Agreement of evolution & Christianity

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S. L. PHILLIPS,

330 John Marshall Place,
Washington, D. C.

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AGREEMENT OF EVOLUTION AND
CHRISTIANITY

By Samuel Louis Phillips,
A. B. {Princeton).

IN this treatise, and for the first time as far as we
are aware, it is believed that Christianity is
placed on its true philosophic basis as an important
agent in the physical, mental, and moral development
of the human race, ranking and working side by side
with natural selection, the survival of the fittest, and
heredity in the evolution of man.

It is therein shown that no warrant exists in Holy
Scripture for arraying Christianity against the con-
clusions of modern scientific research, and whoever
advocates such opposition, although an earnest and
devout disciple of the Saviour, is yet in that respect
an unconscious enemy to His religion.

There is no antagonism between Christianity and
Nature. The only warfare is between the interpre-
tation of Holy Scripture warped to suit preconceived
opinions founded on the ignorance of preceding ages,
and speculations of naturalists not justified by ascer-
tained facts. When Christians will construe the
Bible as a learned and able judicial tribunal would,
and imaginative Scientists will confine themselves to
what is known, a most beautiful and wonderful har-
mony will be presented between the Divine Word

■/

The Testimony of Reason

and Science. Then, but not until then, will the
religion of the Lord Jesus Christ be accepted by
all men, Scientists as well as Christians, and chiefly
because the human reason will not be able to escape
the logical conclusion that it must, from its extraor-
dinary evolutionary character, be as Divine as any
evolutionary physical law of nature.

It is further believed that a distinct advance has
been made by the views therein presented (and
more important than any other part of the treatise),
in the defence of the inspiration of the Holy Scrip-
tures, wherein it is shown that for them to be inspired
and to play any valuable part in the evolution of man-
kind they are exactly as definite, as inerrant, and as
full in revelation as they should be, and no more so.

Extracts from Letters and Press Reviews.

Hon. David J. Brewer, LL.D., Associate Justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States :

Please accept my thanks for a copy of your book
entitled "Agreement of Evolution and Christianity,"
etc. Your suggestions are of great value. I com-
mend the work to all who are interested in such
questions, or are in any way troubled by the sup-
posed conflict between the two.

Cyrus Northrop, LL.D., President^ of the University of
Minnesota :

Your book on the "Agreement of Evolution and

Christianity " is wonderfully clear in its statement of

The Testimony of Reason

facts, arguments, and conclusions. It is as concise
and brief as the proper treatment of the subject
allows. I have no doubt that it will be highly prized
by large numbers of people, etc. ; and that it will
bring much comfort to many whose faith has been
disturbed by the so-called "conflict of Science and
Religion."

James H. Kirkland, Ph.D., LL.D., D.C.L., Chancellor
of the Vanderbilt University :

It is thoughtfully written, and will be of much

service, etc.

Almon Gunnison, D.D., LL.D., President of St. Lawrence
University, New York :

I wish to thank you very heartily for the copy of
" Agreement of Evolution and Christianity." I have
read it with much interest. It is written in an at-
tractive style, — clear in thought and admirable in
expression. The theme treated is a vital one and
one that is attracting much attention. I have read
the book with much interest and profit, and shall put
it in our college library.

The Right Reverend J. L. Mills, D.D., Bishop, Annville, Pa. :
I wish to thank you for your book on the " Agree-
ment of Evolution and Christianity." Every great ad-
vance in the realm of Science has resulted in a real
or apparent conflict with the claims of Christianity.
This is always due to a misinterpretation of the facts
on one or both sides. When Science presents noth-
ing but truth, and when Christianity is correctly in-
terpreted, there is no conflict, — there can be none.

The Testimony of Reason

This you have very clearly and forcibly set forth in
your volume. Its circulation will be helpful to the
church at large, and to all those whose faith is being
tested by the claims of Evolution and whose spirits
are in travail for the birth of a new springtime in
their lives.

Buffalo Evening News:

In the " Agreement of Evolution and Christianity/'
by Samuel L. Phillips, the modern theory of creation
is presented in a simple but scholarly way, and what-
ever may be the verdict on the detailed parallel, it
will be admitted that Mr. Phillips has made out his
main proposition, — that creation by the evolutionary
process is evidence of Divine power as surely as
creation by specific fiats could be.

The Nashville American :

The learned author of this most interesting and
valuable book undertakes to show that so far from
there existing any antagonism between the theories
of Evolution as expounded by such scientists as Her-
bert Spencer and Professor Huxley, and the account
of the creation given in Genesis, the latter agrees so
perfectly with the latest discoveries in evolutionary
science that the congruity is enough without any
other proof to establish a strong probability that the
Scriptural record of creation was of Divine origin,
etc. Then follows a very clear statement of the
doctrine of Evolution, its agencies and limitations,
and a close and most intelligent comparison of the
Mosaic narrative of the creation with the theory of

The Testimony of Reason

Evolution, showing tlie absolute agreement of the two,
and very enlightening chapters on " Evolution and
Mentality " and " Evolution and the Soul." It is a
most convincing argument written from the stand-
point of the Christian and the Scientist at once, and
harmonizes the Scriptural account with the facts of
science accepted in the twentieth century, based
upon astronomy, geology, and biology.

The New Voice :

A striking argument for the agreement of the
scientific theory of Evolution with the Bible story
of the creation.

The Boston Globe :

Clearly and logically the author presents his views
on the subject, and the person who is at all perplexed
will find much to bring comfort and peace to the
mind in the conclusion reached by sound thought
and calm reasoning. It is a volume that clergy and
laity will find it advantageous to read carefully.

The Church Eclectic :

Mr. Phillips argues along recognized scientific lines
and then turns round and applies the same tests to
the evolution of Christianity. It is a new line of
argument, but a most effective one, and we heartily
congratulate the writer on the skill with which he has
used it.

Price i^i.oo. Publishers, The Phillips Company,
330 John Marshall Place, Washington, D.C.

Agreement

of

Evolution and Christianity

Agreement of
Evolution & Christianity

By

Samuel Louis Phillips

(A.B., Princeton)
Author of "The Testimony of Reason," etc.

Second Edition

Washington, D.C.
The Phillips Company

330 John Marshall Place

U^yw^''^

THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

745808

ASTOR, LENOX AND

TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

R 1916 L

Copyright, igo4
By Samuel L. Phillips

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S; A.

Preface

THE underlying purpose of this treatise is
to advance Christianity by showing it to
be a phase of the great law of Evolution appli-
cable to the development of the moral nature
of man, and incidentally to his physical and
mental advancement ; and ranking in its sphere
of influence as importantly as the physical
adaptation of organisms to their environment,
or the transmission of acquired characteristics
to progeny.

It is addressed:

1. To those adherents of the doctrine of Evo-
lution who reject Christianity because of its
supposed inconsistency with their theory.

2. To those who have professed Christianity,
and yet are fearful its foundations are being
battered from under it by the assaults of those
scientists who declare that the ascertained facts
of Nature have disproved the truthfulness of
the Divine record of creation. To such, this
book, it is hoped, will be a comfort, by showing

[v]

Preface

there is not only no antagonism between the
latest discoveries of Evolutionary Science and
the Mosaic account of creation, but so wonder-
ful an agreement actually exists between the
theory of Evolution, as expounded by Mr.
Herbert Spencer, Professors Huxley, Haeckel,
and other eminent advocates of the doctrine,
and the order of creation in Genesis, that, if no
other proof existed except this narrative, its
extraordinary congruity with the facts of science
accepted in the twentieth century would be
adequate to establish a strong probability that
the scriptural record of creation was of Divine
origin,

3. To those Christians who are perplexed by
the absence of plenary and convincing revela-
tion of the nature of God, of the divinity of
Christ, of the immortality of the soul, of rewards
and punishments in the future life, and other
fundamental articles of the Christian faith. It
is believed a careful perusal of the second part
of this book — wherein it is shown Christianity
is a great law of Evolution for the development
of the soul, analogous in every important par-
ticular to the laws of Physical Evolution — will
convince the impartial reader that if more knowl-
edge of the above truths had been vouchsafed
spiritual evolution would have been impeded in
[vi]

Preface

exact proportion ; and that if absolute certainty
of the Godhead, and of the Saviour of mankind,
and of immortality, etc., had been enforced by
full knowledge no growth in moral excellence
would have taken place. To be convinced by a
line of correct human reasoning that revelation
is just what it should be — neither too full nor
too scant — will bring much satisfaction to many
devout hearts, increase their faith, inspire zeal
in the work of and love for their Master, and
cause them to look down upon the assaults of
agnostic scientists and unfriendly atheists as
little more than ripples on the surface of a
pool of water, fretting themselves against the
side of the mountainous and eternal rock of
Christianity.

[vii]

Contents

PART I.

Page

Theology and Evolution i

The Doctrine of Evolution 6

Agencies of Evolution lo

Limitations of Evolution 20

Agreement of Evolution and the Mosaic

Narrative of the Creation 29

Special Creations or Evolution .... 55

Evolution and Man 82

Evolution and Mentality 84

Evolution and the Soul 95

PART II.

Evolutionary Character of Christianity . 105

Soul Evolution no

The Holy Scriptures 116

God 122

Christ a Factor of Soul Evolution . . . 128

The Holy Ghost 136

Immortality of the Soul 140

Reward and Punishment 145

[ix]

Contents

Page

Free Will 150

Faith 156

Good Works 163

Atonement for Sin .170

Evidences of Christianity 174

The Church of Christ 180

The Sacraments . 182

Christianity an Aid to Physical and Men-
tal Evolution 186

Missions 190

The Future of Christianity 193

Conclusion 195

The Testimony of Reason 199

[x]

^1*5

Agreement of T*^ ^
Evolution and Christianity

Part I

THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION

THE scientific world is almost universally
of opinion that life has an inherent
quality which enables it to adapt itself more
or less perfectly to environment, and to trans-
mit acquired characteristics to progeny.

What is here understood by the scientific
world, is that body of men of trained minds and
observation which has investigated the phe-
nomena of life for the express purpose of arriv-
ing at truth in regard to its development.
When there is great unanimity among such
students upon any subject after adequate inves-
tigation, which is certainly the case as to Evolu-
tion, there is, a priori, strong probability of the
correctness of their conclusions. And no class
of men, — for example, theologians, — who have
not given the subject the same careful attention,

[I]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

under equally favorable circumstances for obser-
vation, as scientists have done, should contradict
their legitimate deductions, as far as founded
on facts, unless they have other facts equally
well proven with which to refute them. Mere
theories springing from preconceived notions or
predilections, and crude ideas based on conjec-
ture and not on rigorous exploration, cannot
withstand, in this accurate scientific age, the
assault of intelligent generalization formulated
from ascertained facts.

Instead of the advocates of the Christian
religion being disturbed by the theory of Evo-
lution as expounded by scientists, or denying
its truthfulness, they should, believing their
creed is the revelation of the Most High and
consequently must be harmonious with nature,
investigate their God-given faith for the purpose
of ascertaining whether any real antagonism
exists between it and the doctrine of Evolution.

On the other side of the subject, scientists,
who are as ardent pursuers of truth as men
know how to be, should pause in their rejection
or disregard of a religion which they generally
do not understand, or of the philosophy of
whose tenets they have only a superficial im-
pression, until they have subjected its funda-
mental principles to an accurate examination,
and have determined beyond reasonable doubt
that they are opposed to known facts and laws

[2]

Theology and Evolution

to such an extent, they cannot be true. Such
an examination is particularly incumbent upon
men who spend their lives in the investigation
of facts, and who claim belief should be based
only on knowledge. To condemn the Christian
religion without an accurate and logical ex-
amination is unscientific, and is a denial to it of
what they profess and claim should be granted
to their own subject of inquiry.

Nor is Christianity to be disposed of by ad
captandimt replies that its supernatural claims
are so absurd as not to be deemed worthy of
serious consideration. Any scientist who makes
such a charge is eminently unscientific in mental
poise, and unworthy of the guild in which he
seeks to include himself as a member, because
the Christian religion has claimed and still
possesses as its devoted adherents millions of
men whose mental capacity, general intelligence,
and devotion to truth are equal in all respects
to such denying scientists; and because the
civilization of the world at this time, whereof
such scientists are blessed participators, is due
more largely to the peace and the humanizing
influences wrought by Christianity than to all
other causes.

At no era of the world's history has it been

more important than the present for theologians

and scientists to extend their investigations

reciprocally into the sphere of the other. Evil

[3]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

often results from ignorance, nothing but benefit
can follow from a knowledge of truth. These
two great fields for research and belief should
not be separated by insuperable barriers. If
Evolution be a law of nature, there is no reason
the Christian should not be an evolutionist and
the evolutionist a Christian. They are both
workers in the domains of nature made by one
and the same divine Creator. They cannot be
antagonistic, but must be harmonious ; more
yet, each pursuit broadens and ennobles the
other. The Christian scientist is the more per-
fect Christian and the more perfect scientist.

It is the purpose of the writer to attempt to
show in the following pages that not only no
contradiction exists between Christianity and
Evolution, but the most extraordinary accord

— an accord which could not have been devised
by men of the time of Christ, or even in these
days of scientific knowledge, but only could
have been the work of some superhuman power

— subsists between every important dogma of
Christianity and Evolution, and which accord-
ance, if it exists, constitutes in itself one of the
strongest arguments for receiving the Christian
religion as of divine origin.

A further deduction from the acceptance of

the above proposition will be that the Christian

religion is as evolutionary in its influence on the

moral, and incidentally on the physical and

[4]

Theology and Evolution

mental, nature of man as the survival of the
fittest and the transmission of acquired charac-
teristics to progeny are on the physical nature
of animals ; and therefore said religion is en-
titled to be ranked as a Sciejice with physiology
and mental philosophy.

[5]

THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION

OMITTING all the speculations of philos-
ophers on the subject of Evolution from
the time of Aristotle to 1859, when Charles
Darwin published " The Origin of Species," as
not absolutely important to these discussions,
it may be stated briefly that the conception of
Evolution from this latter period has taken a
firmer hold on the scientific mind than at any
previous era of philosophic thought.

The principal reason for this more general
belief is that greater attention under improved
facilities of observation has been given to the
phenomena of the development of life in both
plants and animals, and biologists have been
driven by force of pure reasoning from observed
facts to the conclusion that many now divergent
species have sprung from a common ancestor,
and that no other theory than Evolution, sub-
stantially as announced by Darwin, logically or
scientifically accounts for this divergence.

Chief among the facts which have compelled
biologists to adopt the doctrine of Evolution,
and stated in a general manner, are : ^
1 See " Evolution," Revised Edition Encyclopadia Brittanica.

[6]

The Doctrine of Evolution

1. The gradations, from simpHcity of struc-
ture and its functions to great complexity among
those classes of living things which bear a strong
family resemblance, show the probabilities are
enormously in favor of an inherent tendency in
life towards greater complexity of structure,
and consequently of a more heterogeneous and
higher functional life,

2. The existence of an unmistakable similarity
between the adult and matured creatures of any
lower species of animals or plants and the em-
bryonic, infantile, or immature creatures of the
higher members of the same family. A con-
spicuous instance of this characteristic, showing
the evolution of birds from marine animals, is, if
the eggs of either a hen or thrush, etc., be ex-
amined after the first few days of incubation,
the young creatures within the shells will be
found to possess the fin-like appendages and
gills of fish.

3. The fact that groups of large families, for
example, vertebrates, of extremely various habits
are constructed on a plan so similar that in
many instances bone for bone, muscle for
muscle, and nerve for nerve may be traced,
with more or less modifications to suit such
habits, through entire families, which similarity
is inexplicable unless they had sprung from a
common ancestor.

4. The existence of structure in rudimentary

[7]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

and useless conditions in some members of a
group, while in other members of the same
group the same structure exists in a fully devel-
oped condition, and performs important and
necessary functions for the life and well-being
of such members.

5. The constantly observed and well-known
effects of use and disuse of parts and faculties,
in modifying structure and functions, the adap-
tation of the animal or plant to its environment,
and the capacity of all living organisms to trans-
mit to their progeny the characteristics of their
own natures.

6. The astonishing similarity of structure and
its functions among animals and plants now in-
habiting the earth although separated by, to
them, impassable seas, mountains, and other
natural barriers.

7. The extraordinary succession in geologic
strata of the various forms of life from lower to
higher species, including extinct types; and
fossil types so simple and homogeneous of
existing forms that the probability is they
were the primordial progenitors of present
groups.

A vast array of observed facts has estab-
lished the above general propositions, and to
account for them on any reasonable basis it
was necessary to abandon the idea of Spe-
cial Creations for each species, and to adopt
[8J

The Doctrine of Evolution

the hypothesis that there existed in living
things a plasticity of organism competent to
mould itself in accordance with its environ-
ment, and to transmit its modified structure to
its offspring.

[9]

AGENCIES OF EVOLUTION

THE agencies of Evolution employed in
causing the physical development of life .
are many. Mr. Darwin, in *' The Origin of
Species," attributed very important effects to
what he termed Natural Selection, or the Sur-
vival of the Fittest. An illustration will best
define what is understood, in part, by this ex-
pression, although the term was not limited to
conscious acts. Usually in a herd of deer run-
ning wild in the forests, the largest, most pow-
erful, and intelligent males drive off their less
favorably endowed competitors and capture as
mates the most attractive females. The progeny
of this selection will in some instances, under
propitious circumstances, partake of the supe-
rior characteristics of their parents. By the
constant acquirement or improvement in this
manner of new qualities and their transmission,
although it may be in each instance of small
moment, the original structure of the distant
ancestor will be so modified a new species will
be created.

The exercise of this selection applies princi-
pally to animals so far advanced mentally that
[lO]

Agencies of Evolution

they possess conscious desires, and have the
ability to make the necessary efforts to gratify
them. Darwin and other naturahsts have col-
lected many facts showing that almost all animal
creation has positive preferences in the selection
of mates, and in some instances very decided
aesthetic faculties. In this way the brilliant plu-
mage and vocal attainments of birds have been
acquired, the female usually accepting as her
mate the male which makes the most fascinating
display.

Another efficient agency in the development
of both plant and animal life is plasticity of
structure, and the effort of all organisms to
adapt themselves to their environments. Every
living thing has wants, and a great many of
them. Each life if examined closely will be
found to have a very narrow sphere wherein it
can exist. It must, first of all, have heat regu-
lated to the exercise of its functions. A differ-
ence of a few degrees in temperature is in a
short time fatal to some animals, and of fewer
degrees still to their perfect development.
Water is another prime essential. All organic
structure has a large percentage of water, and
no physiological functions can be performed
unless water furnishes the diluent to enable the
organs to move with reference to one another.
An interesting fact and evidently importing de-
sign in connection with the molecular mobility

[II]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

of structure is that all organisms are composed
almost exclusively of the three gases, — viz.,
oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, — with some
carbon, which is a solid. These components
being mostly gaseous, their compounds are
more or less plastic and easily change in struc-
ture under the influence of external forces.

The necessity for a supply of carbonic acid
gas for plants and oxygen for animals is im-
perative. The union of oxygen with the other
elements of the animal furnishes usually the
necessary internal heat and destruction of effete
matters. It is unnecessary to elaborate the in-
dispensability of food suitable to respective
organisms. A failure of an adequate supply
of any one of the foregoing prime necessities
speedily ends in extinction.

Now all animals which have survived, includ-
ing man, have been endeavoring, consciously
and subconsciously, every instant of their ex-
istence to accommodate themselves to these
and many other more or less important things
surrounding them. For example, a sheep bred
in a southern latitude will possess a thin wool.
If the same animal is taken to a more northern
climate, the wool thickens, and in a few genera-
tions, the animal is protected with an ample
fleece. When the organism is unable to respond
to the external forces encompassing it, death
takes place, for life may be defined to be a sue-

[12]

Agencies of Evolution

cession of internal changes to accord with ex-
ternal conditions.

An instance of the accommodation of plants
to arid conditions, such as exist in Mexico, is
the development of the large pulpous leaves,
full of fluids, of the southern cactus, by which
adequate water is not only provided but con-
served for the use of the plant during the dry
season. The necessity of oxygen affords a re-
markable example of how a creature can change
itself from a water-breathing to an air-breathing
animal. In 1835 ^ quasi fish was discovered in
a swamp bordering the Amazon, shaped like an
eel with scales. It had perfect gills and perfect
lungs with air tubes and nostrils. Subsequently
a similar one was discovered in Africa. At
that time naturalists were unable to determine
how such a double-breathing animal came to
exist. When the doctrine of evolution was pro-
mulgated, the explanation was apparent that
the above animal was a link form between true
fishes and the amphibians.

Professor VVilhelm Boelsche states the case
substantially thus : Through fossils it was learned
that in a very remote period of the world's history
the oldest representatives of vertebrates were
fish. Then in the carboniferous age, long after
the remote fish age, the amphibians appeared.
Somewhere between those two periods there
must have occurred the change of one or more of
[13]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity ^

the fishes to land-breathing and land-dwelling
animals. That was doubtless the time of the
lizard-fish, if the lizard-fish was the link, yet no
lizard-fish was then known. But in 1869 there
was found in Australia a carp-like fish with gills
and scales, but also a lung — one single lung.
The mouth had not fish teeth, but four big teeth
with crowns indented like the comb of a rooster.
Now such teeth — fossil teeth — had been found
long before. Next was unearthed a well-pre-
served skull, and the impression of the caudal
end of the same creature. Thus was established
in this lizard-fish the connecting link between
the fossil and the then living animals of the
Amazon and of Africa, and also between fishes
and amphibians. It was called the Ceratodus.
This lizard furnishes an illustration of how the
lung developed from the gills. Where it lived
in the Devonian epoch there were many pools,
alternately furnished with water and then be-
coming dry. While the water lasted, the lizard
breathed through its gills, when it dried up
through its lung. But how was the gill de-
veloped into a lung? The true fish owns a
well-known organ — the swimming bladder. An-
atomically this bladder belongs to the alimen-
tary canal. In many fish there is an air connection
with this canal. In the Ceratodus the develop-
ment of this bladder into a lung became com-
plete. Along the wall of the swimming bladder
[14]

Agencies of Evolution

&

there began to form air-sucking blood vessels,
and the mouth of the bladder gradually length-
ened from the depths of the canal towards the
mouth as it was used more and more to suck in
air when the water grew scarcer. The air pas-
sage became a windpipe and the swimming
bladder a lung. Professor Haeckel urged on
the world of science the importance of stud3'ing
the egg of the Ceratodus, and a naturalist was
sent to Australia, who after two years discovered
that the creature developed not as a fish but as
an amphibian, passing through the same stages
which characterize frogs. So in the Ceratodus
biologists recognize a true survivor of the lizard-
fishes, and thus, as they claim, an ancestor of
man — the particular ancestor that developed
his lungs.

Hundred of instances might be mentioned
showing prominently this adaptation by efforts,
conscious and unconscious, of plants and animals
to their environment.

The matter of securing an adequate supply
of proper food has worked great changes in the
structure and functions of all living organisms.
Thus the bee has been obliged to lengthen his
tongue in order to get to the deep sugar cells
of the red clover. Imperative necessity for food
and effort to gratify the desire have wrought
the necessary changes in the elastic membranes
of the tongue. The giraffe has probably de-
[15]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

scended from the xiophodon, an extinct herbiv-
orous animal of the Cenozoic age. Under the
necessity of reaching the branches and twigs
above his head, the seven cervical vertebrae the
giraffe inherited from his progenitor have grad-
ually lengthened. The precise physiological
manner in which the structure and functions of
the neck of the giraffe were extended to sub-
serve his necessity for food was that by his
exertions to reach the twigs and leaves an in-
creased determination or flow of blood to the
neck was produced. This led to increased
nutrition, and as a consequence, to an increase
of cell-growth both in the vertebrae and muscles
— an increased cell-growth results in an enlarge-
ment of structure and specialized development
of the parts.

Among other causes operating to produce
modifications may be mentioned the escaping
of dangers and the use of protective colorings.
Insects, birds, and animals simulate their sur-
roundings, and when apprehensive of enemies,
place themselves in positions similar in color to
to their own, so as to be least conspicuous.
They thus make an effort to save their lives.

If the characteristics acquired by organisms,
intentionally and unintentionally, by efforts to
accommodate themselves to their respective en-
vironments were lost by the death of the indi-
vidual and thus their transmission to offspring
[i6]

Agencies of Evolution

rendered impossible, no progress would be made
in the differentiation of either plants or animals.
But such is the character of inheritance that not
only does it bring forth young after its own kind,
but most often the minutest peculiarities of struc-
ture, function, and mental qualities are trans-
mitted. No argument or illustration is needed
to show how parents recognize in their children
many of their own characteristics.

Besides in some yet unexplained manner
progeny partakes of both parents, thus transmit-
ting not only old and newly acquired structures
of male and female ancestors respectively, but
often wonderfully combining, modifying, enlarg-
ing, or diminishing, etc., the characteristics of
each parent with those of the other, thus produc-
ing new forms alike to, and yet different from
each ; and occasionally giving birth to beings
which if perpetuated would be regarded as new
species. This innate power of transmission and
combination has been availed of by breeders to
such an extent as to produce at will beef-cattle or
milch cows, slow draft horses or racers, etc.

The foregoing condensed exposition of some
of the agencies at work in modifying the physi-
cal structure of organisms, it will be noticed, are
all based more or less on the conscious or sub-
conscious efforts of animals to supply the neces-
sities of their existence. The moment the proper
amount of heat is withdrawn or increased, the
[17]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

creature makes an effort to seek a more agree-
able temperature and adapt his body to the new
condition ; failing in this he perishes. So with
air, with light, with water, etc. As regards food,
the supply of which is not so abundant as the
other necessaries, almost the entire lifetime of
all animals, including man, is spent in efforts to
acquire an adequate amount. This great andi
inexorable necessity is ever taxing their best
efforts, and the efforts are changing bones, mus-
cles, nerves, blood vessels, mucous membranes,
etc., whenever such change renders the ac-
quisition of food more easy, or its use more
beneficial.

So the fundamental principles underlying Evo-
lution are that life has been created with neces-
sities; these necessities are individualized in
each animal; each entity must, in effect, make
the effort to appropriate them for itself; and the
efforts to appropriate such necessities act on
organisms so soft, so ductile, or so plastic that
constant effort in one direction causes the blood
to flow to the parts, thereby increasing their
nutrition which results in cell-growth, and thus
modifies the structure and functions of the cells,
the sum total of which cells is the unit organism.

Or to state the proposition in the converse
form, if heat and air and food, etc., had always
been so abundant that no effort had been re-
quired to provide and appropriate them, and no
[18]

Agencies of Evolution

enemies had existed calling for effort to escape,
there would have been no change of organism
and consequently no development from the sim-
ple to the complex, from the comparatively
useful to the more useful — in a word, no evolu-
tion of the physical structures and functions.
Or to state the proposition yet more broadly,
Evolution is the result of Effort.

[19]

LIMITATIONS OF EVOLUTION

THE doctrine of Evolution is still in its
adolescence. The cause of this is two-
fold. I. The short period in which it has
claimed serious scientific attention has not
allowed adequate facts to be observed so as to
constitute a well-defined philosophy both as to
what it includes and those things it excludes
from its sphere of influence. 2. Its principles
were so revolutionary, so contrary to cherished
opinions of Christians, and so agreeable to men
of infidel tendencies, the former have, as was
quite natural, either refused to entertain its just
claims, or diminished its true influence; and the
latter in their joy to find something by which to
sustain their irreligion, have extended its scope
beyond legitimate deductions.

And yet enough is now known from which to
formulate a wonderful order of creation, har-
monious in every part and rationally explicable
only on the theory that this thing we call Evo-
lution is but another name for a natural law
ordained by an all-wise and powerful Creator,
who is outside of and superior to creation, and
by which law He has evolved all things and en-
[20]

Limitations of Evolution

dowed them witH qualities, the sum total of
which is the present cosmos.

The writer is not aware that any English sci-
entist of prominence has claimed that Evolution
has produced Matter. Creation is beyond the
domain of Evolution. Evolution presupposes
structure and function, though ever so small;
and its sole office is to modify reciprocally both
structure and function so they will adapt them-
selves to external forces. According to Mr.
Spencer, Evolution is a change from the homo-
geneous to the heterogeneous, from the indefi-
nite to the definite, from the incoherent to the
coherent. He has sought to show that the
causes of Evolution are involved in the ulti-
mate laws of matter, force, and motion, among
which he places the doctrine of conservation of
energy. But it is manifest this explanation
assumes the pre-existence of matter, force, and
motion, and their laws. Indeed, the law of
conservation of energy implies in its definition,
no matter or force has been evolved or lost
since the original and first creation, and all
that has existed since has been simply a recom-
bination of previously existing elements. So
Evolution in its widest application leaves us
entirely without any explanation as to final
causes; as to how substances came to be; as
to how the various kinds of matter were en-
dowed with their respective qualities; and as

. [21]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

to how the laws of force and motion — laws
so complex and so certain they can be formu-
lated only in many instances by the higher
mathematics — attach themselves to and govern
all matter in its minutest details. As long as
Evolution does not make good a claim to crea-
tive power, then the evolutionist may be a
Christian and the Christian an evolutionist and
each accept the Mosaic narrative as true that
" In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth."

To state these propositions concretely:

1. There is no pretence that any person or
thing has created a grain of new matter. Some-
thing has never been known to have been pro-
duced from nothing. The various elements
found in the earth's strata and in water and in air
have been and can be made to combine with one
another and produce new substances, but their
sum total is exactly equivalent to, and neither
more nor less than the components. Accord-
ingly, Evolution offers no explanation for the
inconceivable masses of matter aggregated in
the various globes revolving in space. Upon
the subject of the First Cause it is profoundly
silent.

2. Each of the separate elements composing
the body of the earth has very distinct qualities
from every other element. There has been
plainly no evolution in iron, gold, lime, carbon,

[22]

Limitations of Evolution

etc. The qualities they possess have never
altered. They are the same as to color, weight,
magnetic attraction and repulsion, electrical or
combining affinities, etc., as they were when
first made in the first instant of creation. They
are the same in all parts of the earth wherever
found. A grain of gold from Colorado or one
from Australia is a grain of gold in every
characteristic, without the slightest variation
in any respect. Evolution has therefore no
function in the establishment of the qualities
of matter.

3. The same proposition is equally clear as
to the laws governing force and motion. They
operate on matter precisely at this moment
as when first brought into existence. They are
so accurate and unchanging that, for example,
not a second of acceleration or retardation has
yet been observed in the revolution of so im-
mense a body as the earth during the period
of a year. These laws various in the extreme
are more immutable and real than the moun-
tains or the seas. Each is harmonious in every
detail with its own law, and in accord with every
other law regulating other forces and motions.
If one law were to be changed all nature would
be in conflict, and ruin follow. So that nothing
is more stable than physical laws. There could
have been no subsequent adjustment of them,
for conflict would have existed previously.
[23]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

They must have been perfect when decreed.
On the other hand, Evolution by its very name
signifies change. If there were no changes
there would be no evolution. The human mind
is, therefore, driven in accounting for the laws
of force and motion to the First Cause, to the
inscrutable something above and beyond nature,
and no part of nature ; to the only rational solu-
tion that as something cannot come from noth-
ing in a material and physical sense, there must
exist a supernatural power, a power beyond
time and sense, which power according to the
logic of the human mind is best accounted for
in the existence of an all-wise, all-powerful
Supreme Being, Self-existent, who has been
revealed to it as God. This is as far as the
intellect of man can penetrate, and in penetrat-
ing thus far into the First Cause, it creates for
itself a conclusion gratifying and satisfying;
it rests content, and wisely leaves the balance
to the same God who has made all things under
the belief that knowledge adequate for its own
good has been revealed.

4. The theory of Evolution undertakes in its
broadest generalization, in the philosophy of
Mr. Spencer, to embrace the development of
all organized matter and organic life. But
mark well, it does not account for the origin
of either matter or its qualities or its laws;
but given these as created entities, it declares
[24]

Limitations of Evolution

there is enough in such laws operating on
matter to have evolved the globes of the firm-
ament, and all organic life heretofore and now
known.

Mr. Spencer, who has done more than any
other writer to reduce the doctrine of Evolution
to a philosophy embracing all organization,
takes primordial matter, gaseous, nebulous, dark,
and unformed, and by the laws of gravitation,
of resultant forces, of the conservation of energy,
of heat, of light, etc., shows how Evolution has
formed our solar system. This is substantially
the nebular hypothesis which La Place first
formulated mathematically, and it has since
been generally adopted by astronomers.

That subject is mentioned at this place to
illustrate the methods of evolutionary reason-
ing, which consist, not so much in absolute
demonstration, but in deductions from known
facts and the operation of known laws on them,
and a probable conclusion is reached. There
cannot be any certain proof of the nebular
hypothesis, from the fact that the events de-
scribed took place millions of years ago ; but so
well known are the laws which must have been
active in bringing about the concretion of nebu-
lous matter into spheres, and so antagonistic
are the ascertained facts to any other explana-
tion, that the human mind finds no difficulty, by
this deductive method of reasoning, in accepting
[ 25 ]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

the conception that they were in all probability
evolved in some such manner.

5. Another limitation as to the absolute dem-
onstrations of Evolution which may be men-
tioned is the theory that all life, including man's,
sprang from a blurred, undetermined feeling
which answered to a single nervous pulsation
or shock. From this it is supposed a conscious-
ness was developed, and sensations by a number
of rapid successions of such feelings, — these
sensations growing more vivid and co'mplex with
the physical advance of the animal, until the
dawn of mental life. But it is clear there is no
proof of this process. It is, however, an hypoth-
esis which accounts with considerable probabil-
ity for the development of the mind — indeed
with more probability than any other theory
advanced at the present day. The acceptance
of such a doctrine may at first glance seem so
revolutionary as to shock the sensibilities of
many who have not studied the subject, yet the
writer trusts he will be able to show in these
pages that the theory is entirely in accord with
the Mosaic narrative of Creation.

6. When the modern doctrine of Evolution
was first announced in 1859 by Mr, Darwin, in
" The Origin of Species," he discussed its opera-
tion as to the development of new species. For
example, taking as a parent the wild pigeon, he
showed how all the present varieties of pigeons

[26]

Limitations of Evolution

could be easily produced. But it is plain the
causes which could accomplish these changes
in a short time would produce still greater ones,
given an indefinite period and unlimited number
of subjects to operate on. So it was a short
step in this deductive process to trace man to
some ancestral type of man-like ape, now ex-
tinct, of the Miocene period ; and man-like ape
to dog-like ape ; and this last to the anoplothe-
rium of the early Eocene age, which was the
common progenitor of dogs, wolves, tigers, lions,
bears, etc.; the anoplotherium to the paleothe-
rium at the opening of the Tertiary period ;
and so on backward to a protozoic cell. But
of all this there has been no actual demonstra-
tion. It is true explorations of the earth's crust
have been comparatively few and the finds of
fossil remains meagre. It is also true that
nearly all the remains found have been in ac-
cord with the evolutionary succession of animals
and plants, and a constant filling in of missing
forms has constituted more or less connecting
links between genera and families of organisms,
and so more and more probability is given to
the efficiency of evolution. Yet it may be said,
many resemblances are imagined by the ardent
devotees of this law, and many assertions made
of processes gone through with by such or-
ganisms, now only fossils, of which there is
absolutely no proof.

[27]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

But whether the hypothesis of Special Crea-
tion or the hypothesis of Evolution be chosen,
Mr. 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 Hving forms."

In the next chapters it will be attempted to
be shown that the hypothesis of Evolution,
I, in regard to the evolution of the earth; 2, as
to the order of appearance of animals; and 3,
as to the origin of the logical and emotional
faculties of all animals, including man's, are in
accord with the Mosaic narrative of Creation.

[28]

AGREEMENT OF EVOLUTION AND

THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE

OF THE CREATION

CHRISTIANITY regards the Scriptures of
the Old Testament to be inspired by-
God. Evolution and the Mosaic narrative of
the Creation treat of the same matter; it is
therefore necessary in a discussion of the agree-
ments of Evolution and Christianity that the
subject of this chapter should be included.

La Place, a distinguished astronomer of the
eighteenth century, while investigating the
phenomena of the solar system which com-
prises, including the planets, their satellites, and
the asteroids, several hundred components, was
impressed with the facts ^ that their orbits were
all nearly circular around the sun, and nearly
all in one plane; that their revolutions on their
axes were practically in the same direction as
that of the sun ; that there was a regular pro-
gression of distances between the orbits of the
planets, and a regular progression of density;
and that the largest planets rotated most swiftly.
As regard the planets themselves, it was noticed

1 Young's " General Astronomy."
[29]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

that the planes of their rotations nearly coincided
with their orbits; that the direction of their
rotation was the same as their orbital revolu-
tion ; and that the satellites of the planets with
one apparent exception had the same motions
as the planets themselves. For these spheres to
have been of independent origin and yet move
in the manner above described, it has been re-
liably computed ^ that there were about 99, 999,
999. 999> 999. 999. 999, 999, 999. 999, 999, 999,
999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999 chances
in favor of their common origin to i chance in
favor of their independent origin. With such
inconceivable chances in favor of a common
origin, the probability amounting to as great a
certainty as any other subject of human knowl-
edge ; and with all the known facts agreeing
with the laws of gravitation, resultant forces,
and their consequent motions; and also with
the laws of heat and light, etc., La Place pro-
pounded a mathematical nebular hypothesis,
which has been substantially accepted since
by all evolutionists.

This theory, as conceived by modern astrono-
mers, presupposes the entire space subject to
the influence of the solar system was originally
filled with matter in a gaseous, or nebulous, or
meteoric state. If this system is estimated to
have extended only as far as one quarter beyond

1 " Nebular Theory," Revised Encyclopadia Brittanica.

[30]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

the orbit of Neptune, the most distant planet,
a very reasonable limit, and if this cubic space,
and also the sum of the cubic contents of the
sun and the planets be computed, it will be
found there are approximately sixty-six billion
cubic miles of space in the solar system to one
cubic mile of matter therein ; or stated in a
more comprehensible manner, one cubic mile of
earth if expanded to its original gaseous con-
dition would fill a space little less than that
occupied by the planet Mars, or greater than
six of our moons.

1. Two physical facts offer their testimony
as to what must have existed at that time,
(i) Space occupied by matter so attenuated
may be described as void ; and (2) such matter
must have been without form.

2. Matter so inconceivably expanded could
not have possessed vibrations, and without vi-
brations there was no heat or light, and conse-
quently darkness prevailed.

So, the Mosaic account in describing the
" Beginning," as " And the earth was without
form and void, and darkness was upon the face
of the deep," is scientifically accurate, and
agrees with the accepted nebular hypothesis.

3. This hypothesis, however, goes no further
back than the gaseous, nebulous, or meteoric
period. It is silent as to whence the gases
came, or who created them. The inspired

[31]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

word of God reveals their Creator to mankind,
and we obtain this information from no other
source. " In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth."

Evolution has no evidence or suggestion in
contradiction.

4. The solar system is considered by astrono-
mers to belong to a system infinitely greater,
represented by the Galaxy or Milky Way, com-
posed of myriads of suns — many equal to our
own sun, and probably with planets revolving
around some of them. But outside of the
Milky Way and of great significance, in oppo-
site directions to it, are to be found numerous
nebulae, which many conceive to be other sys-
tems of suns, possibly equal to that of the
Milky Way and beyond its influence. Herschel,
La Place, and other astronomers were of opinion
that the nebular hypothesis applies to all these
stars, star-clusters, and nebulae.

So, again, we find no contradiction by Evolu-
tion of the words of the Mosaic account, '* In
the beginning God created the lieavcn and the
earth."

5. In some manner not explained by the ad-
vocates of the nebular hypothesis the laws of
gravitation, of forces, of heat, etc., began to
operate. Whence they came the hypothesis
has offered no suggestion. Evolution did not
create them ; it develops ; it moulds ; it accom-
[32]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

modates. It presupposes matter and the laws
of matter, on which, and by which it may oper-
ate. The idea of Evolution involves a previous
creation of matter and the laws of matter outside
of and beyond itself. In the language of Mr.
Spencer it implies a " First Cause."

In this conclusion we have no disagreement
between Evolution and the Mosaic account,
namely, the revelation of a Creation. " In the
beginning God created 'Ci\Q heaven and the earth."

6. Evolution in addition to implying a Crea-
tion involves the principle of a distinct beginning
of the solar system at a definite period of time.
If this be not true, and Evolution partakes of
the attribute of infinity, and it has been always
active, it may be asked, Why, then, with in-
finite time in which to operate, and infinite
space filled with matter, does man find some of
the globes — comparatively small globes — of
the firmament to be going through periods
metaphorically of youth? Why is Venus prob-
ably not yet fit as an abode for life, and possibly
at that stage of development the earth was when
coal was formed? Why is not man the creature
he will be in the infinite future? To conceive
of the evolution of the solar system having
worked through infinity, without a beginning is
to limit its operations to a different scale of re-
sults than it accomplishes at the present time.
Thus the fact that the frosts and rains are con-
3 [33]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

stantly wearing down all the elevations of the
earth's surface and carrying large quantities of
the detritus to the valleys and oceans — the final
result of these gravitational and frictional forces
being the obliteration of all inequalities of the
periphery of the globe — is strongly corrobora-
tive of the view that they have not operated in-
definitely, otherwise the completely rounded
state of the earth's surface would have long since
been accomplished.^ So the gradual develop-
ment of plants and animals from lowest forms
to higher states shown by the advancing com-
plexity of their fossils found in the successive
upward strata of the earth furnishes strong prob-
ability of a distinct beginning of life. Accord-
ingly, to suppose the laws of evolution to have
had a definite period of starting; natural phe-
nomena agree with what a priori we should on
this assumption expect to exist.

"In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth."

7. The conception of Evolution, that it re-
quired a definite period of starting, is signifi-
cantly congruous with the revelation, " And the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters." The Creation was at that moment

1 The quantity of sediment brought clown annually by the
Ganges amounts to 6,368,077,440 tons. The Mississippi annu-
ally discharges into the Gulf of Mexico about 2,000,000,000
tons of solid matter.

[34]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

given life. The human mind can conceive the Al-
mighty had previously made matter, — the vast,
inconceivably vast, gaseous and nebulous seas of
matter, which filled all space, — all " The deep."
It lay before Him still, silent, inert, cold, and in
darkness. The elements of oxygen and hydro-
gen existed without water being formed ; nitro-
gen and oxygen without atmospheric air result-
ing. No element of nature had the power to
combine with any other previously to the instant
recorded by Moses, when " the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters." This great
act of motion established the laws of nature.
Every particle of matter felt the thrill — the
Divine impulse — and slowly began to move.
This movement of atom against atom produced
friction; friction generated electricity ; and elec-
tricity or some one of its convertible forms, as
motion, light, heat, magnetism, etc., it is demon-
strated by chemistry, is the agent which caused
and still causes the formation of many chemical
compounds. For example, hydrogen and oxy-
gen instantly form water if an electric spark is
discharged into them. Thus matter was organ-
ized. In its qualities, and at the very beginning
were the potentialities of the universes of the
present day; aye, more, probably, the poten-
tiality of all the universes of the infinite future.
8. Before the Spirit of God moved upon the
face of the waters, as this vast sea of matter
[35]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

filled all space, equally diftused, with no more
at one place than another, there existed a state
of equilibrium without motion of any kind.
But the instant this mass began to move, equi-
librium was destroyed and the laws of gravita-
tion operated, and produced a rotary motion
and condensation. The laws of motion allow
movement only in a straight line when there is
an exact and complete balance of all the forces
operating on a body. When any one force, or
a number of forces, operates more strongly than
others, the movement of matter will be in a curve,
the resultant of all the forces. As forces are
most rarely found to be equal, the almost cer-
tain effect of constant and uniform motion is
rotation, and a rushing towards a common cen-
tre of gravity, just as water in a bowl takes on
a circular motion when emptying itself through
a hole at the bottom. This movement of nebula
towards a centre of gravity produced electricity
by friction of its particles and condensation in
proportion to the force exerted, and the nebula
consequently arose in temperature, at first, as if
purely gaseous, so that its central mass after a
time reached the solar stage of temperature;
the solid and liquid particles melting and vapor-
izing as the mass grew hotter.

But light is always the result of adequate heat,
and the hotter the mass the intenser the light.
Accordingly, the very first effect of the move-
[36]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

ment of the gases, the nebulae, or the meteor-
ites of primeval space, was their condensation,
and the production of light as a consequence of
such condensation.

These scientific facts constitute a wonderful
testimony to the truth of the Mosaic account of
Creation, wherein it declares that next after the
Spirit of God moved over the waters, " And
God said. Let there be light, and there was
lightr

9. There was now revolving in space an in-
conceivably great mass of intensely heated
matter — molten liquid — perhaps hotter than
the sun, rushing, swaying with currents, and
heaving with waves, the nearest approach in
description to which at the present time would
be "to compare it to the waters of the ocean.
La Place conceived this mass under the action
of its own gravitation assumed approximately
a globular form with a rotation around its axis.
It must have been as liquid as water to have been
able to take on a globular shape as drops of
water now do. Gases have no such power. In
consequence of this liquidity the mass, instead
of remaining spherical, became flattened at the
poles, and as the rotation went on and the mo-
tion became accelerated, the time came when
the centrifugal force at the equator of the mass
became greater than gravity, and either rings
of meteoric matter were abandoned, resembling
[37]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

the rings of Saturn, or as supposed by some
astronomers, the Hquid or plastic mass became
distorted by a lump formed somewhere on its
equator, which lump finally became detached,
and revolved around its primary. Thus it is
believed by scientists competent to judge there
was formed the great systems of stars scattered
in what may be termed infinite space: i. The
Galaxy or Milky Way being one of them and
to this our Sun belongs. 2. Subsequently the
solar system comprising the planets, Mars,
Venus, the Earth, Jupiter, etc. 3. Later, the
satellites of the planets, such as the moons of
Jupiter, the moons of Saturn, etc.

How singularly accurate Moses was, when he
wrote, " And God said, Let there be a finna-
mejit in the midst of the ivaters and let it divide
the waters from the water's."

The aggregation of these great masses of
gaseous, then nebulous, and next liquid matter
into suns freed the intervening spaces, and thus
created a firmament in their midst. And this
firmament wherein they revolved divided these
globes, which in their then comparatively in-
candescent state were either liquid or plastic
and properly described as Waters.

10. The nebular hypothesis implies that next

after the evolution of the great star-clusters, the

Galaxy being one of them, each component

member, while sufficiently liquid or plastic,

[38]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

would throw off attendant planets, and they in
turn satellites. Thus was formed the planets
and our Earth and Moon.

In the same chronological order Moses re-
cords the creation of the Earth, "And God
made the firmament and divided the Waters
which were Under the firmament from the
Waters which were above the firmament. And
God called the Firmament Heaven."

That the Earth was described by the words,
" The Waters which were under the Firmament,"
etc., is apparent from the phraseology of the
ninth and tenth verses following of the first
chapter of Genesis, " And God said, Let the
Waters under the heaven be gathered together
unto one place, and let the dry land appear:
and it was so. And God called the dry land
Earth ; and the gathering together of the waters
called he Seas : and God saw that it was good."

It is highly probable that the earth as soon as
it cooled sufficiently was completely covered
with water or the vapor of water. In its then
h'quid or plastic condition it must have been
a slightly flattened spheroid. No mountains
reared their heads and no depressions for the
seas existed. In its present state, notwithstand-
ing probably as much water has been absorbed
into the earth as rolls on its surface, still three-
fourths of the earth's exterior is covered with
water, and if the globe was again brought to
[ 39 ]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

a smooth spheroid without depressions there is
adequate water to cover the whole of its surface.
One looking at this great ball revolving in space
and completely surrounded with water would
correctly describe it as " waters." Some geol-
ogists are of opinion that all the planets of the
solar system beyond Mars are yet in a liquid
state. ^

An extraordinary confirmation of the liquid
condition of the earth at the time of its early
separation from the sun is the physical fact,
subject to demonstration in laboratories, that
neither a gaseous nor a hardened rotating globe
will become flattened at its poles like the earth,
but only spheres in a liquid state and propor-
tionally to the rapidity of their rotation.^

So again for the tenth time we have a con-
cordance in period of events and manner of
creation, or evolution, between the nebular hy-
pothesis and the Scriptural account where it
records, " And God made the firmament and
divided the ivaters ivJi'ich zvere tinder the firma-
ment from the ^vaters wJiich were above the
firmament."

II. The earth when it was separated from
the sun must have been, as we have seen, in
either a liquid or plastic state, in order to have
taken on its flattened spheroidal form in obedi-

1 Hitchcock's " Elementary Geology," p. 209.

2 Jclc-m, p. 194.

[40]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

ence to the resultant of its centripetal and
centrifugal forces. As the earth, then a com-
paratively small body, revolved in space which
was intensely cold, it radiated its heat as now,
and grew colder and smaller. The poles of its
axis being least exposed to the warming effects
of the sun, which was then hidden behind deep
clouds, experienced the first condensation of
the two most abundant gases — oxygen and
hydrogen — into water. With the process of
cooling, the area of water extended on both
sides towards the equator. As soon as water
was formed the effect of its weight caused grav-
itation to draw it powerfully to the incandescent
mass of the earth. Great clouds of steam were
generated thereby, and ascended into the upper
atmosphere, where becoming condensed by the
cold it again fell as water. By this process the
water continually penetrated farther and farther
into the earth, and formed crusts both by cool-
ing and by chemical combinations. This was
a period geologically of upheavals and sub-
sidences. A characteristic of water is, it presses
as strongly sidewise as downwards ; so the phys-
ical effect of the percolation of water at one
place more than at another was to elevate the
land in proportion to its subsidence. In this
manner the dry land was made to appear
and the great basins of the seas were formed.
All the extensive ranges of mountains border
[41]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

and run parallel to the oceans. Here again the
Mosaic order is shown to be most accurate. For
next after the formation of the earth, it records,
"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven
be gathered together unto one place, and let
the dry land appear. . . . And God called the
dry land earth ; and the gathering together of
the waters called He seas."

12. There is no geologic evidence that plant
life was not the first product of organic creation.
All certain proof is obscured by the numerous
metamorphoses of the earth's surface, but the
plumbago and the mountainous masses of an
iron ore formed by the decomposition of vege-
table matter, in the Laurentian strata, and im-
mediately above their azoic rocks, attest strongly
to the primogeniture of plants. As an instance
showing the very early appearance of plants in
abundance, it may be mentioned that coal is the
product of fern trees. This is known because
the impress of their leaves is found in coal.
So perfect is their stamp botanists have repro-
duced a simiHtude of those great primeval for-
ests. The growth of such trees to perfection
and in large numbers required a damp atmos-
phere. Their habitat was low, and their roots
were often submerged in stagnant water. A
remarkable confirmation of the statement of
Moses that plant life appeared before the sun
is that the plants of the coal measures deposited
[42]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

in the third epoch-day, are of the soft character
of wood produced in a clouded atmosphere. It
is under intense and direct sun-rays we find such
hard woods as mahogany, hgnum vitae, etc.

The above facts agree again with the Scrip-
tural narrative; "And God said. Let the earth
bring forth grass, herb . . . yielding fruit after
his kind," etc.

13. Astronomers and geologists are also of
opinion that in those early days of the earth's
history our globe was warmer, and there were
great seas of water sweeping over much more
of the land than at present. Now the meteoro-
logical effect of this state of warmth and great
expanse of water was the formation of vast and
dense clouds. Some of the clouds hung closely
over the earth as thick fogs, and some extended
probably for miles upwards. Such may be the
condition of the planet Venus at this time.
There was a glow then as there is now on a
deep cloudy day. A hot and moist atmos-
phere rested over the land ; a shaded and tem-
pered light stimulated chemical actions, and
formed an ideal propagating garden for plants,
but in the thick, murky, sight-impenetrable
fogs there was no place for the wanderings or
browsings of animals.

Our globe in the process of time cooled more
and more, the waters sank deeper and deeper
into the earth, raising more dry land, and form-
[43 J

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

ing higher mountains. Greater and greater
inequalities of temperature were also a conse-
quence of the upheavals. These caused winds
to spring up. Rifts in the vast clouds were
thus made, when, behold ! there in the heavens,
where the clouds broke away from each other,
were the Sun and Moon first seen from the
earth, although they had probably existed un-
known millions of years before.

" And God made tivo great lights ; the greater
light to rule the day, and the lesser light to
rule the night : he made the stars also. And
God set them in the firmament of the heaven
to give light upon the earth. And to rule over
the day, and over the night, and to divide the
light from the darkness," etc. " And the even-
ing and the morning were i\\Q fourth day."

The above is one of the most significant facts
of the Mosaic account, that the sun, — our great
Sun, — the evident source of all life and power
on the earth, should not have been conceived
by an unscientific writer to have been made the
first thing of all Creation, and not to have
been placed long subsequent to other apparently
minor events. In this train of creational phe-
nomena Moses's description seems to have
been indited by one who had stood on the
earth and from that standpoint narrated the
memorable circumstances as they would have
appeared to the human eye.
[44]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

14. From the fact that the appearance of the
sun was postponed until the fourth day, and
after the evolution of dry land and the creation
of plants, and the further fact that one of the
purposes for which it was ordained was " to
divide the light from the darkness," it will be
observed that the word "light" in the opening
sentence of the Mosaic narrative, " And God
said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light was good, and God
divided the light from the darkness," was not
descriptive of the light of the sun. The light
created in the beginning was the vast luminosity
which arose from the heating of the nebulce by
condensation under the influence of gravity and
friction. The light which divided the day from
the night of our earth was exclusively from
the sun.

The ambiguity arising from the double use
of the word "light" has probably caused per-
plexity to persons unacquainted with the nebular
hypothesis and the generation of light by the
condensation of gases.

15. The explanation of another ambiguity is
appropriate at this place, namely, the constant
use of the phrases. And the evening and the
morning were the ''first day,'' or the " second
day," etc., to mark the epochs of Creation.

Probably no part of the narrative has been
more misunderstood than these expressions.
[ 45 J

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity-
Most readers erroneously conclude, the above
statements indicate a day of twenty-four hours
— a solar day. That this was not the meaning
of the inspired writer is evident from what was
done during the fourth epoch-day, namely, the
apparent creation of the sun. Mark, the earth
had been formed, the dry land raised, the seas
were in their beds, and plants were growing.
After all of this, " And God said, Let there be
lights in the firmament of heaven, to divide the
day from the night,'' etc. " And the evening
and the morning were \\\q. fourth day."

In these sentences we have recorded the dis-
tinct division of the day from the night as known
to men at this time — the day made by the light
of the sun — that great orb whose inconceivable
mass and fires cause the " signs " and " seasons,"
the " days and years."

The phraseology, " And the evening and the
morning were the first day," etc., was therefore
certainly not the division of time marked by the
diurnal rotation of the earth on its axis, which
constitutes our day, for neither the sun nor the
earth existed on the first day as independent
globes.

Where a word is used ambiguously in a docu-
ment, or the same word, in a double sense, the
usual rule of interpretation adopted by courts
of law is to discover the true meaning of the
word in each case and harmonize the entire
[46]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

account. Under this method the phrases the
evening and the morning were the ''first" or
" seco7id," etc., day, must have referred to great
epoch-days in the evolution of creation, occupy-
ing probably millions of years, and not to the
solar day, which was not ordained as a division of
time until the fourth epoch-day.

On this subject of the time occupied in the
development of creation, namely, that twenty-
four solar hours were not intended to define the
phrases, " And the evening and the morning
were the first, etc. day," we again have agree-
ment and not antagonism between science and
the revealed order of Creation.

i6. Efforts have been made to determine the
condition of the earth at this early period of its
development, and geologists have reached the
conclusion, as stated before, that in consequence
of the obliquity of the earth's equator to the
sun, the first places to cool sufficiently to
allow the vapor of water, that is, steam, to con-
dense into water were around the poles of the
earth's axis. It is therefore in the waters of
the circumpolar ocean, most probably the Lau-
rentian Seas, at that time tropical in temperature,
that geologists and biologists believe was the
habitat of first animal life. No dry land had
appeared at that period. But subsequently in
what is called the Lower Silurian Age the Lau-
rentian Hills were uplifted. This belt of land
[47]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

shaped Hke a broad band, spanning North
America from Labrador to the Pacific Ocean
at Alaska, was the first land to appear on our
globe. The lowest rocks of these hills contain
no fossils. Some of the next higher strata hold
masses of graphite chemically formed by living
plants. The upper Silurian deposits followed
with the dawn of marine life, possibly in a near
relative to the Eozoon. Next came the Devon-
ian period characterized by the warm seas being
crowded with shark-like fishes, thus confirming
once more the Scriptures, wherein they declare
that the next order of Creation was, " And
God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly
the moving creature that hath life," etc.

17. Fossils embedded in rocks are like words
engraven on stone. From them geologists have
learned that in the earliest days of life the only
vertebrates were fish. In those times also great
and rapid changes were taking place on the
earth's surface. The heat of the sun was intense
when not shaded by clouds ; the crust of the
earth, thin ; water was abundant, and constantly
penetrating this thin crust it came in contact
with the internal incandescent glow. Immense
reservoirs of steam were formed which by their
pressure threw up more plains and hills and
mountains. At some places the oceans were
cut off from the interior, and vast inland
seas were isolated, and in other directions
[48]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

islands were upHfted with interior depressions.
Marine Hfe was subjected to vicissitudes propor-
tional to the changes of its environment. Each
animal, by conscious and sub-conscious efforts,
endeavored to accommodate itself to its sur-
roundings, and in so doing doubtless many new
species and genera were developed, such as fishes,
sharks, eels, whales, lizards, etc.

The constantly increasing areas of dry land,
and reciprocally the varying and diminishing
supply of water of the inland seas and ponds,
were particularly favorable to the evolution of
an animal, which could breathe with gills and
with lungs as the occasions required. As stated
in a previous chapter, the fossil remains of this
animal, which forms a connecting link between
fish and amphibians, have been found in Aus-
tralia, and representatives of the same creature,
the Ceratodus, living to-day, have been discov-
ered in the swamps of the Amazon and the
rivers of Africa.

From this lizard-fish sprang the amphibian-
lizard, and from the amphibian-lizard sprang the
lizard-bird. This lizard-bird, the Archaeop-
teryx, is one of the most remarkable fossil con-
tributions to the theory of Evolution which has
ever been discovered. Its fossil remains have
been several times unearthed, and their impress,
as stamped most plainly into the strata, shows
an animal with " feathers and wings, a crocodile
4 [49]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

jaw with teeth, a long lizard tail, and lizard's
claws on its wing bones."

This is an unmistakable link between the liz-
ard and the bird, and demonstrates beyond a
reasonable doubt the evolution of the gill-
breathing fish into the land-flying fowl.

And yet as wonderful is the fact that the
Mosaic narrative, written fifteen hundred years
before Christ, should record the creation of the
"/(?:£// that may fly above the earth in the open
firmament of heaven," immediately after the
moving creatures of the waters.

1 8. The increasing areas of dry land and
more and more abundant herbage were unceas-
ingly preparing the earth as a habitation for the
four-footed beasts and snakes. Such creatures
were dependent on practically the same condi-
tions that limit and control their lives at the
present time. In light of our knowledge of
cosmic development it is apparent fowls might
live where ruminants would have died. A bird
may perch, gather its food from and build its
nest in the branches of trees so deeply sub-
merged in water as to be prohibitive to land
animals. This view has been confirmed by the
location of fossil remains of quadrupeds and
creeping things which appear together, first, in
the Eocene period of the Ccnozoic Age of the
earth. This period was long after the advent
of birds.

[50]

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

These facts asserted by geologists constitute
another agreement with the Mosaic narrative,
which places the appearance of cattle and
creeping things simultaneously on the sixth
day.

19. According to biologic geology and the
theory of evolution man was the last animal to
be developed.

The Scriptural order of creation is the same.

In the foregoing comparison of the evolution
of nature and the Creation as given in the First
Book of Genesis there exist as a whole two most
extraordinary similarities; similarity of order, or
sequence as to time, in which the several parts
of the cosmos were created ; and similarity as
to the manner or means by which they were
evolved.

I. As to the sequence required by Evolution
and the Scriptural order of Creation, if the fore-
going analysis be correct, there is not one item
misplaced in either account, not one error to the
discredit of either theory. This agreement of
results derived from two independent sources of
knowledge constitutes in itself a very strong
probability of the truth of each source. Each
testifies reciprocally for the other. Scientific
Evolution proves the Scriptural account to be
true; and the Scriptural account, as a Revela-
tion from God, proves Scientific Evolution to be
[51]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

true. No such similarity exists between false-
hood and falsehood, or falsehood and truth, but
only between truth and truth.

If each of the events of creation as recorded
by Moses were so independent as in no manner
to be related to one another, or one not to be
necessarily precedent to another, the chance
of stating, say, fifteen such independent events
in their correct order, without knowledge to
guide their narration, would be more than one
million times a million in favor of a mistake.

But in the Mosaic order there are at least
seven events so far independent that none of
them give the clue of sequence for the follow-
ing events: namely, that plant life should have
been created before the sun appeared; that the
sun should not have appeared until the fourth
day, instead of being accounted the first of all
things ; that the earth should not have been
considered the first to have been created even
before the sun, and the sun and stars all formed
subsequently and as attendants on the earth ;
that fishes should have been made next to
plants ; then fowls, then cattle, and man last
instead of first, as an unlearned and vain man
would have ranked himself.

Now when there are seven independent facts
to be narrated, and there is only one correct
order of narration, there are five thousand and
thirty- nine chances they will be stated in an in-

The Mosaic Narrative of the Creation

correct manner to one chance that they will be
stated properly, if the narrator has no knowl-
edge or clue. This mathematical computation
gives some idea of the pitfalls which lay in the
path of the sacred writer when he staked the
reputation of his Revelation on the order ot
events as he narrated them. But when the
probabilities against the happening of an event
are as great as those mentioned above, and are
all overcome, and a true record claiming to be
inspired is written, the candid mind is com-
pelled to jneld belief to the justice of the claim
of revelation in proportion to the chances over-
come. There are few subjects in life with five
thousand and thirty-nine chances in their favor
to only one against them to which men do not
give their implicit assent.

2. No less remarkable is the manner in which
the Scriptures declare the Creation was evolved.
When Moses wrote, some fifteen hundred years
before Christ, there was not, as far as is known,
any mathematical knowledge of the laws of
gravitation, and of their effects in causing
bodies to revolve in orbits, and in producing
condensation of gases; of electricity in bring-
ing about the chemical union of the elements ;
no telescopes to inform of the rotation of suns
on their axes, and the formation of rings or
lumps on their equators, and when the cen-
trifugal force of globes became greater than
[53]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

their centripetal force to cause planets or satel-
lites to be abandoned to independent existences.

And yet every one of these phenomena
enumerated in this chapter, and other physical
facts, omitted as not being essential to a clear
understanding of the argument, are implied, and
absolutely involved in the Mosaic Cosmogony.

When it required the mathematical genius of
La Place, surrounded with the appliances of
modern research and inspired with the re-
corded learning of all the ages, to propound
the Nebular Hypothesis which ]\Ioses gave
to the world in its integrity some thirty-three
hundred years before, it would, indeed, seem on
ordinary principles of human reasoning, that
the Mosaic Narrative has been proved by this
same Nebular Hypothesis to have been dictated
by superhuman knowledge.

[54]

SPECIAL CREATIONS OR EVOLUTION

THE Christian world received a great
shock when the theory of Evolution was
announced. Men had been so accustomed to
believe that the Mosaic narrative implied special
and distinct creative acts by God of the great
events of the Cosmos in each day of twenty-four
hours, for six consecutive days, they regarded
the idea of the evolution of this earth stretch-
ing over millions of years, and the creation of
vegetal and animal life occupying eons in its
development from lower orders as rank heresy
contrary to the inspired Word of Holy Scrip-
ture, and therefore to be rejected as attacking
the foundations of Christian belief.

Naturally men thus assailed in their most
cherished opinions would be indignant, and in
proportion to their indignation they would deny,
and deny without calm and adequate investiga-
tion of the merits of the new doctrine. But not-
withstanding the denials of theologians, many
students of nature have been ceaselessly at
work investigating every department of phys-
ics, excavating the strata of the earth's crust,
making extended and reliable experiments in
[55]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity-
biology, and doing all other things tending to
unfold the order of events in the great past,
until so considerable an amount of cumulative
evidence has been obtained that nearly all who
have entered upon the study have been con-
vinced that the Great First Cause has produced
the universe and all things therein contained,
not by special creations of each revolving
sphere, and of each family of plants and animals
in six solar days, but by the creation of primeval
matter, by bestowing on it certain qualities, and
by the establishment of laws to govern its
motions. It is submitted that the time has
about come when the Christian, believing as he
must that nature and the Scriptures both prq-
ceed from God, and therefore are harmonious,
should lay aside all prejudice and all fear, and
intelligently and learnedly investigate the won-
derful story of Creation narrated in the first
chapters of Genesis, for the purpose of ascer-
taining if there is in fact any antagonism be-
tween its true meaning and what is accepted as
the manner of creation by almost all honest
students of science.

I. Probably the Mosaic account in having so
distinctly and repeatedly described the order of
creation as having taken place on the " first,"
"second," "third," etc., days, has done more
than by any other phrases in the narrative to
prejudice the Christian mind against the accep-
[56 J

Special Creations or Evolution

tance of the evolution theory — because this
theory requires vast numbers of years for the
development of each period of creation.

Now it is herein urged the inspired Word
does not describe a day of twenty-four hours in
marking the eras of creation, and for the argu-
ment to be conclusive to Christian judgment
this fact should be proved from the narrative
of Moses and not from any nebular or other
physical hypothesis. It is therefore necessary
in order to make each subdivision of the sub-
ject complete, to reiterate somewhat the argu-
ment of a portion of the previous chapter.^

During the first two creative days, or periods,
Genesis declares : " The earth was without form,
and void; and darkness was upon the face of
the deep : and the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters. And God said, Let there
be light: and there was light. And God saw
the light, that it was good : and God divided the
light from the darkness. And God called the
light day, and the darkness he called night:
and the evening and the morning were the
first day. And God said. Let there be a firma-
ment in the midst of the waters: and let it

1 Saint Augustine, Origen, and some of the other fathers of
the early Christian church, Professors Hahn, De Luc, Lee, and
Wait, of England, and Silliman and Guyot, of the United
States, were of opinion that the word "day" in the Mosaic
narrative represented periods of indefinite length. — Hitch-
cock's " Elementary Geology."

[57]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity-
divide the waters from the waters. And God
made the firmament, and divided the waters
which were under the firmament from the
waters which were above the firmament: and
it was so. And God called the firmament
Heaven : and the evening and the morning
were the second day. . . . And God said, Let
there be lights in the firmament of the heaven,
to divide the day from the iiigJit ; and let
let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for
days, and years. And let them be for lights in
the firmament of the heaven to give light upon
the earth : and it was so. And God made two
great lights ; the greater light to rule the day,
.and the lesser light to rule the night: the stars
also. And God set them in the firmament of
the heaven to give light upon the earth, And
to rule over the day, and over the night, and
to divide the light from the darkness : and God
saw that it was good. And the evening and
the morning were the fourth day,"

A. The division of time composed of twenty-
four hours defined and understood at present as
a day, is due to the rotation of the earth on its
axis, thus presenting its entire surface to the
sun in twenty-four hours. The portion of its
sphere opposite the sun we call day, the por-
tion not opposite, night. That such a period,
namely, the solar day, was not intended to be
described by Moses by the expression, " And
[58]

Special Creations or Evolution

the evening and the morning were the first
day," is evident, because it was not until the
second day that God said, " Let there be a fir-
mament in the midst of the waters (spheres),
and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament and divided
the waters which were under the firmament (the
earth) from the waters which were above the
firmament (stars) ; and it was so. And God
called the firmament Heaven. And the even-
ing and the morning were the second day."

Now the meaning of the word "firmament"
is the space in which the stars and sun re-
volve. It was called by Moses " Heaven." It
is still called " The Heavens." One of the
functions of the firmament was to " divide the
waters from the waters," that is, sphere from
sphere, to allow space in which these spheres
might revolve in their orbits and rotate on their
axes. If there was no space in which they
might rotate, for the firmament was not created
until the second day, and as the day of twenty-
four hours is due to the rotation of the earth on
its axis, it is plain the expression, "And the
evening and the morning were the first day,"
is not to be interpreted as a day of twenty-
four hours.

B. The declaration, "And God said. Let
there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,"
that is in the midst of the spheres, "And God
[59]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

made the firmament and divided the waters
which were under the firmament" (that is, the
earth, for the earth and heavens are often
spoken of as the heavens above and the earth
beneath), " from the waters which were above
the firmament," is explicable only on the theory
that the spheres or stars, inchiding the earth,
were divided from one another into separate
orbs on the second day.

From the definition of the solar day, namely,
the rotation by the earth on its axis, there could
have been no such day until after the creation
of this second period in which the earth took on
its independent rotation. So that the expres-
sion, " And the evening and the morning were
the first day " could not have been used for a
day of twenty-four hours.

C. To define the expressions. And the even-
ing and the morning were the "first," " second"
etc., day, as solar days is antagonistic to the crea-
tions o{ \\\z fonrtJi day.

" And God said. Let there be lights in the fir-
mament of the lieaven to divide tlie day from the
night," . . . "and ior days, 2ind years; And let
them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven
to give light upon the earth : , . . And to rule
over the day, and over the night, and to divide
the light from the darkness : . . . And the even-
ing and the mgrning were \hQ fourth day."

It is asserted that during this fourth day or
[60]

Special Creations or Evolution

epoch the first solar day was created as we
know it. Such is the unequivocal statement
that God then made lights to divide the day
from the night, and to rule over the day and
over the night.

The interpretation of the phrases '^ first day"
'' second day," and ^' third day," etc., as great
epochs of creation, and not as solar days, which
were established only in the fourth day or epoch,
harmonizes the entire account, and when an
interpretation performs correctly this office all
sensible men on all occasions adopt it. " One
day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and
a thousand years as one day."

D. The expression in the first creative period,
"And God said, Let there be light and there
was light. And God saw the light was good,
and God divided the light from the darkness"
will now be observed to refer to a different
character of light from that of the sun, probably
to the luminosity of the condensing gases or
nebulae, because it is most distinctly stated, it
was not until the fourth day the sun and moon
appeared, and one of their functions was " to
divide the light from the darkness." It is urged,
therefore, that the true interpretation of the
Mosaic narrative does not set limited periods
marked by the diurnal rotation of the earth on
its axis as the divisions of time in which Al-
mighty God made His several creations. On
[6i]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

the contrary, it is contended herein, such an
explanation is antagonistic to the plain meaning
of His Holy Word, and the assignment of long
periods of time, occupying millions of years in
each epoch, is entirely compatible with the
Divine Revelation of Creation.

E. The fourth commandment of the Deca-
logue announced by Moses from Mount Sinai is
in these words, " Remember that thou keep
holy the Sabbath-day. Six days shalt thou
labor, and do all that thou hast to do ; but the
seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.
In it thou shalt do no manner of work; thou,
and thy son, and thy daughter, thy man-servant,
and thy maid-servant, thy cattle, and the stranger
that is within thy gates. For in six days the
Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all
that in them is, and rested the seventh day:
wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day,
and hallowed it."

A cursory reading of this commandment
would seem to indicate from its comparison to
the days assigned the Israelites respectively for
labor and for hallowed rest that the Creation
was made by God in six solar days of twenty-
four hours each. This interpretation has been
advanced to the Christian conscience as an argu-
ment against the theory of Evolution which
requires immense periods of time for the de-
velopment of the heaven and earth. It is,
[62]

Special Creations or Evolution

therefore, important for those who believe the
Scriptures to be inerrant to determine what is
the correct signification of the words used in
the commandment.

a. A cardinal rule adopted by all bodies
having the ascertainment of the meaning of
writings is to investigate the circumstances giv-
ing rise to and surrounding the document, thus
placing the judge, as far as possible mentally,
under the influences which affected the writer —
in a word, to reproduce the occasion. This
rule has its reason in the fact that men usually
act in the same manner when impelled by
similar causes.

The Israelites had not long before the delivery
of this commandment escaped from Egypt by
passing between the rolled-up water walls of
the Red Sea and were entering upon their long
journey towards the Promised Land. For such
a multitude of men, women, and children, with-
out stores and without habitations, in a barren
wilderness to survive pestilence, famine, and
anarchy in the forty years of wanderings before
them, the Lord God, who was directing their
ways and supplying their necessities, gave to
them through Moses many laws and ordinances
applicable to their physical, social, and moral
conduct. These are enumerated in the Second
Book of Moses called Exodus.

To wax strong in body and mind ; to main-
[ '53 ]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

tain their numbers adequately to subdue the
warHke people which held the country around
about the river Jordan, and whom they were
to meet in battle ; to acknowledge and worship
and love gratefully the God who was making
them His peculiar people, it was necessary
among other things, to establish periods for
labor and rest; and as the most appropriate
time for worship, to consecrate the days of rest
to the glory and adoration of Jehovah.

b. The Israelites at the time of the delivery
of the Ten Commandments were acquainted
with the order of Creation as narrated by Moses
in the First Chapter of Genesis. This occupied
what we have called six epoch-days.

c. The language often adopted throughout the
Old Testament is highly metaphorical. Bodily
parts and human actions are frequently attrib-
uted to God. He is described as possessing a
mouth, a terrible voice, an outstretched arm; as
having walked in the garden of Eden ; as a man
of war ; to have come to see the Tower of Babel ;
to have laughed, and to have awakened as one
out of a sleep ; to have spoken face to face with
Moses ; to have tempted Abraham ; to have
repented of having made man, etc., etc.

d. Two of the most effective methods of argu-
mentative persuasion are by metaphor and by
simile. To endow inanimate things or super-
natural ideas with animal attributes, and partic-

[64]

Special Creations or Evolution

iilarly with qualities similar to those possessed
by humanity is a highly attractive manner of
presentation of the thought, and sometimes more
effective than a metaphysical disquisition or log-
ical argument.

So with the employment of similes and com-
parisons. The use of an appropriate simile is
delightfully fascinating. Its concreteness brings
out in bold relief the idea to be enforced, and its
analogy to the subject discussed often consti-
tutes a persuasive appeal.

e. In this commandment there are found both
of these styles of rhetorical expression. It em-
ploys the metaphorical method in stating that
God " rested " the seventh day. This was an ex-
ceedingly powerful manner to enforce the duty
of rest on the Israelites. It asserted that their
Lord God who had performed such wonders for
them, who was daily supplying their necessities,
and was employing the terrible forces of nature
as an attendant on His presence on Mount Sinai,
"rested" after His work of Creation, and they
were called upon to imitate Him. Such an
appeal — the imitation of the Almighty — must
have affected their hearts as no other considera-
tion could have done.

This statement that God " rested " was, of

course, a metaphor. It is perfectly inadmissible

to the Christian mind to believe that God, the

Creator of all Things ; that He whose attributes

5 [65]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity-
are omnipotence and omniscience; that a Being
without body or parts " rested," as a tired mor-
tal would rest, after the completion of the Crea-
tion. We have, therefore, a part of this com-
mandment delivered in a metaphorical style,
and a strong argument is thereby presented that
its other parts are not necessarily to be con-
strued in a "literal" manner, if such literal
interpretation causes it to clash with known
facts.

f. It so happened that the evolution of the
Cosmos was distinguished by six very distinct
phenomena, and were described in the Mosaic
narrative as created on successive " days," al-
though plainly, as we have shown, not solar
days of twenty-four hours each. But six solar
days were to be considered, under the provi-
dence of Jehovah, as affecting the Israelites in
their human relations and activities, as a period
for labor, and one day, the seventh, for rest and
worship of Himself. It was a wise and humane
ordinance, adapted to the physical needs of men
then, as now, — for all men after a period of six
days of toil long for one day of rest, and again
at the expiration of the latter are so revived they
are anxious to return to their labors.

What more skilful method of giving the

greatest possible effect to the commandment, of

bringing it most energetically to the minds and

consciences of the Israelites, than to adopt the

[66]

Special Creations or Evolution

beautiful and effective simile between the periods,
or creative days, of heaven and earth, and the
secular days in which man should alternately
labor and rest; using, as is most frequently the
case in similes, a word with a double significa-
tion, as was indeed done with the same word in
the Mosaic narrative. In this instance it was
the word " day," applicable in one sense to the
great epoch-days, each of unknown millions of
years in which God's Creation had been evolv-
ing; and suitable in its other meaning to the
short periods of twenty-four hours^ the limit of
man's feeble capacity for labor.

A further corroborating evidence of the im-
mense and indefinite length of the creative days
as used in this commandment is the length of
the "seventh day," wherein the Creator rested,
and which " seventh day," as far as knowledge
or revelation has been vouchsafed to man, has
not yet terminated.

There is nothing, therefore, in the fourth com-
mandment expressed or implied which is contra-
dictory to an interpretation which harmonizes it
with all the phenomena of nature and the deduc-
tions of geologic science,

2. If the Inspired Word of God had said dis-
tinctly, each individual nebula and sun and
planet and plant and animal were special crea-
tions, the writer would accept it as unqualifiedly
true, believing it was within His almighty power
[67 1

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

and will to have made them in that manner.
But after a careful consideration of the Inspired
narrative no such declaration is believed to have
been made, but on the contrary the text taken
in its entirety indicates a progressive develop-
ment and not distinct creations.

A. Special creations indicative of weakness.

The Christian mind regards the power of God
to be infinite, all-wise, omnipotent. There is
nothing beyond the scope of His IMightiness.
Now humanly thinking, it is an evidence of
capacity to generalize. An inferior intelligence
passes on each subject separately; a superior
mind groups them under classes. A savage
makes separate arrow after arrow with his own
hands ; the intelligent mechanic constructs a
machine to turn out hundreds of gross daily.
To suppose Almighty God required a solar day
or an eon in which to make light, another such
period to form the firmament and divide the
stars from one another, another to produce vege-
tal life, and another beasts and man, is putting a
very decided limit to the capacity of Omnipo-
tence. The a priori Christian conception of
God should be rather that all of these things
could have been made by one fiat. It is an im-
peachment of His infinite omniscience to imag-
ine He made light experimentally and waited to
see if it was good before He dared to proceed
with the next order of creation. The ''light*'
[68]

Special Creations or Evolution

pleased Him, and He simply declared It was
" good."

How much greater the power and wisdom to
have brought matter out of nothing, to have
endowed it with its inconceivably numerous qual-
ities, and to have established for its governance
the harmonious laws and self-development which
rule things, physical and metaphysical, all by
a single decree, knowing the evolution of the
utmost future in the first instant of creation?
This explanation satisfies the words of the text,
and harmonizes them with all the knowledge
received from astronomy, geology, and biology.
Such a harmonizing method of interpretation is
universally adopted by the highest judicial tri-
bunals of all enlightened countries.

Words used at periods far distant in time
from the present, whose meanings may have
changed in both a scientific and popular signifi-
cation, and especially when written in a foreign
language, should never be allowed to destroy
the value of their own narrative by being ren-
dered in such a cramped sense as to contradict
the same words used in another sense in a
different place, or to antagonize known facts.

