Has man descended from worms, fishes, lizards, opossums, hedgehogs and apes as Haeckel says? Is he a son of an ape? No! A Son of God!

Does death annihilate both soul and body; or does the soul live after the death of the body? Shall we see and know our children, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, and friends after death? Shall we enjoy forever, the society of the good, the true and the beautiful? Shall we be free from want, pain and sorrow? Shall we be happy throughout eternity? This is my belief and hope!

Darwin (Origin of Species, vol. 1, p. 228) says: “Have we any right to suppose that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man?” On the same page he refers to “the works of the Creator” as being superior to those of man. In the same work (vol. 2, p. 304) he refers to “the laws impressed on matter by the Creator.” Again (p. 306) he refers to life as “having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one,” animal, at the beginning of life on the earth. In his Descent of Man (p. 95) he says: “There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of the omnipotent God.” Referring to the question: “Whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe.” On the same page he says: “And this has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.” In the same work (p. 627) he says: “The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long continued culture.” On the same page he says: “Few persons feel any anxiety from the impossibility of determining at what precise period, in the development of the individual, from the first trace of a minute germinal vesicle, man becomes an immortal being.” Again (pp. 627-628) he says: “The birth, both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a conclusion.” Thus it appears that Darwin believed in the existence of a personal God and in the immortality of the human soul. But he also believed “that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world” have been “due to secondary causes, like these determining the birth and death of the individual.” (Origin of Species, 2, p. 304.) In brief, Darwin maintained that the Creator directly and specially made one or a few primordial forms, and turned them loose upon the earth to shift for themselves, subject to the “factors of evolution.”

Although Darwin appears to believe in the special creation of the first one, or the first few, animals and plants, and in the immortality of the human soul, yet his theory of evolution is highly materialistic; and the publication of this Origin of Species gave materialism an immense impetus.

The Encyclopedia Britannica (9 ed., vol. 2, p. 109), referring to “thinkers, who hold materialistic views,” says:

“According to this school, man is a machine, no doubt the most complex and wonderfully adapted of all known machines, but still neither more nor loss than an instrument whose energy is provided by force from without, and which, when set in action performs the various operations, for which its structure fits it, namely: to live, move, feel and think.”

The materialist maintains that there is no substance in man, which is alone conscious, distinct and separable from the body; that matter is the only substance in existence; and that matter and its motions constitute the universe. (Cent. Dic. 5, p. 3658.) This work, on the same page quotes J. Fisk (Evolutionist, p. 277) as saying that “Philosophical materialism holds that matter, and the motions of matter, make up the sum total of existence; and that what we know as psychical phenomena in man and other animals, are to be interpreted, in an ultimate analysis as simply the peculiar aspect, which is assumed by certain enormously complicated motions of matter.” (Cent. Dic. 5, p. 3658)

According to this view, if one should meet a friend, the sight of him would set certain atoms in his eyes and brain in motion; and these atoms would inform the Ego that the man is his friend, Smith or Jones.

So, if one be required to find the square root of 3,600, his eyes or ears would see or hear the problem; and the sight or hearing of it would set certain atoms in motion; and by this motion they would ascertain that 60 is the square root required. But the theory is too absurd for discussion, in this place.

I assume that every evolutionist is logically a materialist. Referring to “Man and the rest of the living world,” Huxley, (Man’s Place, etc., p. 151), says:

“I can see no excuse for doubting that all are co-ordinated terms of nature’s great progression, from the formless to the formed—from the inorganic to the organic—from the blind force to conscious intellect and will.”

So far as I know he does not mention the Creator nor the human soul in any of his works; but he strenuously maintains that man is a son of an ape; and believes that all the phenomena of life are the result of chemical and mechanical forces.

Herbert Spencer does not use the word “God,” “Creator” nor “Soul” in the index to his Principles of Biology; but after discussing the theory of special creation at length, he says:

“The hypothesis of special creation turns out to be worthless by its derivation; worthless in its incoherence; absolutely without evidence; worthless as not supplying an intellectual need, worthless as not supplying a moral want.” (Principles of Biology 1, p. 430.)

This quotation is full of bosh and nonsense. For example: In the same book (pp. 415-416), referring to the hypothesis of special creation and to that of evolution, Spencer says:

“Both hypotheses imply a cause. The last, certainly as much as the first, recognizes this cause as inscrutable. The point at issue is, how this inscrutable cause has worked, in the production of living forms. This point, if it is to be decided at all, is to be decided only by examination of evidence.”

The word “inscrutable” is synonymous with “impenetrable,” “undiscoverable,” “incomprehensible,” “unsearchable,” “mysterious.” (Cent. Dic. 4, p. 3114.)

Now, if the Cause which produces animals and plants is impenetrable, incomprehensible, etc., Spencer could not possibly know whether each animal and plant is directly and specially made by the Creator or not; nor could he say, logically, that there is no evidence of special creation; for he admits that the Cause is “inscrutable” to him. But there is abundant evidence that each animal and plant is a new direct and special creation, for the obvious reason that no other hypothesis can explain and account for the admitted facts.

Haeckel, (Evolution of Man, p. 26), says the first one, or the first few, animals that appeared on our earth arose “by spontaneous generation from inorganic matter.” On the same page he says:

“Life is only a physical phenomenon. All the plants and animals, with man at their head, are to be explained in structure and life, by mechanical or efficient causes, without any appeal to final causes, just as in the case of minerals and other inorganic bodies. This applies equally to the origin of the various species. We must not assume any original creation … to explain this, but a natural, continuous and necessary evolution.”

Prior to the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, belief in the theory of special creation was well nigh universal among scientists as well as laymen. But immediately after the publication of that work the scientific world accepted Darwin’s theory as absolute truth, not only as to animals and plants, but extended the Darwinian principle of materialism to all other branches of science. Materialism permeated all literature and became a fad. It fostered “higher criticism,” agnosticism, infidelity and atheism. It destroyed human hope and enthroned despair. It shook and rent the church from the corner stone to the spire.

According to the materialist, there is no such thing as a personal God, nor a human soul. He maintains that life, intellect, memory and will-power are mere properties of the human body as a physical structure; and that death works the absolute annihilation of the body and the Ego. In his view, there is no life, punishment nor pleasure after death. He, therefore, resolves to make the most of his life, and to get all the ease, comfort and pleasure that it affords, without regard to anything that may happen after death. He has no fear of any final judgment, nor of God. He is not restrained by any moral law, nor by any religious obligation. He fears nothing but publicity, public opinion, and the criminal statutes. Hence, lying, cheating, fraud, perjury, theft, robbery, murder, suicide.

I admit that heredity, environment and other forces, which the evolutionist denominates, “the factors of organic evolution,” may affect, modify, or differentiate an animal or a plant, or its organs and parts, to a certain extent. But I deny that heredity, environment or any, or all, the “factors” combined, are adequate to evolve a new species of animal or plant; or even a new organ or part of one. On the contrary I maintain that heredity, environment and all other factors of evolution combined, are inadequate to produce a single animal or plant, without the aid of the Creator; and that each animal and plant is a new, direct and special creation by Almighty God.

In this little work, I shall make an humble effort to prove that there is a living personal God; that He directly and specially creates each human being; makes its body and endows it with life and with an immortal soul. If the reader shall think that I have made a creditable effort to accomplish this purpose, I shall have done my fellow man a good service by pointing the way to hope and happiness.