Evolution leads to infidelity and atheism, and is therefore a foe to Christianity. It denies the doctrine of special creation, and opposes the religion of the Christian, the Jew and the Mohammedan. Why should not all these religions unite against the false and unsupported theory that would make havoc of them all?
If evolution could be shown reconcilable with Christianity it would be lifted into respectability, but what would be the gain to Christianity? The Christian religion is reconcilable with all true science, and hails every true science with joy. The church loves true science, but hates a lie that poses as the truth. Christianity is readily reconcilable with the true sciences of Astronomy and Chemistry, but we do not try to reconcile it with the corresponding false sciences of astrology and alchemy. Why should we be concerned about such a reconciliation, since all the evidence offered in favor of evolution is not worthy of serious consideration? The facts hotly contest every guess. There is no conflict between Christianity and science. But evolution is not science. It is not knowledge. It is not truth. It is not proved. It is not certain. It is not probable. It is not possible. How can the serious student escape the conviction that evolution has not one chance out of a thousand, or even out of a million, to be a possible theory, and none whatever to be a probable or proven theory? It offers not one convincing argument. The evidence against the theory shows that it has not yet been proven and never can be.
The present population of the globe shows the unity of man in the days of Noah, and that the human race could not have begun 2,000,000 years ago, nor 1,000,000, nor 100,000, nor even 10,000. And no evidence that the evolutionist can bring to bear now or hereafter can ever set aside this mathematical demonstration. This one argument is sufficient to shatter evolution, if there were no more. But the whole fifty arguments in this book rush to the support of this one. They all harmonize with the Bible statements, but not one of them with the false and baneful theory of evolution. And no erroneous guess that they can make will escape mathematical detection. Why should we gratify the clamor of evolutionists, and seek to reconcile Christianity with a theory so manifestly false? To be worthy of acceptance, it must satisfactorily answer every one of the fifty arguments in this book and many more. Can it do so?
Evolution carried to a logical conclusion would destroy every thing precious to the heart of a Christian. It denies the real inspiration of the Bible. It makes Moses a liar. It denies the story of creation, and substitutes an impossible guess. It denies miracles, the providence of God, the creation of man and beast, and God’s government and control of the world. It laughs at the Virgin Birth and makes Christ a descendant of the brute on both sides. It denies his deity, his miracles, his resurrection from the dead. It joins hands with agnosticism, modernism, and other forms of infidelity and atheism and gives them the strongest support they have ever had. All these hail evolution’s advent with exceeding great joy. It has the closest affinity with the wildest and worst theories ever proposed.
Its writers and proponents turn infidel and atheist. Its teachers and advocates lose their belief in God and the immortality of the soul. The young men and women who are taught, abandon the faith of their fathers and join the forces of unbelief. To be sure, some are saved by inconsistency, and still maintain their faith, but the havoc is great. It would strip Christ of his Deity, reduce him to the dimensions of a man, and make his religion powerless to save. The men who tore the seamless coat from the dying Christ did a praiseworthy act, in comparison to those who would strip him of his deity and glory, for these are the garments of God!
The ruffians at the foot of the cross gambled for a mere human garment, but there are evolutionists who would “trample under foot the blood of the Son of God, and count it an unholy thing.” Those who would rob the world’s redeemer of his power and divinity, while speaking patronizingly in praise of his human traits, do but insult him with the vilest slander, which makes the derision of Calvary seem like praise.
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.
“With from one to three millions of distinct species in the animal and vegetable world, not a single species has been traced to another. Until species in the animal and vegetable world can be linked together, why should we assume without proof that man is a blood relative of any lower form of life? Those who become obsessed with the idea that they have brute blood in their veins devote their time to searching for missing links in the hope of connecting man with life below him; why do they prefer a jungle ancestry to creation by the Almighty for a purpose and according to a divine plan? Why will they travel around the world to find a part of a skull or remnants of a skeleton when they will not cross the street to save a soul?
“How can intelligent men and women underestimate the Christ? He is no longer a wandering Jew with a few followers; He is the great fact of history and the growing figure of all time—there is no other growing figure in all the world today. Men—the greatest of them—rise and reign and pass away; only CHRIST reigns and remains. They shall not take away our Lord. The Christian Church will not permit the degrading of its founder; it will defend at all times, everywhere and in every way, the historical Christ. It believes that ‘there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.’ No diminutive Messiah can meet the religious need of the world today and throughout the centuries. Christ for all and forever, is the slogan of the church. There has been apostasy in every age; attacks upon Christianity have been disguised under cloaks of many kinds, but it has withstood them all—‘The hammers are shattered but the anvil remains.’ The church will not yield now; it will continue its defense of the Bible, the Bible’s God and the Bible’s Christ until ‘every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.’
“While it resists the attacks upon the integrity of God’s Word and the divinity of the Saviour, it will pray that those who are now making the attack may come under the influence of, and yield their hearts to, Him whose call is to all, whose hand is all power and who promises to be with His people ‘always, even unto the end of the world,’ The Apostles’ Creed which has expressed the faith of the Christian Church for so many centuries shall not be emasculated by modernism.
“‘Faith of our fathers! living still
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword;
O how our hearts beat high with joy
Whene’er we hear that glorious word—
Faith of our fathers! holy faith,
We will be true to thee till death’!”
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg