EVOLUTION.

WHAT DO EVOLUTIONISTS TEACH?

DEDICATED TO C.F., DANVILLE, IND.

Many scientists who reject religion put on an air of superiority that is repulsive. If you call their speculations in question you at once receive credit for being an uneducated fool, a worshiper of the Bible.

Mr. Huxley advises theologians to let science alone. Wonderful advice! Do such men let religion alone? They can't agree among themselves, not even in their advice to theologians. And they ask more of religionists than they are willing to give. Dr. Lionel Beale, an English physiologist has written a volume of three hundred and eighty pages to prove that the phenomena of life, instinct and intellect, are not referable to the blind forces of nature. He avows his belief that mind governs matter; that a "never-changing, all-seeing, power-directing and matter-guiding Omnipotence" presides over all things. He also avows faith in the miracles underlying Christianity. But Prof. Huxley says, there is overwhelming and crushing evidence that no event has ever occurred on this earth which was not the effect of natural causes, meaning thereby physical causes. The factor of a divine intelligence he sets aside as of no consequence. His words are, "the doctrine that belief in a personal God is necessary to any religion, worthy of the name, is a mere matter of opinion."

Tyndall, Carpenter and Henry Thompson teach that "prayer is superstitious absurdity." Herbert Spencer is regarded by infidels as the "great philosopher," and he labors to prove that there can not be a personal God, or human spirit or self; that moral laws are simply "generalizations of utility," or, as Carl Vogt would have us believe, that self-respect, and not the will of God, is the basis and law of moral obligation. And Mr. Haeckel would have us believe that a few "monistic materialists" are the only men entitled to a hearing upon the question of "Evolution." So he excludes all true and intelligent Christians, for they are not and can not be "monistic materialists."

His words are, "It is only a select few, therefore, of learned and philosophical monistic materialists who are entitled to be heard on questions of the highest moment to every individual man, and to human society." But just what the man means by the "highest moment" we are anxious to know, as he is the most blank negative of religion that we can conceive. When he attempts to answer the religious objections to evolution, or, as he terms it, the descendence theory, he unceremoniously dismisses them as beneath his notice, giving his only argument, viz.: "All faith is superstition." He disposes of the objections drawn from first, or intuitive truths, by a simple denial of their existence, asserting that all our knowledge is from our senses. The objection that so many noted naturalists reject evolution, as it is advocated by himself and others, he considers at some length. He says, first, "Many have grown old in another way of thinking and can not be expected to change." Second, "Many are collectors of facts, without studying their relations, or, they are destitute of the genius for generalization, and so, can not rear the building. Others, again, are specialists." He says "It is not enough that a man should be versed in one department, he must be at home in all, in Botany, Zoology, Comparative Anatomy, Biology, Geology and Paleontology. He must be able to survey the whole field." His next, and mainly, is the statement that naturalists are generally lamentably deficient in philosophical culture and spirit. He says "The immovable edifice of the true monistic science, or what is the same thing, natural science, can only arise through the most intimate interaction and mutual interpretation of philosophy and observation." (See Philosophie and Empirie, pp. 638–641.)

This statement alone should stir up all Deists to a consideration of their teaching touching the sufficiency of the "Book of Nature;" for if it be true, then we must expect some other revelation, or be left to the conclusion that the Great Father has left his creatures in a great measure in a state of helplessness, unless Mr. Haeckel, or some other man like himself, can show us that the "Great Spirit" intended that he, and others like him, should do our thinking for us, seeing that we are incapable through mental deficiency, of raising the edifice, and seeing that, Mr. Huxley advises us poor (?) theologians to "let it alone." And Mr. Haeckel himself would not allow that any man is entitled to a hearing until he comprehends Biology, Botany, Comparative Anatomy, Zoology, Geology and Paleontology. Ho! evolutionists, ninety-nine out of every hundred of you, get out! You have no right to speak on the subject; otherwise, Haeckel is one of the foolish men, and talks without understanding himself. You must be at home in all those sciences, and emancipate yourselves from all religious beliefs before you have a right to be heard upon the grave question of evolution from an ancestral moneron; for you are incapable of comprehending your own monistic—materialistic origin. For, according to Haeckel, before a man is entitled to be heard he must renounce all faith in God, in the Bible, in the human spirit, and in the future life. Mr. Haeckel knows a great deal? Well, there are some very weighty men in this world? But, when they are in the east, our planet does not tip up in the west? We Christians have no right to be heard? Mr. Huxley advises us to keep our mouths shut (?). Well, that is grand? It correllates so beautifully with "free thought" and "free speech."

