The Churches and Modern Thought / An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour :: IRRECONCILABLE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH EVOLUTION

IRRECONCILABLE DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH EVOLUTION

§ 1. Preliminary Remarks.

THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION.

General views of the development or evolution of the visible order of nature have been entertained by philosophers from the earliest historical times. There were pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Lucretius (600 B.C.–50 A.D.). The inquiry was then arrested for nearly sixteen hundred years—that is, until the renascence of Science. As knowledge, in spite of ecclesiastical discouragement, again slowly advanced, the science of biology gained in strength, and the work of LinnÆus, Buffon, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and others, paved the way for that modern theory of Evolution which Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, Huxley, and Haeckel have demonstrated to us. This doctrine of Evolution is no longer a mere speculative theory, possibly or probably true, but an established fact accepted by the whole scientific world with hardly a single dissentient voice. We know that everything as it now exists is the product of Evolution—the solar system, the earth, all lower forms of life, and lastly man, together with his languages, arts, sciences, theology, social habits, instincts, and, according to many high authorities, morals, conscience, and consciousness. Yes, “man, perfect as he may appear to us, is still not a being apart in nature, but by his whole organisation is continuous with the other zoological species.” “Anthropology, properly so-called, is, in fact, merely a chapter of zoology.” “The homological structure of man, his embryological development, and the rudiments which he still retains, all declare in the plainest possible manner that he is descended from some lower form.” He “derives his moral sense from the social feelings which are instinctive or innate in the lower animals.”1

It is in the special sense of explaining how living things came into being, and how they have acquired their present characters, that the teaching of Evolution appears to be most in conflict with that of the Churches and the Bible. It is, therefore, this aspect of Evolution with which we are here chiefly concerned, and we may remember that, since Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871), his main conclusions have been confirmed by every branch of anthropological research—by palÆontology, zoology, comparative anatomy, physiology, pathology, teratology, psychology, and more especially by embryology, a science in which there has been a remarkable progress during the past thirty years. Professor Haeckel points out on page 24 of his important work, The Evolution of Man (translated by Joseph McCabe), that “even when human anatomy began to stir itself once more in the sixteenth century, and independent research into the structure of the developed body was resumed, anatomists did not dare to extend their inquiries to the unformed body, the embryo, and its development. There were many reasons for the prevailing horror of such studies. It is natural enough, when we remember that a Bull of Boniface VIII. excommunicated every man who ventured to dissect a human corpse. If the dissection of a developed body were a crime to be thus punished, how much more dreadful must it have seemed to deal with the embryonic body still enclosed in the womb, which the Creator Himself had decently veiled from the curiosity of the scientist.” PalÆontology is another very young science that has contributed greatly towards the evidence of our origin. Professor Huxley informs us, in his essay on “The Rise and Progress of PalÆontology,” that the first adequate investigation of the fossil remains of any large group of vertebrated animals dates from 1822, and that in the last fifty years the number of known fossil remains of invertebrated animals has been trebled or quadrupled. Fossils were at one time believed to have been sown by the devil, whose fell purpose was to throw discredit upon the Bible story of Creation. Perhaps this pious opinion may have had something to do with the slow progress of palÆontology?

DARWINISM.

To prevent the chance of any misunderstanding, some explanation may be necessary for the benefit of those who are not in touch with scientific thought, and who hear that “Darwinism” is out of date. They should understand that, although the doctrine of Evolution as applied to organic life used to be widely spoken of by the term “Darwinism,” the latter is now only used by scientists in a special sense, to designate the belief in the gradual origin of species by natural selection. There are some who deem this hypothesis to be untenable. But there is no dispute whatever concerning the doctrine of the derivation or descent, with modification, of all existing species, genera, orders, classes, etc., of animals and plants, from a few simple forms of life, if not from one. Modern evolutionary theories, however, are more particularly concerned with the question of the ways and means by which living organisms have assumed their actual characters or forms, and on these points there are many shades of individual opinion.

Ignorance of the gist of the Darwinian theory, “natural selection,”2 has been fruitful in misunderstandings and objections regarding it, so that it is advisable to mention here that the author of the theory states explicitly that it does not account for the origin of variations in individuals, still less in species; but that, given the origination and existence of variations, it shows that some of these are preserved, while others are not—that favourable variations tend to be perpetuated, and unfavourable variations to become extinct; that those variations which best adapt an organisation to its environment are most favourable to its preservation, and, consequently, that the theory of natural selection is adequate to explain the observed fact of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. “Natural selection ... implies that the individuals which are best fitted for the complex and changing conditions to which, in the course of ages, they are exposed, generally survive and procreate their kind.”3 Natural selection does not, it may be added, imply conscious selection. It would be equally true to call it natural murder, or natural weeding-out. But, whether Darwin and Weismann be right or wrong in attributing so much to natural selection, what I wish particularly to point out is that the hypothesis of Evolution is nowise invalidated because, out of the various causes at work, we are not quite sure as yet which is the most efficient. It is necessary to make this clear, for, hearing that “Darwinism” is under dispute, the uninitiated might come to the conclusion that the animal origin of man is discredited.

THE AVERAGE PERSON’S IDEAS ON THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.

With but very few exceptions, every biological student admits our animal origin. The ideas of most people, however, on this subject are hazy in the extreme, and no wonder, when the study of Evolution has never been included in their school curriculum. Men (and in very rare cases women) pick up a few crumbs of knowledge concerning the scientific theory of their origin, and then, from want of leisure or from religious motives, or from various causes, they drop the subject. Often they are put off by the dry details of the evidence and the technical phrases before they have obtained a real grip of the subject. They do not even know some of the more simple and obvious proofs which alone would have sufficed to convince them. One finds that men’s views concerning Evolution are coloured by the opinion prevailing at the time when they themselves were once faintly interested in the subject; and thus there is, at present, an inertia of ignorance, due to the misconceptions and prejudices of older generations. The opinions of our elders, being formed on a riper experience, very properly enlist our respect; but, unfortunately, in this instance they are based upon false premises, and so lead us astray. People who remember when Darwin first propounded his theory, and the violent, not to say virulent, opposition with which it was received by the Church, only too often remain in blissful ignorance of all that has since transpired. It is quite enough for them that they are erect, tailless, speaking, reflecting bipeds. With attributes such as these, they fondly imagine that they are separated from the beast by a gulf that neither Evolution nor any other theory could possibly bridge. Whatever the reasons may be—and there are many—the vast majority of Christians not only remain woefully ignorant of Evolution, but have no desire to learn anything more about it. They know it is opposed to Bible teaching. They prefer, as it has been well said, to consider themselves fallen angels rather than elevated apes.

We are not, however, concerned here with likes and dislikes, but only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. Moreover, if it be objected that we can take no pride in an animal ancestry, surely we may say the same of our savage ancestry. “He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part, I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.”4 “We must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men, but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect, which has penetrated into the movement and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”5

THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH.

Now let us consider the opinions of our spiritual guides. At the Shrewsbury Church Conference, in 1896, Archbishop Temple said that, “in his opinion, the full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution would prove a great help to Christian thought and Christian life.” In his book, The Relations between Religion and Science, he states that “the doctrine of Evolution leaves the argument for an intelligent and beneficent Creator and Governor of the world stronger than it was before.” A decade has passed, and still how few Christians know of this “help,” of this “stronger argument”! In the course of his address at the Weymouth Church Conference in 1905, the Bishop of Gloucester admitted that “Darwin’s teaching on evolution and development” had “revolutionised our ideas of God’s action in nature.” If this be so, how comes it that such a vast number of the pious still adhere to the old ideas? Is it not the duty of the pastor to educate his flock? What “ideas of God’s action in nature” are missionaries even now putting into the heads of their converts? If we inquired of the average religionist, should we find that his or her ideas had been revolutionised? Not only are worshippers in the House of God kept in ignorance, but theological students are distinctly warned against the full acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution. For instance, Dr. Orr, a professor of apologetics, delivered a course of lectures before the professors and students of the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1903, the object of which was to show the dangers that must accrue to the Faith if the theories of Darwin were accepted in their entirety. He stoutly denied that man and woman were an evolution by slow stages from creatures that had gone before, and asserted that the first man came into being, as did the first woman, by a special act of creation. Unfortunately for the validity of his assertion he labours under the delusion that science concedes that man, or anything like man, cannot be traced further back than the post-glacial period, and that the brain capacity and physical characteristics of primeval man stood on as high a level as the average man of to-day!6

In a recently-published letter,7 written by Charles Kingsley to a correspondent, we read: “My own belief in the general truth of my friend Darwin’s views—which deepen day by day as I verify them—has only given me wider and deeper and nobler notions of God’s works in the material universe.” He then proceeds to illustrate his own thoughts by a charming little story of a certain old heathen Khan, who was delighted with the idea of a God so wise that he made all things make themselves. This old Khan and Charles Kingsley overlook an objection which to myself, and to many others, seems quite insuperable—namely, that a God so wise and merciful would have seen his way to prevent that frightful wastefulness and cruelty which is part and parcel of the evolutionary process. But more of this difficulty anon.

