The article from which we have quoted points out the relevancy, to the question at issue, of the principle of degeneration and gradual decay in historical organisms or institutions. "Our scientists who bother themselves and others about the descent of man have favored with a keen interest the Bushmen of Australia and other types of savage humanity, with receding skulls, flat noses, thin legs, little or no clothing, and not much of morals or religion. The lower in the scale and the farther remote from the civilized Caucasian a newly discovered or investigated tribe or specimen, living or dead, would appear to be, the greater was the value set on the discovery, because the nearer science was supposed to have come to the missing link, the transition from brute to man. Of course, the missing link will never be discovered, because it never existed. There is no transition from brute to man, and never was. But if there were a species of beings which might be classed either with man or with brutes, a transitional species, even that would not necessarily represent a transition in the direction from brute to man. We do not say that a transition from man to brute is possible; for it is not; but we do say that the evolutionist who sees in Bushmen and other savages specimens of humanity representing the earlier stages of development, through which the more highly developed species had long since passed on the way from the primitive state of man to their present state, makes a great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark Twain and his friend, who, having slept all day, rushed from the hotel in scanty clothing, climbed the observatory and to the amusement of the guests loudly admired what they took to be the famous Rigi sunrise, while in fact they were vociferating and gesticulating at the setting sun. But while our tourists had soon found out their mistake, our evolutionists have not; which does not make it any less a mistake. St. Paul has drawn a vivid picture of the degenerating influence of sin upon the nations under the righteous wrath of God,* [* Rom. 1, 18-32.] and the course which the Greek nation and the Roman would have run from their pristine vigor exhibited in the days of Thermopylae and Cannae down to the state of marasmus senilis pictured by Juvenal, a state of rottenness which even the transfusion of German blood into the putrid veins of that degenerate and decaying race could not remedy, is a fearful corroboration of the apostle's testimony."
We cannot leave this subject without briefly adverting to a great historic fact, indeed, the most massive and significant fact in all history, which, in its remoter bearings, not only strikes at the very heart of the evolutionistic philosophy, but at the same time wounds it mortally in all its parts. I refer to the Resurrection of our Lord. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central fact of our Christian belief and it is, rightly understood, the all-sufficient answer to the theory of evolution. Christ's resurrection is an historical fact fully as much as the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis in 480 B. C., the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, and the peace of Versailles of 1919 are historical facts, proven by the word and record of contemporary witnesses. But if Christ was raised then we have proof for the following tenets, all contradicting evolutionary speculation at so many vital points: 1) The existence of a personal God who is concerned with human affairs; 2) The reality of miraculous interference with natural forces; 3) The truth of atonement and the redemption, and 4) The inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures (hence also of the creation account in Genesis). The details of the argument are beyond the scope of this paper, but a little patient study will bring to light the fact that each of these four basic ideas is dove-tailed, mortised and anchored so firmly in the fact of Christ's resurrection, that you can get rid of them all only by denying that fact. Hence it is, aside from any investigation of proofs of evolutionism, clear to the Christian student that there must be some fault either in reason or in observation that vitiates the whole theory. The resurrection of Christ is a fact, a fact to which the entire history of Christianity testifies, the most tremendous fact in the history of the world. And it stands fore-square against a theory which says that there is no personal God, that there is no sin, no redemption; that there are no miracles, no revelation, no inspiration; that there is no absolute religion nor an absolute standard of right and wrong.
CHAPTER ELEVEN. Evidence of Design.
Compare all that has been said by scientists themselves about the evolutionary theory, and what remains? This, only, that some how, we do not know when, life arose, and some how, we do not know by what laws, one form evolved from another, until we and the world about us have become what we are now. Now, the fact that no laws have so far been discovered by scientists to account for this presumed development of all things by inherent forces, is very significant and the conclusions which logically follow from it deserve our attention. Since Darwin's solution, Natural Selection, was discarded, twenty or thirty years ago, many other solutions have been propounded, but none has received the assent of even a respectable group of scientists, let alone by all. These solutions, —such as the theories of de Vries and Mendel, are frankly no more than guesses based on certain observation in plant life and insect life and their originators by no means assert that they have found a law by which the universe can be accounted for. But if there is no universal law, there is only chance. Hence it is clear that what we are asked to believe is that ancient Greek speculation was after all not far from the truth, that through a fortuitous (accidental) concourse of atoms the world came into being, and that by chance combinations of elements the great variety of living things arose.