One evolutionist is all the time spreading himself about the preachers of religion knowing nothing in science, and another is saying to them, let science alone, and another says you can't rear the building if you try; you don't know enough. What a grand harmony there is just here? We theologians would advise "natural selection to be present with such instructors as thus advise us, and continue with them long enough, at least, to reject the worst from the school and give us a blessing in the survival of the fittest, for we would like to know our duty." So much for liberalism and broad principles.

"Monistic materialism," according to Haeckel, finds its primeval parent in a moneron, a creature of one substance, and that a semi-albuminous fluid. Now, it would be very interesting to know just how all the different substances, in all the creatures of this earth, got in, in order to get out, for involution lies behind evolution. But then, we theologians "have no right to be heard?" "are not entitled to be heard?" and, besides this, Mr. Haeckel has set aside intuitive, or first truths, and, as all axiomatic truths are of this class, perhaps it is wrong for us to bother you with our logic? Nevertheless we can't refrain from speaking our piece; we are advocates of free thought and free speech.

It must be conceded that there was a time when life and organisms began to exist upon our planet. From whence did they come, and how? The "high-priest" of Germany, who claims to be entitled to a hearing, says, by "spontaneous generation" they first appeared in the "monera." His words are these, "Only such homogeneous organizations as are yet not differentiated and are similar to the inorganic crystals in being homogeneously composed of one single substance, could arise by spontaneous generation, and could become the primeval parents of all other organisms." Such is Haeckel's germ of life.

Did it always exist? Is a moneron an eternal life germ? No. Neither Haeckel or Darwin advocates such a foolish idea; nor yet the idea of life-germs always existing. Life-germs are material organisms, and they may be alive or dead; for we know there is no period in the history of a living organism when it is not liable to die.

Spontaneous generation does not correlate with the idea that "life-germs always existed." And it is also opposed to the Christian idea that all life is from God, the eternal, ever-living spirit. So we Christians say, there is no life without antecedent life. If men prefer to deify life-germs, of course that is their business, but we have no disposition to accept a distinction without a difference, excepting the sacrifice of our common sense. It is more rational to believe in an ever-living intelligence as the source of all life, intelligence and moral nature. Did an eternal life-germ evolve all the forms of organic life known upon our earth? The eternal life-germ idea of materialistic philosophy represents no evolutionists of any note whatever. I know of one gentlemen only, at the present writing, that it represents. Haeckel says, We can, therefore, from these general outlines of the inorganic history of the earth's crust deduce the important fact, that at a certain definite time life had its beginning on our earth, and that terrestrial organisms did not exist from eternity, but at a certain period came into existence for the first time.

The godless advocates of spontaneous generation thus allow that life in its first appearance was without antecedent life; and so more was produced by the blind forces than was in nature to be evolved. Tell me how that was done, and I will tell you how to create something out of nothing. Haeckel says, "All the different forms of organisms which people are usually inclined to look upon as the products of creative power acting for a definite purpose, we, according to the theory of selection, can conceive as the necessary productions of natural selection, working without a purpose."—History of Creation, Vol. 1, pp. 176–327. He says, "We have before this become acquainted with the simplest of all species of organisms in the monera, whose entire bodies when completely developed consist of nothing but a semi-fluid albuminous lump; they are organisms which are of the utmost importance for the theory of the first origin of life."—History of Creation, Vol. 1, p. 330.

Here we part with our friends of the Haeckel school. They maintain that there was life without antecedent life, and so get more out of dead atoms than was in them, which is equal to something made of nothing. Mr. Darwin, being apprised of this difficulty, claimed a miraculous origin for the first form, or forms, of life, but retired the Creator at once upon the great achievement, leaving all to be evolved from these first forms by and through natural agencies, denying even design in nature. Mr. Buckner, a bold advocate of the "spontaneous generation" of life, who has published two volumes on Darwinism, says Darwin's views "are the most thoroughly naturalistic that can be imagined, and far more atheistic than those of his predecessor, Lamark, who admitted, at least, a general law of progress and development; whereas, according to Darwin, the whole development is due to the gradual summation of innumerable minute and accidental operations." It is admitted that the doctrine of evolution of species from other and entirely different species is a mere hypothesis, an opinion, or guess.

What have we to gain by the adoption of this unknown factor in the vegetable and animal kingdoms? Answer, nothing but irreligion; a world of godless infidels tearing afresh the wounds that death has made, and restoring to the grave its victory over the human heart. Renan, in his recent lectures talks about the "torture consequent upon the disappointment in his efforts to attain to the unattainable;" and Strauss said the "sense of abandonment is at first something awful." This is the inheritance that the tenet of evolution leaves to all infidels in their last extremity.