To give another example of a clerical evolutionist: the Rev. G. S. Streatfield, vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead, on May 22nd, 1901, read a paper at the Southport Conference on “Questions that Must be Faced,” in which he conceded that “the fact of Evolution is now hardly questioned in the scientific world—one might almost say in the world of thought.” He, too, is charmed with the new theory, for he says: “It is, I suppose, generally agreed that the evolutionist has worthier, more rational, more truly philosophical views of the Divine Will and Action than those who hold the traditional theory.” Clerics of his stamp and school are now becoming more outspoken, and admit their convictions in public instead of in writings that are likely to be seen only by a select few. Only lately the Dean of Westminster, addressing a large gathering of Sunday-school teachers, told them that the idea that the human species was separately created was given up, and the fact of man’s descent from lower organisms accepted. While admiring his candour, one cannot help calling to mind that in 1860 Professor Huxley was utterly ridiculed by erudite scholars of the Church for making a precisely similar statement.

Between those who accept and those who entirely reject Evolution there are various shades of opinion. There are those who accept everything short of the evolution of certain mental faculties; although students of comparative psychology now admit that the intellectual faculties of animals differ from those in man in degree only, not in their essence. There are those like the Rev. John Urquhart, author of a brochure called Roger’s Reasons, who seek to reconcile the Bible story of creation with the Evolution theory, although any such interpretation was put out of court long ago by Professor Huxley’s reply to Mr. Gladstone.8 There are those who, like Dr. Torrey,9 persist in altogether denying our animal origin, although there is hardly a single scientist, hardly a single thoughtful man, who has studied the subject without bias, who believes anything else.

The number of clergymen who openly admit the truth of Evolution is as yet comparatively small. The few who do express their opinion openly, profess to be delighted with the new light that has now been shed upon God’s methods. The question arises, How is it, then, that we hear so little about Evolution from the pulpit, and that, consequently, the faithful are kept in ignorance of this fresh revelation? The answer is obvious: It is because the advanced divines have yet to educate their congregations up to their way of thinking, and the process has, for many reasons, to be conducted with extreme caution. They know full well that they have a difficult and dangerous task before them; that those who accept Evolution, but are unable to accept their opinions concerning its spiritual helpfulness, will lapse into agnosticism. They also know that their views are not popular with conservative believers.

The chief reason, perhaps, for pulpit reticence is that the enormous majority in the Church still remain hostile to this new doctrine. They consider it to be dangerous, and likely to unsettle people’s minds. Possibly in their inmost souls, if they have studied Evolution at all, they agree with a certain distinguished essayist who says: “A God who could have been deliberately guilty of them (the Evolutionary processes) would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible.”10 The cruelty of the law of prey and struggle for existence, and the wastefulness of Nature’s arrangements for the reproduction of life (plant and animal alike), do, indeed, appear sufficient warrant for some such painful impression; while, as if this were not enough, there is for the Christian the additional difficulty of reconciling Evolution with the Bible story of the Creation and Fall of man. These various difficulties must now be carefully investigated.

§ 2. “Nature Red in Tooth and Claw.”

Darwin tells us that “there is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at such a high rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate in less than a thousand years there would literally not be standing room for his progeny.”11 [I commend this passage to the notice of President Roosevelt and others who are so anxious that we should obey God’s command to Noah, and “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.”] “If all the offspring of the elephant, the slowest breeder known, survived, there would be, in seven hundred and fifty years, nearly nineteen million elephants, descended from the first pair. If the eight or nine million eggs which the roe of a cod is said to contain, developed into adult codfishes, the sea would quickly become a solid mass of them. It is the same with the plants. The lower organisms multiply with an astonishing rapidity, some minute fungi increasing a billion-fold in a few hours. But we need not give further examples of this fecundity whereby Nature, ‘so careless of the single life,’ secures the race against extinction. The result is obvious—a ceaseless struggle for food and place. In that struggle the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong; the weaker, be it in brain or body, going to the wall; the vast majority never reaching maturity, or, if they do, attaining it only to be starved or slain. As among men competition is sharper between those of the same trade, so throughout the organic world the struggle is less severe between different species than between members of the same species, because these compete more fiercely for their common needs—plants for the same soil, carnivora for the same prey.”12

The problem of evil has exercised the mind of man from all time, and has never yet been solved. In our own time the solution by theology seems farther off than ever, now that the existence of the Devil is denied, while the law of prey and struggle for existence is admitted to be the Creator’s own handiwork—to be His Divine plan for the evolution of all living things. Surely we must admit the inherent cruelty of the process? Professor Huxley, in an article on the “Struggle for Existence,” concludes that, “since thousands of times a minute, were our ears sharp enough, we should hear sighs and groans of pain like those heard by Dante at the gate of hell [not to mention what we should not hear—the anguish and terror borne in silence], the world cannot be governed by what we call benevolence.”13

Winwood Reade, in his striking book, The Martyrdom of Man, says: “But it is when we open the Book of Nature, that book inscribed in blood and tears; it is when we study the laws regulating life, the laws productive of development, that we see plainly how illusive is this theory that God is Love. In all things there is cruel, profligate, and abandoned waste. Of all the animals that are born a few only can survive; and it is owing to this law that development takes place. The law of murder is the law of growth. Life is one long tragedy; creation is one great crime. Is it the law of a kind Creator that no animal shall rise to excellence except by being fatal to the life of others? It is useless to say that pain has its benevolence, that massacre has its mercy. Why is it so ordained that bad should be the raw material of good? Pain is not less pain because it is useful; murder is not less murder because it is conducive to development. There is blood upon the hand still, and all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten it.”14

Robert Blatchford (Nunquam), in his book, God and My Neighbour, which has caused no little stir of late in certain quarters, speaks to the same effect: “On land and in sea the animal creation chase and maim and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow on the wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying fish, like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence of the tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by the ravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays eggs under the skin of the caterpillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar’s blood. They produce a brood of larvÆ which devour the caterpillar alive.... A germ flies from a stagnant pool, and the laughing child, its mother’s darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls land-ward, and twenty thousand human beings are drowned or crushed to death. A volcano bursts suddenly into eruption, and the beautiful city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitants are charred or mangled corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love and has power to save, makes no sign.... Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man tries to save.”

“But,” it may be said, “you are giving only the one side—the freethinker’s side—of the question. What are the Christian evolutionist’s replies to these terrible attacks upon our Heavenly Father?” You shall hear them, and judge for yourself whether they are likely to convince the multitude.

In the second chapter of his book on Darwinism, Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace lays himself out to say all that can be said, and a great deal that cannot reasonably be said, in extenuation of God’s plan. He owns that, “to many persons, Nature appears calm, orderly, and peaceful. They see the birds singing in the trees, the insects hovering over the flowers, and all living things in the possession of health and in the enjoyment of a sunny existence. But they do not see, and hardly ever think of, the means by which this beauty and harmony and enjoyment is brought about. They do not see the constant and daily search after food, the failure to obtain which means weakness or death; the constant effort to escape enemies; the ever-recurring struggle against the forces of Nature. This daily and hourly struggle, this incessant warfare, is, nevertheless, the very means by which much of the beauty and harmony and enjoyment in Nature is produced, and also affords one of the most important elements in bringing about the origin of the species.” After showing that the struggle for existence has proved a stumbling-block in the way of those who would fain believe in the all-wise and benevolent Ruler of the universe, he goes on to say that “all this is greatly exaggerated”; that “the supposed torments and miseries of animals have little real existence, but are the reflection of the imagined sensations of cultivated men and women under similar circumstances”; and that “the amount of actual suffering caused by the struggle for existence among animals is altogether insignificant.” Space, and a consideration for a possibly impatient reader, prevent my wading through the paltry reasons he proceeds to bring forward in order to try to prove that pain is not pain, and that the less degree of pain suffered by an animal or a savage is an excuse for its infliction.

The Rev. Professor Flint’s book on Theism15 is much patronised by the Church as an apologetic book of the highest order. The Professor tries to show (p. 204) that, although the process of development involves privation, pain, and conflict, it is subservient to the noblest end, because the final result is, as he alleges, order and beauty. All the perfections of sentient creatures are, he owns, due to this painful process. “Through it the lion has gained its strength, the deer its speed, the dog its sagacity. The suffering which the conflict involves may indicate that God has made even animals for some higher end than happiness—that He cares for animals’ perfection as well as for animals’ enjoyment. The ends are eminently worthy of a Divine intelligence.” The Professor does not explain why, to paraphrase one of Mr. Lowes Dickenson’s sage remarks, the less perfectly evolved generations should be sacrificed in order that future generations may be heirs of an unearned increment. Myself, I fail to see that even the ends, whatever they may happen to be—and they appear distinctly nebulous—can ever justify the cruel means; and I feel sure that our dumb fellow-creatures, the principal parties concerned, would agree with me, had they the power of reflection and speech. How can they, how can we, profess to approve of a plan that brings only unhappiness in its train? Suppose it were necessary in order to give more happiness in an after-life, the creature might meekly wonder why he or she had first to suffer pain, but could imagine, as the pious imagine, that it must be for some good purpose. Does Dr. Flint mean to say that there is an after-life for all living things? The learned Professor tries to explain pain away by describing its preservative use. He says (p. 246): “Were animals insusceptible of pain, they would be in continual peril.” That would certainly spoil the evolutionary Creator’s plans; but it hardly excuses His methods. Professor Flint, however, argues that, though pain is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end, and “its end is a benevolent one.” How, I ask does it profit the creature itself to become ever so graceful in appearance, ever so perfect in mind and body, if it is only to gratify its Maker, who has an end in view with which it is in no wise itself concerned, and to attain which infinite pain has to be endured? Which would you or I rather be—lovely and unhappy, or ugly and happy?

There is another of these attempts to relieve doubt which I should like to bring to notice. The little book entitled In Relief of Doubt, by the Rev. E. Welsh, highly recommended by the Bishop of London, and one of the books selected by the Christian Evidence Society for their examination in March, 1907, is quoted from by Dr. Warschauer16 when refuting Mr. Blatchford’s remarks on the cruelty of Nature. Dr. Warschauer selects the passage where Mr. Welsh says (p. 103): “We probably overstate the actual anguish of the lower creatures, imagining that they are bundles of sensitive nerves and quick brains like our own, and that they therefore have our sensibility to pain. A trodden worm writhes, and we credit it with all the pain that the foot of a Brobdingnag would inflict on a delicate child under his heel.” Now, I am quite sure we credit no such thing. If we did, we, and especially the Isaak Waltons among us, would be perfect monsters of cruelty. Mark, too, how Messrs. Welsh and Warschauer carefully select for their illustration a worm—one of the lowly organised invertebrates! I may mention that Dr. Warschauer’s book was particularly recommended to me by a well-read cleric, who thought that it was an admirable and complete refutation of Mr. Blatchford’s arguments. Dr. Warschauer will hardly advance his cause by transparently omitting all mention of the higher animals, or of that bundle of nerves called man.

Nor will the average man agree with Professor Wallace that “it is difficult even to imagine a system by which a greater balance of happiness could have been secured.” Was it, for example, impossible for God to have decreed that sentient life should feed only on non-sentient life? Could He not have brought about development without all this terrible struggle? One would think that Messrs. Warschauer and Wallace must not only have had a particularly good time themselves in this world, but must have purposely shut their eyes to the misery all round them. If they had to change places with a wounded Russian or Japanese writhing in agony on the battlefield, I wonder whether their optimism would stand the test? The bravest of us shudder at the idea of being buried alive, and yet this was just the very fate of many a poor fellow in that truly terrible war. Not that man did not do his utmost. “One by one the dead and injured were carefully and tenderly taken out,” relates an eye-witness, “and many a tear was shed by strong men at the terrible sights we had to witness. The worst part of our work was to have to endure the agonising cries of the men who were suffering terrible torture; but everyone helped so willingly that we felt that we were not doing enough.” Please note, on the one hand, the cruel torture, and, on the other, the sympathy of man.

I will not weary or distress you further, gentle reader, with harrowing details of the pain that is endured alike by man and beast. It is all so well known. I shall only ask you to listen to a little story from the leaves of a naturalist’s note-book, and to put to yourself a few questions. “A sparrow-hawk suddenly dashed under the branches of a hedgerow oak, and seized a linnet. But the bird of prey had not calculated upon the missel-thrush whose nest was in the oak, and who made it his business to have no suspicious strangers loitering in the neighbourhood. With an angry ‘jarr,’ and a swoop that would have done credit to the hawk himself, the plucky missel-thrush was upon the marauder almost at the same instant that the linnet was seized; a feather—a hawk’s feather—floated in the air, and the astonished bird of prey flung himself sideways, and spread his talons to meet the next assault. This action released the linnet, who sped away into the next parish like a bullet, while the missel-thrush, perched in the oak tree again, noisily threatened to repeat the attack. So the sparrow-hawk departed in the opposite direction to the linnet, and in two minutes all birddom was twittering and squabbling as before on the site of what was so very nearly a sudden tragedy.” Is not your sympathy, humane reader, all with the linnet and its gallant rescuer, although the hawk was but carrying out the behests of its Maker! Does it not give us a thrill of pleasure when the lion is baulked of his prey—when the pet lamb is rescued from the butcher? Are we, then, more merciful than God? Was it Jesus or was it the gentle Gautama that marked

“How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him,
And kite on both; and how the fish-hawk robbed
The fish-tiger of that which it had seized;
The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did hunt
The jewelled butterflies; till everywhere
Each slew a slayer, and in turn was slain,
Life living upon death. So the fair show,
Veiled one vast, savage, grim conspiracy
Of mutual murder, from the worm to man,
Who himself kills his fellow”?17

§ 3. The Bible Account of Creation Irreconcilable with Science in Each and Every Respect.

The hypothesis respecting the past history of Nature, which was formerly, and is still very largely, accepted by Christians, is the doctrine fully and clearly stated in the immortal poem of John Milton—the English Divina Commedia—Paradise Lost. There is the best of reasons for the popularity of this doctrine. It agrees literally with the plain words of the Bible. The hypothesis is briefly this: “That this visible universe of ours came into existence at no great distance of time from the present, and that the parts of which it is composed made their appearance, in a certain definite order, in the space of six natural days, in such a manner that on the first of these days light appeared; that on the second the firmament or sky separated the waters above from the waters beneath the firmament; that on the third day the waters drew away from the dry land, and upon it a varied vegetable life, similar to that which now exists, made its appearance; that the fourth day was signalised by the apparition of the sun, the stars, the moon, and the planets; that on the fifth day aquatic animals originated within the waters; that on the sixth day the earth gave rise to our four-footed terrestrial creatures, and to all variations of terrestrial animals except birds, which had appeared on the preceding day; and, finally, that man appeared upon the earth, and the emergence of the universe from chaos was finished.”18 This interpretation is that which has been instilled into most of us in our childhood; but, “if we are to listen to many expositors of no mean authority, we must believe that what seems so clearly defined in Genesis—as if very great pains had been taken that there should be no possibility of mistake—is not the meaning of the text at all. The account is divided into periods that we may make just as long or as short as convenience requires. We are also to understand that it is consistent with the original text to believe that the most complex plants and animals may have been evolved by natural processes, lasting for millions of years, out of structureless rudiments. A person who is not a Hebrew scholar can only stand aside and admire the marvellous flexibility of a language which admits of such diverse interpretations.”19

Furthermore, we are to understand that there is no disagreement between theology and science in the sequence of the six acts of creation. Here at least we are not asked to twist words round so that one may mean a million. We have a definite statement which science either supports or it does not. The reader who knows that the verdict of science is negative may ask: “What is the use of wasting my time over a Christian argument which has long since been exploded?” I crave his pardon and patience; but, however true it may be that Mr. Gladstone’s position was shown to be untenable, it is equally true that an enormous number of persons still persist in maintaining that there is a remarkable coincidence of the Pentateuchal story with the result of modern investigation, and that science supports them in this conclusion. The Very Rev. Henry Wace, D.D., Dean of Canterbury, in his address before the Christian Association of University College, London, on May 7th, 1903, reminded his hearers that a President of the British Association (Sir William Dawson) had stated that “it would not be easy even now to construct a statement of the development of the world in popular terms so concise and so accurate” as the first chapter of Genesis. And Dr. Wace asks: “From whence could have come this marvellous approximation, to say the least, to the facts which science has been slowly revealing but from the Divine wisdom which alone was cognizant of them, and could alone make them known to mankind?”

A short time ago a lady very kindly sent me a little pamphlet, entitled Roger’s Reasons; or, The Bible and Science, written by the Rev. John Urquhart. In this there is a resurrection pie of the old, old arguments, dished up again in such a guise as to take in the unwary and ill-informed, who would have no suspicion that the food thus given them for their refection was not only stale, but had been condemned as unfit for mental consumption by the whole of the scientific faculty. The lady above mentioned considered the reasoning perfectly convincing, and so possibly would ninety-nine Christian ladies out of a hundred. Mr. Urquhart is now much in evidence as a Christian apologist, and his pamphlet is being distributed broadcast (81,000 have already been issued), so that it does seem worth while taking some notice of the attempts that are still being made to treat the Creation myth as a Divine revelation. That modern science does not support either the interpretation put upon the Bible story of the Creation by Mr. Urquhart or by Mr. Gladstone, or any interpretation which is compatible with the general sense of the narrative, can be ascertained by anyone who will read Professor Huxley’s essays, “The Interpreters of Genesis” and “Mr. Gladstone and Genesis.” A few quotations from these essays may enable the reader to form a slight idea of the decisive manner in which the assertion that modern science supports the Bible narrative is controverted by science herself.

Speaking of Mr. Gladstone’s contention that the statements in the first two verses of Genesis are supported by the nebular hypothesis, Professor Huxley remarks: “But science knows nothing of any stage in which the universe could be said, in other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be formless or empty; or in any respect less the seat of law and order than it is now. One might as well talk of a fresh-laid hen’s egg being ‘without form and void’ because the chick therein is potential and not actual, as apply such terms to the nebulous mass which contains a potential solar system.”

In a note at the end of the second essay, “Mr. Gladstone and Genesis,” there is an excellent exposition of the “Proper Sense of the ‘Mosaic’ Narrative of the Creation.” Among other points, Huxley, of course, notices how the stars are, as it were, thrown in—“He made the stars also.” These words have always struck me as making it peculiarly clear that the “Mosaic” narrative originated from man, and not from God. The unknown authors of the Hexateuchal compilation were almost as ignorant of the nature of the stars and of their unthinkable distance away from us as a camel-driver in Sind, who gravely informed a friend of mine that the stars were once quite close to the earth, until one fine day a certain woman (it is always the woman who causes the mischief) grabbed hold of one and used it for cleaning her child, whereupon the gods, much annoyed at such presumption on the part of mankind, moved them far enough off to be safe from further desecration.

That the order of Creation as given in the Bible cannot be maintained will be clearly seen if we take the particular case of the birds and creeping things. Science does not affirm that the birds were made before “everything that creepeth upon the earth.” Mr. Gladstone tries to get over the difficulty by excluding reptiles, lizards, etc., from the category of creeping things. This will appear in the course of the following quotations from Professor Huxley’s essay on “Mr. Gladstone and Genesis”:—

“Mr. Gladstone’s views as to the proper method of dealing with grave and difficult scientific and religious problems had permitted him to base a solemn ‘plea for a revelation of truth from God’ upon an error as to a matter of fact, from which the intelligent perusal of a manual of palÆontology would have saved him.... He does, indeed, make a great parade of authorities, and I have the greatest respect for those authorities whom Mr. Gladstone mentions. If he will get them to sign a joint memorial to the effect that our present palÆontological evidence proves that birds appeared before the ‘land population’ of terrestrial reptiles, I shall think it my duty to reconsider my position—but not till then.... I have every respect for the singer of the Song of the Three Children (whoever he may have been); I desire to cast no shadow of doubt upon, but, on the contrary, marvel at, the exactness of Mr. Gladstone’s information as to the considerations which ‘affected the method of the Mosaic writer’; nor do I venture to doubt that the inconvenient intrusion of these contemptible reptiles—‘a family fallen from greatness,’ a miserable, decayed aristocracy reduced to mere ‘skulkers about the earth,’ in consequence, apparently, of difficulties about the occupation of land arising out of the earth-hunger of their former serfs, the mammals—into an apologetic argument, which would otherwise run quite smoothly, is in every way to be deprecated. Still, the wretched creatures stand there, importunately demanding notice; and, however different may be the practice in that contentious atmosphere with which Mr. Gladstone expresses and laments his familiarity, in the atmosphere of science it really is of no avail whatever to shut one’s eyes to facts, or to try and bury them out of sight under a tumulus of rhetoric.... However reprehensible, and, indeed, contemptible, terrestrial reptiles may be, the only question which appears to me to be relevant to my argument is whether these creatures are or are not comprised under the denomination of ‘everything that creepeth upon the ground.’... Hence I commend the following extract from the eleventh chapter of Leviticus to Mr. Gladstone’s serious attention:—

And these are they which are unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth: the weasel, and the mouse, and the great lizard after its kind, and the gecko, and the land-crocodile, and the sand-lizard, and the chameleon. These are they which are unclean to you among all that creep (v. 29–31).

The merest Sunday-school exegesis, therefore, suffices to prove that, when the Mosaic writer in Genesis 1. 24 speaks of ‘creeping things,’ he means to include lizards among them. This being so, it is agreed on all hands that terrestrial lizards and other reptiles allied to lizards occur in the Permian strata. It is further agreed that the Triassic strata were deposited after these. Moreover, it is well known that, even if certain footprints are to be taken as unquestionable evidence of the existence of birds, they are not known to occur in rocks earlier than the Trias, while indubitable remains of birds are not to be met with till much later. Hence it follows that natural science does not ‘affirm’ the statement that birds were made on the fifth day, and ‘everything that creepeth on the ground’ on the sixth, on which Mr. Gladstone rests his order; for, as is shown by Leviticus, the ‘Mosaic writer’ includes lizards among his creeping things.”20

The crust of the earth is a book having for its pages strata that have, fortunately, been upturned for our perusal, and the story it tells must be true. The series of fossiliferous deposits which contain the remains of the animals which have lived on the earth in past ages of its history afford the evidence required concerning the order of appearance of the different species. As Professor Huxley says elsewhere21: “When we consider these simple facts, we see how absolutely futile are the attempts that have been made to draw a parallel between the story told by so much of the crust of the earth as is known to us and the story which Milton tells.” Still, the story which Milton tells is in accord with the story which the Bible tells to those who are not given to playing conjuring tricks with the plain meaning of words.

Finally, we must remember that “hundreds of thousands of animal species, as distinct as those which now compose our water, land, and air populations, have come into existence and died out again.” “If the species of animals have all been separately created, then it follows that hundreds of thousands of acts of creative energy have occurred, at intervals throughout the whole time recorded by the fossiliferous rocks; and, during the greater part of that time, the ‘creation’ of the members of the water, land, and air populations must have gone on contemporaneously.”22

The common-sense view of the Creation story, and one that is now widely accepted even by orthodox Christians, is that it is a myth. Many of us will, therefore, agree with Professor Huxley when he says: “I suppose it to be an hypothesis respecting the origin of the universe which some ancient thinker found himself able to reconcile with his knowledge, or what he thought was knowledge, of the nature of things, and therefore assumed to be true. As such, I hold it to be not merely an interesting, but a venerable, monument of a stage in the mental progress of mankind; and I find it difficult to suppose that any one who is acquainted with the cosmogonies of other nations—and especially with those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians, with whom the Israelites were in such frequent and intimate communication—should consider it to possess either more or less scientific importance than may be allotted to these.”23

It may not be inappropriate to conclude this section with Milton’s conception of the last act of creation, so charmingly simple and so strictly according to the Bible and what Christ Himself believed, and yet so completely untrue:—

The sixth, and of creation last, arose
With ev’ning harps and matin, when God said,
Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind:
Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth,
Each in their kind. The earth obey’d, and straight
Op’ning her fertile womb teem’d at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limb’d and full grown....

There waited yet the master-work, the end
Of all yet done; a creature who, not prone 
And brute as other creatures, but indu’d
With sanctity of reason, might erect
His stature, and upright with front serene
Govern the rest, self knowing:...

... Therefore the omnipotent
Eternal Father—for where is not he
Present?—thus to his Son audibly spake:
Let us make now man in our image, man
In our similitude, and let them rule
Over the fish and fowl of sea and air,
Beast of the field, and over all the earth,
And every creeping thing that creeps the ground.
Thus said, he form’d thee, Adam, thee, O man,
Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breath’d
The breath of life: in his own image he
Created thee, in the image of God
Express, and thou becam’st a living soul.

—Paradise Lost, Book VII., 449–456, 505–510, 516–528.

§ 4. Proofs of Our Animal Origin.

The third and last of the Evolution stumbling-blocks is that connected with the dogma of the Fall and Atonement. Before considering this, it will be better, I think, to summarise as briefly and simply as possible some of the chief proofs of our animal origin. The well-informed can skip this section, which is intended for the benefit of that vast majority—the ill-informed. Space will not permit me to do much more than allude to the proofs; but anyone really desirous of convincing himself or herself of the truth of the doctrine, and at the same time wishing to avoid details that might possibly prove wearisome, will find it popularly treated in Huxley’s work on Man’s Place in Nature (Macmillan); in Dennis Hird’s An Easy Outline of Evolution (Watts & Co.; 2s. 6d.); in Edward Clodd’s The Story of Creation (Watts & Co.; 6d.); in S. Laing’s Modern Science and Modern Thought (Watts & Co.; 6d.); in Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe (Watts & Co.; 6d.), though this can hardly, perhaps, be described as popular; and in Metchnikoff’s The Nature of Man (Heinemann, 1903; 12s. 6d.). The most complete work on the subject is Haeckel’s The Evolution of Man (Watts & Co., 1905; 42s.; abridged edition, 2s.). This is in two volumes, copiously illustrated, of which the first is entirely devoted to human embryology or ontogeny, a branch of science which furnishes the most overwhelming evidence.

The proofs may, roughly speaking, be grouped under three heads—the extraordinary affinity of bodily structure, the revelations of embryology, and the tale told by the useless rudimentary organs. We will commence with

THE EXTRAORDINARY AFFINITY OF BODILY STRUCTURE.

“It is notorious that man is constructed on the same general type or model with other mammals. All the bones in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and viscera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the same law, as shown by Huxley and other anatomists.”24 Man’s nearest animal relations are the tailless anthropoid or man-like apes—namely, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gibbon. “Now that all the details of the human organisation have been studied, and the anatomical structures of man and large monkeys without tails have been compared, bone with bone, and muscle with muscle, a truly astonishing analogy between these organisms is made manifest—an analogy apparent in every detail.”25 The following are some of the points more particularly calling for notice:—

Dentition.—In the natural history of mammals the teeth play an important part as a means of determining differences and relationships. “Everyone knows the milk teeth and the permanent teeth of man. The anthropoid apes bear in this respect an astonishing likeness to man. The number (thirty-two in the adult), the form and general arrangement of the crown, are identical in man and anthropoid apes. The differences are to be found only in minor details.”26 “But the fact must not be lost sight of that all these differences are less pronounced than those which exist between the dentition of anthropoid apes and that of all other monkeys.”27

The Foot.—Anti-evolutionists have laid great stress on the difference between the foot of a man and that of an anthropoid ape. But it is clearly shown by Huxley that in all essential respects the hinder limb of the gorilla terminates in as true a foot as that of man,28 and “that, be the differences between the hand and foot of man and those of the gorilla what they may, the differences between those of the gorilla and those of the lower apes are much greater.”29

The Sacrum.—“In monkeys, as a whole, the sacrum is composed of three, or rarely four, vertebrÆ, while in anthropoid apes it contains five—that is to say, just as many as in man.”30

The Skull.—Here the differences are more marked; but again we must remind ourselves that, as regards the osteology, Professor Huxley tells us that “for the skull, no less than for the skeleton in general, the proposition holds good that the differences between man and the gorilla are of smaller value than those between the gorilla and some other apes.”31

The Brain.—Several distinguished zoologists at one time insisted on the absence in all monkeys of certain parts of the brain peculiarly characteristic of man, but now it is unanimously accepted that the parts of the brain in question are “precisely those structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes. They are among the most distinctly simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits.”32

The difference between the brain of the orang and that of man is a mere difference of degree, and not of kind; and most students of comparative psychology now admit that the intellectual faculties of animals differ from those in man in degree only, not in their essence. Replying to his opponents, Professor Huxley compares the brain of man and that of ape with two watches, one of which will, and the other will not, keep accurate time. He exclaims: “A hair in the balance-wheel, a little rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the escapement, a something so slight that only the practised eye of the watchmaker can discover it, may be the source of all the difference.”33

The late Sir Charles Lyell mentions in his Antiquity of Man how Dr. Sumner, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, brought out in strong relief fifty years ago, in his Records of Creation, one essential character separating man from the brute. As the same argument is still being “brought out,” and is, on the face of it, exceedingly plausible, and as the answer to it has to do with the brain, it cannot be passed over. Dr. Sumner said: “It has been sometimes alleged, and may be founded on fact, that there is less difference between the highest brute animal and the lowest savage than between the savage and the most improved man. But, in order to warrant the pretended analogy, it ought to be also true that this lowest savage is no more capable of improvement than the chimpanzee or orang-outang.” This objection is met by some such consideration as the following:—When you examine the enormous difference in the formation of the skull in man and ape (look, for instance, at plate xvii., vol. ii. of Haeckel’s Evolution of Man), and when you remember that this sets hard at an early date, you surely have a good reason for limited improvability. Further, the brain of even the lowest savage represents a development of some half a million years above the ape along the line of intelligence. How, then, can we dream of making this up in one or a few generations by artificial training of the ape? Lastly, we have the enormous leverage of language, the inherited wealth of thousands of speaking generations, and an incalculable aid to thought. How much is the intelligence of the MicrocephalÆ, the clucking “small heads” lately on show at the Hippodrome, capable of rapid improvement? Our experiments do not show that the ape is not improvable, but only that we cannot, in a single generation, lift it over a gulf representing 500,000 years of human development. How can we expect it?

The Blood.—In the last few years an astonishing confirmation of our relationship to the anthropoid ape has been discovered. We are blood relations. Elie Metchnikoff, Professor at the Pasteur Institute, shows this clearly in his book, The Nature of Man.34 Until quite recently it was not known how to distinguish human blood from that of other mammals. A method giving conclusive results has now been discovered, and is used in forensic medicine. The same method has been employed in comparing the blood of man and the anthropoid apes, resulting in the discovery35 that, in their case, there is practically no blood difference whatever!

THE REVELATIONS OF EMBRYOLOGY.

The opponents of Evolution used to appeal to the special features of human embryology, which were supposed to distinguish man from all the other mammals; but in 1890 Emil Selenka proved that the same features are found in anthropoid apes, especially in the orang, while the lower apes are without them.

“When Huxley wrote, the embryological history of anthropoid apes was practically unknown. Darwin, Vogt, and Haeckel, in their attempts to support the theory of the animal origin of man, had not sufficient knowledge of the embryology of monkeys. It is only recently that important work on this subject has been published.... The placenta often gives information of great importance in the classification of mammals. It is sufficient to glance at the zonary placenta of dogs and seals to be convinced of the relationship of these two species which at first sight seem so different. Now, the placentas of all the anthropoid apes examined up to the present are of the same discoid type as that of man. The arrangement of the umbilical cord of man, which was formerly considered as quite peculiar to him, is found in anthropoid apes, as has been established by Deniker and Selenka. It is striking that the anthropoids resemble man rather than the lower monkeys in the relation of the foetus to the foetal membranes. With regard to the embryos themselves, the similarity between those of monkeys and man is very great.... The youngest stages of human development that have been obtained can hardly be distinguished from those of the lower monkeys either in position or shape. More advanced stages exhibit greater differentiation, and the later embryos of man resemble those of anthropoids much more closely than those of the lower monkeys. The resemblance between the nearly mature foetus of anthropoids and human embryos of about the sixth month is evident enough.”36

We are thus bound, in all honesty, to own up to our ape-like progenitors. But this is only a small portion of the wonderful tale told by Embryology. “Man is developed from an ovule about 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovules of other animals,”37 and, marvellous to relate, from that stage upwards the embryo is one continuous epitome of the history of man’s evolution from lower forms of life.38 Up to a certain point the germs, not only of all mammals, but of all vertebrate animals, fishes, reptiles, and birds, are scarcely distinguishable. A sceptic may convince himself by studying the plates given in Haeckel’s The Evolution of Man, and especially plates ix. to xiv., where the embryos of various animals are compared. At the more advanced stage, where the embryo has already passed the reptilian form, we find that for a considerable time the line of development remains the same as that of other mammalia. The resemblance, for example, after the first four weeks’ growth, between the embryo of a man and that of a dog is such that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the one from the other. Even at the age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal with a tail, hardly to be distinguished from an embryo puppy.39 After this period the embryo emerges from the general mammalian type into the special order of primates to which man belongs. Thus does the growth of the egg from which man springs compress into a few weeks the results of millions of years, and set before us the history of his development from fish-like and reptilian forms (which, as we have seen, p. 211, Mr. Gladstone deemed so contemptible and “fallen from greatness”), and of his more immediate descent from a hairy, tailed quadruped, the extinct common ancestor of man and monkey. As evolution proceeds the embryo rises up to man, and the differences specialising the human infant at its birth, such as the largeness and more complex convolutions of the brain, become more and more accentuated as its growth proceeds.

Regarding the question of “gaps,” we have to bear in mind that it is part of the evolutionary theory that the active processes of evolution have very largely ceased, that existing forms are but a surviving remnant with enormous gaps, and that the survivors are so fitted at present to their surroundings that evolutionary forces are causative of equilibrium rather than change. We have already seen, too, that in the struggle for existence it is among the closely-allied species that the contest is more strenuous, and that the weakest, or least fitted to survive, has to go to the wall—to be wiped out. Thus it is that there is a tendency for species to become extinct, and for the gaps to be widened. The extraordinary thing is not that we have so little direct evidence of descent, but that we have so much. That there are not more links missing is due principally to the discovery of fossil remains. When an animal dies, the probabilities are, of course, enormously against geological preservation of its bones, yet the gaps are continually being filled up by geological finds, and, though the remaining gaps may be great, they are not unaccountable.

I must now pass on to the remaining set of proofs of our origin.

THE TALE TOLD BY THE USELESS RUDIMENTARY ORGANS.

Perhaps nothing furnishes a more conclusive proof of our animal origin than the study of rudimentary structures—muscles, sense-organs, hair, bones, reproductive organs, etc. There are some which are “either absolutely useless, such as the mammÆ of the male quadrupeds or the incisor teeth of ruminants which never cut through the gums; or they are of such slight service to their present possessors that we cannot suppose that they were developed under the conditions which now exist.”40 Of useless rudimentary organs, or parts of organs, there are not less than one hundred and seven in man.41 To this category belong the coccyx—the vestige of a tail—the muscles of the ear, the vermiform appendage, etc.

“The os coccyx in man, though functionless as a tail, plainly represents this part in other vertebrate animals. At an early embryonic period it is free, and, as we have seen, projects beyond the lower extremities.”42 It sometimes happens that we find external relics of a tail. Professor Haeckel, in Fig. 195, vol. i. of The Evolution of Man (library edition), shows the tail of a six months’ old boy, which Granville Harrison removed by operation. The anthropoid ape, like man, has only the rudiment of a tail.

The ear muscles are rudimentary in man. “It is well known how readily domestic animals—horses, cows, dogs, hares, etc.—point their ears and move them in different directions. Most of the apes do the same, and our earlier ape ancestors were also able to do it. But our later simian ancestors, which we have in common with the anthropoid apes, abandoned the use of these muscles, and they gradually became rudimentary and useless. However, we possess them still. In fact, some men can still move their ears a little backward and forward by means of the drawing and withdrawing muscles; and with practice this faculty can be much improved. But no man can now lift up his ears by the raising muscle, or change the shape of them by the small inner muscles. These muscles were very useful to our ancestors, but are of no consequence to us. This applies to most of the anthropoid apes as well.”43

The vermiform appendage of the coecum is not only practically useless, but the source of that extremely dangerous complaint, appendicitis. It is remarkable that this organ is practically identical with the vermiform appendage of anthropoid apes, yet none of the other monkeys present any such resemblance with men. Professor Haeckel, speaking of the vermiform appendage, says: “The only significance of it in man is that not infrequently a cherry-stone or some other hard and indigestible matter penetrates into its narrow cavity, and by setting up inflammation and suppuration causes the death of otherwise sound men. Teleology has great difficulty in giving a rational explanation of, and attributing to a beneficent Providence, this dreaded appendicitis. In our plant-eating ancestors this rudimentary organ was much larger, and had a useful function.”44

“In order to understand the existence of rudimentary organs, we have only to suppose that a former progenitor possessed the parts in question in a perfect state, and that under changed habits of life they became greatly reduced, either from simple disuse or through the natural selection of those individuals which were least encumbered with a superfluous part, aided by the other means previously indicated.”45

Whatever the precise explanation may be, can we bring ourselves to suppose that God created us with a number of useless organs, or that He placed them there as a snare to entrap our judgment? Again, “rudimentary organs, for the most part, display a congenital lack of the power of resistance, and, as Darwin suggested, for this reason they are frequently the seats of disease.”46 Can anyone imagine his Maker arranging all this on purpose? I can not. We are assured by pious apologists that God has instituted pain in order to save us from injuring ourselves; how can He, then, have specially provided us with organs whose only function is to be a source of danger?

Many other examples might be given bearing on this line of argument; but enough has been said, I hope, to convince the reader that in these rudimentary organs there is overpowering evidence against separate acts of creation, and in favour of an animal origin of the human race. Besides this, we have also the evidence derived from the study of our bodily structure and embryonic development. The bearing of these three great classes of fact is, as Charles Darwin remarks, unmistakeable. “It is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our own forefathers declare that they were descended from demi-gods, which lead us to demur to this conclusion.”47

§ 5. The Overthrow of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION.

No Biblical standpoint is more directly opposed to modern evolutionary views than the doctrine of the Fall and Atonement. We have seen, in the chapters on the Higher Criticism and on Comparative Mythology, that the Bible story of Creation is nothing but a borrowed legend; and we have now seen that it could not in any case be true. If it were, Evolution would be untrue. Now, the account of the fall of man is an exceedingly important portion of the Bible, the whole fabric of the Christian faith being constructed upon it; and there is no doubt whatever that the average Christian realises this, and continues to believe in the “Fall.” He may accept the doctrine of the evolution of the physical nature of man; but he flatly denies that his intellect and moral attributes were a part of the process, although such authorities as Darwin, Huxley, and Romanes clearly point out that man’s intellect and moral sense have arisen from lower stages of the same faculties in his primate ancestors.

