied to man in Mr. Darwin's latest work. We naturally recoil from the thought that we have sprung from some lower race of animals—that we are only the descendants of some race of anthropoid apes. So long as it is asserted that we are no more than this, we may well be reluctant to admit the suggestion. But if it be admitted that to a physical nature formed like the bodies of the lower animals, a special spiritual gift may have been superadded, the difficulty vanishes. All Mr. Darwin's arguments with reference to physical resemblances may then be admitted, and we may allow that he has given a probable explanation of the method by which "the Lord God formed the Adam, dust from the ground" while we maintain that the intellectual and moral faculties of man are derived from a source which lies beyond the investigations of science.

The conclusions to be drawn from this investigation may be briefly summed up as follows:—

1. There is every reason to conclude that the process of Creation was carried on, in great part, under the operation of the system of natural laws which we still see acting in the world around us: such laws being so far as we are concerned only an expression of an observed uniformity in the action of that Being by whom the Universe was created and is upheld.

2. That inasmuch as the development of a new state of things differs from the maintenance of a condition already existing, the working of these laws was necessarily from time to time supplemented by special interferences of the Creator, but that such interferences formed parts of the original design, and are not indications of anything in the shape of change or failure.

3. That many of the events recorded in the Mosaic Record are of the nature of such special interferences, while others point to remarkable developments of particular forms of organic life.