Such is the condition of evolutionistic thought to-day. That there is no direct evidence for organic evolution is generally admitted. That geology cannot be quoted for it is also quite generally conceded, since the sudden rise of perfect (not half-developed) insects, of perfect fish, of perfect mammals, is clear even to the man who merely turns the leaves of Geikie's, Le Conte's, and Dana's text books, or visits Field's Museum. Yet some-how things must have gotten to be what they are by development from earlier forms,—this about sums up what is really contained in the concept of evolution as it appears in most recent scientific literature, so far as scientists at all touch upon the subject. However, they by no means urge the evolutionary principle as they used to do. Bacteriologists especially, so I am informed by a chemist of international repute, Dr. P. A. Kober, of New York, as a class are inclined to give up the theory as a "bad guess." Why, they find in fossil fish diseased portions which bear unmistakable traces of the action of bacteria which live to-day, in other words, which in "countless millions of years" have not progressed enough to show any change recognizable under the most powerful miscroscope! [tr. note: sic] Anthropologists shake their head when they are told by evolutionists that the animal which shows clearest "resemblance" in a structural way, to certain points in human anatomy, is a small fossil ape, about the size of a house cat, with a skull one inch in diameter! There remains no proof, direct or indirect, of any principle working the changes which are believed to have occurred. All things have evolved, if they have evolved at all, by chance.
Now, over against this doctrine of chance there stands the monumental fact that throughout nature, living and non-living, there runs a principle of design. The minerals, the plants, the animals, all exhibit, as even the superficial observer knows or might know, a plan. There is design in the crystals in which elements exist when they pass from a liquid into a solid state; there is design in the leaf and flower of every plant; there is plan, design, in the structure and physiology of animals. We would add, there is an evident plan in the history of the Chosen Race, the Jews, as we possess it in the Old and New Testaments; there is a plan in the moral sphere, laws producing unvaried results; there is an ordered scheme even in the life of the individual. But let us limit our investigation to the domain of nature. Let us note how little necessity there is for assuming that by mere chance things have come to be what they are.
As a rule each chemical substance has an individual crystal by which it can be distinguished. It is possible to classify the thousands of different crystals, since all belong to one of six classes, according as their surfaces are grouped symmetrically around the axes of the crystal. The salt crystal has one form, the topaz another, quartz and beryl another, borax another, and these forms are absolutely unvaried wherever these substances are found in nature or in the chemist's retort. It is not here our intention to point out how impossible it is to assume that there has been an evoluton [tr. note: sic] of one of these forms out of another. The point is that there is not chance, but orderly arrangement, symmetrical shape, in a word, most evident design.
Turning to plant life, even the amateur student cannot fail to observe that the entire world of plants is built on a beautiful system which argues most powerfully not for accidental arrangement but for plan. The place of every leaf on every plant is fixed beforehand by unerring mathematical rule. As the stems grow on, leaf after leaf appears exactly in its predestined place, producing a perfect symmetry;—a symnetry [tr. note: sic] which manifests itself not in one single monotonous pattern for all plants, but in a definite number of forms exhibited by different species, and arithmetically expressed by the series of fractions, 1/2, 1/3, 2/5, 3/8, 5/13, 8/21, etc., according as the formative energy in its spiral course up the developing stem lays down at corresponding intervals 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, or 21 ranks of alternative leaves.
The position of each blossom is determined beforehand by that of the leaves; so that the shape of every flower-cluster in a boquet [tr. note: sic] is given by the same simple mathematical law which arranges the foliage. Every flower has a "Numerical Plan." Although not easy to make out in all cases, yet generally it is plain to see that each blossom is based upon a particular number, which runs through all or most of its parts. And a principal thing which a botanist notices when examining a flower is its numerical plan. It is upon this that the symmetry of the blossom depends. Thus the stonecrop and the flax are based upon the number five, which is exhibited in all their parts. Some flowers of this same stonecrop have their parts in fours, and then that number runs throughout; namely, there are four sepals, four petals, eight stamens (two sets), and four pistils.
Next let us touch upon the plan which connects the plant with the animal world. The wonderful adaptations of many flowers and insects to each other, as to the fertilization of the former, and as to the life of the individual insect and the propagation of its kind, are evidence of design. For example, there are certain species of plants that are dependent for their fertilization on certain species of moths which live in the flowers, and the moths, in turn, are dependent on the plants. They deposit their eggs in the ovaries of the flowers where the young are hatched and nourished. The moths in some cases carry the pollen and place it on the stigmas of the flowers, as if guided by intelligence. So marvellous are the provisions which are made to ensure the fertilization of plants that the dean of Amercan [tr. note: sic] botanists, Professor Asa Gray, exclaims: "If these structures and their operations do not argue intention, what stronger evidence of intention in nature can there possibly be? If they do, such evidences are countless, and almost every blossom brings distinct testimony to the existence and providence of a Designer and Ordainer, without whom, we may well believe, not merely a sparrow, not even a grain of pollen, may fall." (On this entire subject read Selina Gaye's "The Great World's Farm," published by the MacMillan Co., New York.)