The conservative Christian believes that man was originally endowed with a lofty moral nature; that he succumbed to temptation; that he became a degraded being; that he has been working out his punishment ever since; and that his hope of escape from the curse laid upon all mankind lies in the atonement made by Jesus Christ. Even if inclined to have views less strictly in accord with the Christian teaching of the past eighteen hundred years, he still believes that all this is true in some sort of allegorical sense which cannot be exactly defined. Lastly, there is an ever-swelling host of perplexed Christians who, in their heart of hearts, feel much as Mr. Blatchford does when he says: “God is all-powerful. He could have made Adam strong enough to resist Eve. He could have made Eve strong enough to resist the serpent. He need not have made the serpent at all. God is all-knowing. Therefore, when He made Adam and Eve and the serpent He knew that Adam and Eve must fall. And if God knew they must fall, how could Adam help falling, and how could he justly be blamed for doing what he must do? God made a bridge—built it Himself, of His own materials, to His own design, and knew what the bearing strain of the bridge was. If, then, God put upon the bridge a weight equal to double the bearing strain, how could God justly blame the bridge for falling?”48

The average divine, whatever his denomination, is usually in no hurry to accept Evolutionist theories of the Fall, or, if he does, he keeps it to himself. Dean Wace thinks the tale of Eden and the Fall is partly historical, partly allegorical, and, in any case, true to Christian experience; and Cardinal Newman considered that the whole orthodox Christian scheme stood or fell with a belief in some great “aboriginal catastrophe.” Progressive divines teach, on the contrary, that the narrative of the Fall is not to be understood as literal history, any more than the visions of the Apocalypse are to be understood as a literal description of heaven. “For us,” they say, “the underlying truth, and not the outward form in which that truth is clothed, is the essential thing.” [As our first parents are represented as being in a state of guileless simplicity, and subsequently falling in with the tempting serpent, who, in obvious contrast with their untried innocence, is described as a being of special subtilty, the “underlying truth” appears to be that, with God’s cognisance, man is continually being taken advantage of by a crafty spirit of evil; or, to keep more closely to the religious evolutionist’s idea, man’s better nature, implanted by God, is being continually got the better of by animal instincts implanted by ——?] These enlightened clerics are in a somewhat delicate position, and none probably recognise this more than they do themselves, as testified lately by the fact of over a hundred of their number distributing a manifesto to all the clergy of the Church of England, in which they express a desire to receive authoritative encouragement to face critical problems with entire candour.49

AN INSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.

The gravity of the situation and the divergence of the new from the old teaching are summed up by the Church Times in the following pertinent remarks:—“It is impossible for Christians to affect nonchalance as to the result of the controversy between anthropologists like Lubbock, Lyell, Huxley, Haeckel, and Fiske, who assert the human race to have continuously (with whatever relapses) progressed out of brutish and squalid barbarism, and those who, like the late Duke of Argyll, Lang, Tylor, Hartmann,50 Renouf, and most missionaries, maintain that savagery is a declension from higher things, and that ‘man’s natural state is civilisation’—not, of course, the civilisation of Paris and London, of trousers and half-penny papers, nor yet Rousseau’s anarchic golden age, but creation in God’s image after His likeness. It is said that we need believe no more about our first parents than that they were innocent—i.e., had not yet made trial of good and evil; that the ‘former Adam,’ even after he had ceased to be a pithecoid hanging by his tail from boughs, and long after his mollusc51 stage of existence, was still as primus homo, a demi-witted creature, burrowing in holes, gnawing roots, grunting, grimacing, snarling, shuddering; not even a noble savage, but bestial and grovelling. As moral consciousness slowly woke in him, he misused his powers; but such a ‘fall’ was really an advance. Such is the latest version of Paradise lost—of that great disinheritance, that moral and spiritual catastrophe, which, St. Paul avers, was the entrance of death into the world by one man, and which, he seems to say, dragged down the lower creation when the son of God, ‘paragon of animals, noble in reason, infinite in faculty,’ fell in Eden. We do not urge that the two teachings cannot be reconciled; but it is clear that the immense difficulty is not to be dismissed by saying that the Bible is a mosaic, not Mosaic, or that it does not profess to instruct us in anthropology.”52

There is a downrightness and lucidity about this criticism of advanced theology which one cannot but admire, although one may not be able to share its optimism as to the chance of the two teachings ever becoming reconciled. How can they? Consider the unsatisfactory nature of the following speculations by means of which the clerical evolutionist hopes to surmount the stumbling-block of the Fall.

THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER’S THEORY.

Dr. Gore, Bishop of Worcester, now of Birmingham, who is an adherent of Evolution, speaks mysteriously of a “fall from without.”53 As the question is of enormous importance to the truth of Christianity, I propose to examine Dr. Gore’s thesis at some length. He grants that the idea of special creation is inconceivable, and that our race has an animal ancestry, and then gives us the following description of primeval man, which (shades of our forefathers!) he assures us is according to the Bible and the enlightened ideas of early Christianity: “Man began at the bottom, immature, in the fullest sense of immaturity, totally undeveloped, but with a capacity for development.” A correspondent of Dr. Gore’s, anxious possibly to be let down gently in the matter of his ancestor, suggested “immature, but not deformed.” This Dr. Gore accepted as a good phrase. Most of us would think that when our ancestor was at the stage, say, of the ape-like man he would be deformed according to existing notions of the human form divine, while, if only at the protoplasm stage, the question of form would hardly matter.

It has been explained to me by a clerical biologist that the Bishop meant that the Fall was not a fall from a completely developed form to one less developed, but that there was perversion of the development, so that a rudimentary life which might have been developed one way has developed along a less favourable path—a common occurrence in ontogeny. However that may be, and whatever the physical or mental state of this creature at the time he “fell,” was his previous state one of beautiful innocence and purity? What about those inherited animal instincts? Dr. Gore goes on to say that “humanity might have, with infinitely more rapidity, developed upward; it has been delayed, retarded by sin.” Granted; but at what stage of development did this poor wretch ever get a proper chance? The Christian faith inculcates that there is no chance for him without belief. What belief did this immature man have to guide him?

However, let us see what more Dr. Gore may have to tell us on the Fall and Atonement. The words already quoted are from his second lecture to the Birmingham working men. In his third and last lecture he says: “He (God) appointed that man alone of creatures should have a twofold nature—that he should have fellowship with physical nature, but also that he should have fellowship with God. He (man) fell through a suggestion from without, and preferred wilfulness to obedience; he thus fell into sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Note that, if sin is said to have caused death, Christ is said to have abolished death. ‘He that believeth on Me shall never die.’ It is death as men have known it, the end of their hopes, that sin introduced and Christ abolished.”

Here, then, is the Bishop’s answer regarding the “Fall” question. There has been a “fall through a suggestion from without,” whatever that may happen to mean. I should have thought that, if there was a fall at all, it was through a suggestion from within, much as Canon Wilson puts it.54 Bishop Gore, however, probably feels that it has to be from without to agree with the Bible story of the temptation. We are told nothing further about this mysterious “without,” and I ask: “Could anything be more vague and unsatisfactory than this explanation of the Fall?”

Assuming that determinists are wrong, and that the Creator is not responsible for the shortcomings of His creatures, the only fault for which primeval man could possibly be held to be answerable is that of not controlling his animal instincts so soon as he commenced to be conscious and could no longer claim the excuse of innocence. Probably he did his best, and began to improve himself ever so little. In that case, as the Church Times sapiently remarks, there was no Fall, but an advance. Or, adopting a compromise suggested by an American divine, he fell upward! If he did not strive as much as he might have done, there was, at all events, no sudden leap over a precipice; for the gift of increased consciousness, such as the human being now possesses, must have evolved very gradually. However, the creation of the world and all that therein is was also exceedingly gradual, and yet the pious find themselves able to consider the Bible account to be an accurate though allegorical representation of the process; so there is really nothing to prevent them from considering the account of a remarkable incident in a certain garden during a hot summer’s day, shortly after man put in his appearance on this globe, to be a true representation of the perverse conduct of their ancestors through countless ages.

For this so-called “Fall” we are to be visited with a death which will be the end of our hopes if we do not believe in Christ. This, then, is the new threat held over the unbeliever: he will forfeit his right to immortality. As it is in place of the old-fashioned consignment to hell, we may hope, for the sake of the human race as a whole, past and present, that the new Christian dogma is nearer the truth than the old. Most of us, however, will, I think, come to the conclusion that there has never been a “Fall” at all in any sense. Dr. Gore in one breath asks us to think man so much above the ape that his spiritual powers cannot have been evolved; yet, when science points out that they were evolved—that man rose so much above his relations—he still speaks of a fall! It is an outrage to our common sense. And, if there were a Fall, may we not say with the Persian poet?—

Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Path I was to travel in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin.

