While evolution in plant life and in animal life up to the highest form of animal might, if there were proof of it, be admitted without raising a presumption that would compel us to give a brute origin to man, why should we admit a thing of which there is no proof? Why should we encourage the guesses of these speculators and thus weaken our power to protest when they attempt the leap from the monkey to man? Let the evolutionist furnish his proof.
Although our chief concern is in protecting man from the demoralization involved in accepting a brute ancestry, it is better to put the advocates of evolution upon the defensive and challenge them to produce proof in support of their hypothesis in plant life and in the animal world. They will be kept so busy trying to find support for their hypothesis in the kingdoms below man that they will have little time left to combat the Word of God in respect to man's origin. Evolution joins issue with the Mosaic account of creation. God's law, as stated in Genesis, is reproduction according to kind; evolution implies reproduction not according to kind. While the process of change implied in evolution is covered up in endless eons of time it is change nevertheless. The Bible does not say that reproduction shall be nearly according to kind or seemingly according to kind. The statement is positive that it is according to kind, and that does not leave any room for the changes however gradual or imperceptible that are necessary to support the evolutionary hypothesis.
We see about us everywhere and always proof of the Bible law, viz., reproduction according to kind; we find nothing in the universe to support Darwin's doctrine of reproduction other than of kind.
If you question the possibility of such changes as the Darwinian doctrine supposes you are reminded that the scientific speculators have raised the time limit. "If ten million years are not sufficient, take twenty," they say: "If fifty million years are not enough take one or two hundred millions." That accuracy is not essential in such guessing may be inferred from the fact that the estimates of the time that has elapsed since life began on the earth, vary from less than twenty-five million years to more than three hundred million. Darwin estimated this period at two hundred million years while Darwin's son estimated it at fifty-seven million.
It requires more than millions of years to account for the varieties of life that inhabit the earth; it requires a Creator, unlimited in power, unlimited intelligence, and unlimited love.
But the doctrine of evolution is sometimes carried farther than that. A short while ago Canon Barnes, of Westminster Abbey, startled his congregation by an interpretation of evolution that ran like this: "It now seems highly probable (probability again) that from some fundamental stuff in the universe the electrons arose. From them came matter. From matter, life emerged. From life came mind. From mind, spiritual consciousness was developing. There was a time when matter, life and mind, and the soul of man were not, but now they are. Each has arisen as a part of the vast scheme planned by God." (An American professor in a Christian college has recently expressed himself along substantially the same lines.)
But what has God been doing since the "stuff" began to develop? The verbs used by Canon Barnes indicate an internal development unaided from above. "Arose, came, emerged, etc.," all exclude the idea that God is within reach or call in man's extremity.
When I was a boy in college the materialists began with matter separated into infinitely small particles and every particle separated from every other particle by distance infinitely great. But now they say that it takes 1,740 electrons to make an atom of infinite fineness. God, they insist, has not had anything to do with this universe since 1,740 electrons formed a chorus and sang, "We'll be an atom by and by."
It requires measureless credulity to enable one to believe that all that we see about us came by chance, by a series of happy-go-lucky accidents. If only an infinite God could have formed hydrogen and oxygen and united them in just the right proportions to produce water—the daily need of every living thing—scattered among the flowers all the colours of the rainbow and every variety of perfume, adjusted the mocking-bird's throat to its musical scale, and fashioned a soul for man, why should we want to imprison such a God in an impenetrable past? This is a living world; why not a living God upon the throne? Why not allow Him to work now?
Darwin is so sure that his theory is correct that he is ready to accuse the Creator of trying to deceive man if the theory is not sound. On page 41 he says: "To take any other view is to admit that our structure and that of all animals about us, is a mere snare to entrap our judgment;" as if the Almighty were in duty bound to make each species so separate from every other that no one could possibly be confused by resemblances. There would seem to be differences enough. To put man in a class with the chimpanzee because of any resemblances that may be found is so unreasonable that the masses have never accepted it.