We were not surprised to learn that, in the Tenn. trial, evolution was defended by agnostics, who made their chief attack on the Bible and revealed religion; and the school, the home and religion were defended by men of high Christian character. Had Mr. Darrow as earnestly defended Christianity and Mr. Bryan as earnestly opposed it, millions would have held up their hands in astonishment. But the alignment was natural, and opened the eyes of multitudes to the fact that evolution is a friend to infidelity and a foe to Christianity. Their objection to prayer during the sessions of the Court shows that they hated what God loves.
Christianity withstood ten fiery persecutions, lasting 300 years, at the hands of the Roman Empire, the mistress of the world. The church was purified, and grew and multiplied. Numerous heresies arose but all yielded to the truth. Sin and corruption, formality and worldliness, failed to hinder the triumphant march of the church of God.
Infidelity made a fierce attack in the eighteenth century in its own name, and lost. But the most dangerous attack ever made is on, by evolution claiming the name of science and modernism claiming the name of religion. This f. a. d. is truly for a day. God will win. Truth will live and error will die. But too many precious souls will be lost unless the world awakes to see its danger soon.
Mr. Bryan, in his last message, said: “Christ has made of death a narrow starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow. Evolution strikes out the stars, and deepens the gloom that enshrouds the tomb.”.... “Do these evolutionists stop to think of the crime they commit when they take faith out of the hearts of men and women and lead them out into a starless night?”
Evolution wars with the religion of the Jews also. It attacks the Old Testament, dear alike to Christian and Jew. The Jews were the chosen people of God, and have played a large part in the history of the world. We gladly clasp hands with them against the common foe. David speaks for Jews and Christians in the 8th Psalm. In contrast to evolution, which degrades man to the level of the brute, he declares that man is but a little lower than God, (Heb. Elohim). The revisers had the courage so to translate it. David under inspiration wrote better than he knew, and in absolute harmony with modern science:
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man (how great must he be) that thou are mindful of him (among thy great and marvelous works)? And the son of man that thou are a companion to him? For thou hast made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet; all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.” All animals confess the dominion of man since the strongest and fiercest flee from his face. Who would prefer the “string of stuff” that would place man below the brute, to the lofty description of the Hebrew Psalmist placing him a little lower than God?
Hon. William J. Bryan, when attending the Presbyterian General Assembly in Columbus, Ohio, in 1925, enclosed, in a letter to the writer, a copy of his address in John Wanamaker’s Church, Philadelphia, on evolution and modernism, from which we select the following:
“All the modernists are evolutionists and their hypothesis of creation gives man a brute ancestry and makes him the apex of a gradual development extending over millions of years. This hypothesis contains no place for, and has no need of, a plan of salvation. It is only a step from this philosophy to the philosophy of the atheist who considers man ‘a bundle of tendencies inherited from the lower animals,’ and regards sin as nothing more serious than a disease that should be treated rather than punished. One of the gravest objections to the doctrine of the modernists is that it ignores sin in the sense in which the Bible describes sin. Modernists ignore the cause of sin, the effects of sin, and the remedy for sin. They worship the intellect and overlook the heart, ‘out of which are the issues of life.’ No evangelical church has ever endorsed a single doctrine of the modernists.
“Evolution is the basis of modernism. Carried to its logical conclusion, it annihilates revealed religion. It made an avowed agnostic of Darwin (see in his ‘Life and Letters’ a letter written on this subject just before his death); it has made agnostics of millions and atheists of hundreds of thousands, yet Christian taxpayers, not awake to its benumbing influence, allow Darwinism to be injected into the minds of immature students, many of whom return from college with their spiritual enthusiasm chilled if not destroyed.
“When we protest against the teaching of this tommy-rot by instructors paid by taxation, they accuse us of stifling conscience and interfering with free speech. Not at all; let the atheist think what he pleases and say what he thinks to those who are willing to listen to him, but he cannot rightly demand pay from the taxpayers for teaching their children what they do not want taught. The hand that writes the pay check rules the school. As long as Christians must build Christian colleges in which to teach Christianity, atheists should be required to build their own colleges if they desire to teach atheism.