THE ARCHDEACON OF MANCHESTER’S THEORY.

Archdeacon J. M. Wilson tells us55 that “We are taking our part in the long struggle of good against evil. This has been often pictured to us as the struggle of God against some Personal Power of Evil which we call Satan, the fact of struggle suggesting two rival powers. But the evolutionary way of regarding it presents the struggle as one of the divine element in man struggling to overcome the purely animal inheritance of lust and passion inherited from a far by-gone stage.” Dr. Wilson, therefore, believes, as every thorough evolutionist must believe, that we have to look to an animal and not a human ancestor for the ultimate origin of what we call sin. But we want to know where the “Fall” comes in, and this he has explained elsewhere,56 in what seems to me to be the only possible way open to an evolutionist. He says: “Man fell, according to science, when he first became conscious of the conflict of freedom and conscience; and each individual man falls as his ancestor fell.” Dr. Wilson does not attempt to make out that there was any particular “fall” at any particular period in man’s history, such as Dr. Gore apparently still clings to; but he plainly tells us: “I do not mean to say that there is a particular moment at which men fell: it is not so. It is a continuous struggle of good and evil.” He continues: “I see in this nothing to conflict with a legitimate interpretation of the story of the Fall in the third chapter of Genesis. Such a narrative is not an illusion, still less a mere fiction; it is, as all teaching of spiritual truth must be, a temporary and figurative mode of expression.” In other words, Dr. Wilson considers these early chapters of Genesis, and probably a great deal more of the Old Testament and some of the New, to be only an allegory. With regard to the Atonement difficulty, Dr. Wilson’s argument is simply that “We need only to look at the world as it is to see the struggle of the two-fold nature in man; to see that it has need of a Redemption, of a Saviour.” Few, I fear, will accept this latest explanation by a learned and earnest believer. Theologians, in Dr. Wilson’s opinion, have made a grievous mistake when they say: “If the story of the Fall is not literally true, then it is literally false, and with it goes the need of a Redemption, of a Saviour.” Yet most people—and these will include the whole body both of the old-fashioned orthodox and of the unbelievers—will certainly side with those “grievously mistaken” theologians.

THE RATIONALIST’S THEORY.

To many of us there seems no need whatever to have recourse to the supernatural in order to account for the origin of sin. It is not one of the mysteries of life. When we know who our ancestors were, and hence why we possess certain instincts, it is quite unnecessary to predicate a “Fall.” Details of the Rationalist’s view of sin (and of the reasons for morality) will be found in the last chapter of this book.

CONCLUSIONS.

These, then, are the difficulties created by the doctrine of Evolution. They are difficulties which appear completely to impugn the very nature of God, the veracity of the Bible, and the dogmas of sin and its atonement. We have already seen, by our study of Bible criticism and comparative mythology, how grave are the grounds for distrusting the Faith, and Evolution seems to be just the finishing stroke that was required for confirming our suspicions. We must now see whether there are any other arguments for belief of sufficient weight to warrant us in over-stepping the boundaries of reason by an act of faith.

1 Quoted from Darwin’s Descent of Man.

2 “The preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations I call natural selection” (Darwin, Origin of Species, ed. 1860, iv.).

3 Darwin, Varieties of Animals and Plants, xx., 178.

4 Concluding remarks in Darwin’s Descent of Man.

5 Ibid.

6 See his book containing the aforesaid lectures, and called God’s Image in Man and its Defacement in the Light of Modern Denials. (Hodder and Stoughton; 1905.)

7 Lent by Mr. Reginald Blunt to the Chelsea Public Library.

8 See Professor Huxley’s essays, “The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature” and “Mr. Gladstone and Genesis,” appearing in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1885, and February, 1886, respectively, and also in the collection of Huxley’s essays entitled Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions.

9 Dr. Torrey informed a huge audience in the Albert Hall recently that he had given up the theory of Evolution for scientific reasons. “People speak of the missing link; why, they are all missing!” cried Dr. Torrey. Now, this is nothing more nor less than an untruth, and Dr. Torrey must know that it is, if he has studied Evolution, as he assures us that he has. Here is an example of the way Christians are misinformed by their spiritual teachers on the subject of Evolution. But what can you expect of an evangelist who thinks that he is serving God’s cause by slandering the dead, as he did in the case of Colonel Ingersoll and Thomas Paine?

10 See Mr. W. H. Mallock’s Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 177.

11 Origin of Species, p. 65.

12 From The Story of Creation, by Edward Clodd. Chapter on “The Origin of Species,” p. 95 of the cheap edition.

13 The Nineteenth Century, February, 1888, pp. 162, 163.

14 Pp. 519–20.

15 Theism, by the Rev. Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of Moral Philosophy, Divinity, etc., being the Baird Lectures for 1877.

16 On p. 39 of his own work, Anti-Nunquam.

17 The Light of Asia, Book the First.

18 Quoted from Huxley’s Lectures on Evolution.

19 Quoted from Huxley’s Lectures on Evolution.

20 Controverted Questions, pp. 100, 102, 103, 104.

21 In Lectures on Evolution.

22 Quoted from “The Interpreters of Genesis,” in the essays on Controverted Questions, p. 91.

23 “Mr. Gladstone and Genesis,” pp. 112–3 of Controverted Questions.

24 The Descent of Man, p. 10.

25 The Nature of Man, by Metchnikoff, p. 41.

26 The Descent of Man, p. 10.

27 The Nature of Man, p. 42.

28 Man’s Place in Nature, p. 126.

29 Ibid, p. 127.

30 The Nature of Man, p. 42.

31 Man’s Place in Nature, p. 111.

32 Ibid, p. 139.

33 Ibid, p. 102, note.

34 Pp. 49–54. At the late International Congress on Tuberculosis, Professor Behring paid the highest tribute to Metchnikoff’s labours on phagocytosis. Strange indeed are the instruments chosen by God for conferring His benefits on mankind; for the author of The Nature of Man denies His existence!

35 Described in the Lancet, January 18th, 1902.

36 The Nature of Man, pp. 45–48.

37 The Descent of Man, vol. i., p. 14. According to the latest authorities, however, the human ovum (when mature) differs in many respects from other (especially non-mammal) ova.

38 See the “Family Tree” of Life in the Appendix.

39 “It is,” says Professor Huxley (in Man’s Place in Nature, 1863, p. 67, and quoted by Darwin in his Descent of Man, p. 14), “quite in the later steps of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its developments as the man does. Startling as this last assertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably true.”

40 The Descent of Man, vol. i., pp. 17–18.

41 See The Nature of Man, p. 60.

42 The Descent of Man, vol. i., p. 29.

43 The Evolution of Man, vol. ii., p. 708.

44 Ibid, 774.

45 The Descent of Man, vol. ii., p. 32.

46 The Nature of Man, p. 67.

47 The Descent of Man, vol. i., pp. 32–33.

48 God and My Neighbour, p. 134.

49 The document and the hostile criticisms concerning it in religious papers are highly instructive. Except for the correspondence on the subject in the Standard during May, 1905, under the title of “Faith and Religion,” the general public are not likely to know of the matter.

50 Tylor and Hartmann, however, believe in the animal descent of man, and therefore in a rise from primitive civilisation.

51 Our ancestors were never “molluscs”; “worm” would be an appropriate word here.

52 Review in the Church Times of May 31st, 1905, of the Dean of Westminster’s book, Some Thoughts on Inspiration.

53 This and the following quotations are from “Advent Lectures on Sin,” delivered by Dr. Gore, then Bishop of Worcester, in St. Philip’s Church, Birmingham. They were reported in the Church Times of December 4th, 11th, and 18th, 1903.

54 See pp. 234–5.

55 In an address to the Students’ Christian Union of Owens College, Manchester, on January 8th, 1904.

56 In his interesting book, Problems of Religion and Science, p. 70.

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