B. Periods of Creation.

It is, however, plain from the inspired narra-
tive, that creation as it exists at present was
not completed at one instant. There was suc-
cession of created things and succession of
[69]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

periods of creation. If the Christian evolution-
ary theory be adopted, namely, that God — the
God revealed by Moses in the Old Testament, and
represented by Jesus Christ in the New Testament
— made matter by His own power, and endowed
it with its qualities and laws, then each day
described in the First Chapter of Genesis con-
stituted a great epoch of evolution so conspic-
uous as in a popular account to deserve special
mention, and the fact of such eras being enu-
merated as the " first," or " second," day, etc. ;
or that certain very important things were
respectively created in them, is not conclusive
that such periods were definite days of twenty-
four hours, or the creations described to have
taken place therein were special creations, in-
stead of being eras distinguished by the evolu-
tion of worlds from primordial matter in the
earlier periods, and the evolution of vegetal and
animal life from simpler and less homogeneous
forms in the later epochs ; and each brought
about by and contained in the original creative
act described by the words, " And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters."

When any interpretation given to an enumera-
tion of days and to creations within such days
is opposed to all the observed facts of the
formations and strata of the earth's crust and to
all the fossil life imbedded therein, such in-
terpretation should not be adopted, except in
[70]

Special Creations or Evolution

obedience to the most unequivocal language ;
and when the language is equivocal that mean-
ing should be assigned to it which agrees with
all the ascertained knowledge on the subject.
If this logicalmanner of interpretation be adopted
there is no warrant in the Holy Word to exclude
the hypothesis that God with His unUmited
power impressed in the Beginning on both in-
organic and organic matter the ability to evolve
into the beautiful and wonderful Cosmos, with
possibly the high destiny yet before it, in the
infinite future, to surpass its present develop-
ment as much as it now does the earliest eras
of its existence.

C. The verb " Create."

The phrase, " In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth," does not necessarily
imply a special creation of each of the things
therein contained. The verb " Create " has no
other signification than the expression of the
the idea " to bring into existence." It does
not declare the manner of production, the agen-
cies employed, or the number of processes gone
through with, but simply the idea "of causing
to exist."

A man who creates a machine and by it
turns out ten thousand nails a day is as veritably
a creator of such nails as the mechanic who
creates each individual nail by blows with his
hammer on the anvil.

[71]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

D. The laws of nature.

Creation consists not only of matter but of
the physical laws governing it. Matter in motion
without laws would be chaos.

Evolution has had no influence on the qual-
ities of matter or on the laws of nature. God
made them perfect in the beginning. They
never change. So far as we know, or physics
teaches, they never have changed. When " the
Spirit of God moved over the Avaters " the
Christian understands it was at that instant they
were ordained, perfect in all their details, and
beyond comprehension in their complexity and
harmony. All evolutionists agree they are im-
mutable. In this sense God created all things
in the Beginning. He had the omnipotence in
the very Beginning to endow matter under the
influence of these laws with the power to evolve
this marvellous Cosmos, and the omniscience to
know their utmost results in the future. To
possess these attributes of power and knowledge
demonstrates higher capacity than a series of
special creations. To believe in Evolution we
t-t/yix glorify God ; to adhere to Special Creations we
attach the limit to His power which usually
characterizes inferiority.

3. An argument of much weight is the improb-
ability that an all wise and merciful God would
have specially created beings of such limited
capacities and subject to so much pain and
[ 7-^ ]

special Creations or Evolution

misery as characterize the entire animal creation.
It has been said by a loving field naturalist,
almost all wild life ends in tragedy. We know
animals are the victims of nearly all the diseases
affecting mankind, and when attacked they
must suffer the same pains. To suppose God
made them, and they never fell by the Sin of
Disobedience, to exist in so imperfect and
miserable a state as they are subject to, is to
the moral sense of many good men a very dis-
tressing thought, and irreconcilable with the
infinite love they believe is an attribute of their
Heavenly Father.

The conception of Special Creations seems
necessarily to imply God has decreed this life
should be to all His creatures a life of physical
disease and consequent on it of mental distress.
Men oppressed with the tortures of fevers, of
the pains of malignant sores, of the malforma-
tions of bodily structure, have often cried out
against their lot. There is no reason to sup-
pose brutes would not make the same com-
plaints if they had the power of speech. Special
creation, therefore, apparently involves either
an imperfectness of creation in God, which is
entirely inadmissible, or a want of pity for
sufferings, which is equally false. But the
hypothesis of Evolution largely relieves the sub-
ject of all these difficulties.

Evolution of animal life is based primarily
[73]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

on Free Will — a free will to make efiforts to
avoid dangers and to pursue the advantageous.
A broad conception of Evolution is, Almighty
God has chosen to create primordial life, and
to ordain that from the smallest beginnings it
should develop by its own capacities into higher
and higher states until it has reached its present
complex and heterogeneous condition — its pres- .
ent state being only one position and one in-
stant in its evolution, and which will be, in the
far future, surpassed by higher and still higher
developments beyond the thought of man to
conceive.

The greatest good to the greatest number is
the legend on the banner of Evolution,

To accomplish these grand results all organic
beings must die to make way for new and
better forms and functions. The earth is too
small to hold all the dead and the living. To
compel animals to pursue the advantageous,
and thus acquire new characteristics, they must
be made to feel the pains attendant on diso-
bedience of the laws of life. But mingled
with these two direful calamities, disease and
death, there is yet so much pleasure in living,
such compensation for the unhappiness of life,
that all animals, notwithstanding pain, hunger,
and distress of feelings, universally and instinc-
tively flee from death. So, balancing the great
blessings and ills of life, both necessary for its
[74]

Special Creations or Evolution

evolution, the judgment instinctively declares
life is sweet; and while much suffering exists,
there is yet more pleasure ; and if assured of
a blissful immortahty every soul is ready and
eager to thank God that its body was born.

Evolution is, therefore, full of mercy and
of promise. Its entire aim and the reason for
existence of pain and death are the betterment
of the hving organism. Every creature which
has existed from the dawn of life has been
endeavoring consciously and subconsciously to
adapt itself to its surroundings, — to live and to
grow so as to avoid pain, to postpone death,
and to seek contentment. The efforts to ac-
complish these results have produced changes
in functions and structures. These have been
transmitted to progeny, and in turn improved
on by them, until age by age, all living forms
have better accommodated themselves to their
environments, but with some retrogressions, and
by so doing have more and more avoided the
ills of the flesh, have increased their longev-
ity, and have enjoyed intenser pleasures of
existence.

This is Evolution. This is the merciful law
whereby all life is growing, although slowly,
yet surely, more exempt from distress and
more capable of appreciating the blessings of
this earth.

4. To the Christian mind the rocks and
[75]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

strata of the earth's crust, and the milHons of
fossils of pre-existing ages contained therein,
are leaves of the book of nature, whereon are
written by its Divine Creator the past history
of the earth. This record is as authentic and
credible as any other knowledge. The only
question being, as in all other writings, its true
meaning. The special question for our con-
sideration is, Does it show in so clear a manner
an evolutionary development of living organ-
isms as to render improbable the theory of
Special Creations?

It is undoubtedly true much has been un-
earthed pointing to Evolution as the great
means employed to differentiate living forms,
and much yet remains to be found to prove
in any particular case that Evolution not only
was the cause of this differentiation, but no
other cause contributed to it. What are called
" missing links " are noticed in every genus. In
no one family of organisms has the descent from
earlier forms been made absolutely conclusive,
for an absolute conclusion is rarely reached on cir-
cumstantial evidence. Yet a very near approach
to a complete chain has, however, been found in
several classes, among which may be mentioned
the links from gill-breathing fish to gill-breath-
ing lizards, or lizard-fish ; from lizard-fish to
lizards with both gills and lungs ; from these
latter to amphibians, which start with gills, then
[76]

Soecial Creations or Evolution

lose them and possess lungs alone; from these
amphibians to lizard-birds ; and finally from
lizard-birds to ordinary fowls entirely divorced
from a water habitat.

When such a succession of connected and
allied forms is found to exist the chance of
an independent origin is almost nil, while the
chances of a relationship from a common an-
cestor are enormously great.

5. The embryonic development of organisms
is to the scientific student inexplicable except
on the theory of Evolution. The presence in
the egg of a bird during the early stages of its
incubation of gill-like appendages enforces a
conclusion that the far-off ancestor of the fowl
possessed gills and breathed by means of
water and must have been a creature allied
to fishes.

Von Baer, a distinguished biologist, in study-
ing embryonic life observed facts which have
justified the following statements, quoted in
the language of Mr. Herbert Spencer: " In its
earliest stage, every organism has the greatest
number of characters in common with all other
organisms in their earliest stages; that at a
stage somewhat later, its structure is like the
structures displayed at corresponding phases by
a less extensive multitude of organisms; that
at each subsequent stage traits are acquired
which successively distinguish the developing
[77J

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

embryo from groups of embryos that it previ-
ously resembled — thus step by step diminishing
the group of embryos which it still resem-
bles; and that thus the class of similar forms
is finally narrowed to the species of which it is
a member. This abstract proposition will per-
haps not be fully realized by the general reader.
It will be best to restate it in a concrete shape.
The germ out of which a human being is
evolved differs in no visible respect from the
germ out of which every animal and plant
is evolved. The first conspicuous structural
change undergone by this human germ is one
characterizing the germs of animals only — dif-
ferentiates them from the germs of plants. The
next distinction established is a distinction
exhibited by all Vertebrata; but never ex-
hibited by Annulosa, JMollusca, or Celenterata.
Instead of continuing to resemble, as it now
does, the rudiments of all fishes, reptiles, birds,
and mammals, this rudiment of a man assumes
a structure that is seen only in the rudiments
of mammals. Later, the embryo undergoes
changes which exclude it from the group of im-
placental mammals, and prove that it belongs
to the group of placental mammals. Later
still, it grows unlike the embryos of those
placental mammals distinguished as ungulate
or hoofed, and continues to resemble only
the unguiculated or clawed. By and by it
[78]

Special Creations or Evolution

ceases to be like any fetuses but those of the
quadrumana; and eventually the fetuses of only
the higher quadrumana are simulated. Lastly,
at birth, the infant, belonging to whichever race
it may, is structurally very much like the in-
fants of all other human races; and only after-
wards acquires those various minor peculiarities
of form that distinguish the variety of man to
which it belongs.

" The generalization here expressed and
illustrated must not be confounded with an
erroneous semblance of it that has obtained con-
siderable currency. An impression has been
given by those who have popularized the state-
ments of embryologists, that during its develop-
ment each higher organism passes through
stages in which it resembles the adult forms of
lower organisms — that the embryo of a man is
at one time like a fish and at another time like
a reptile. This is not the fact. The fact estab-
lished is that up to a certain point the embryos
of a man and a fish continue similar, and that
then differences begin to appear and increase —
the one embryo approaching more and more
towards the form of a fish, the other diverging
from it more and more.

"The reader must also be cautioned against

accepting this generalization as exact. The

likenesses thus successively displayed are not

precise, but approximate. Only leading char-

[79]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

acteristics are the same ; not all the details.
Making all requisite qualifications, however,
these resemblances remain conspicuous; and
the fact that they follow each other in the way
described is a fact of great significance."

6. Without pursuing the physical argument
further to establish the probability of Evolution
having been the means employed by God to
develop His Creation, this chapter may be
briefly summarized by saying, it is believed
that no warrant is to be found in the Inspired
Word of God for requiring mankind to accept
the theory of Special Creations ; that its lan-
guage is to a marked extent antagonistic to
the idea that anything like solar days divided
the great epochs of creation ; that immense
periods of time or eras, having been shown to
be the probable meaning of the phrases, "first,"
"second," etc., days, the order of creation as
narrated by Moses, was a succession of physical
developments, in each instance proceeding from
the simple to the complex — the long epochs
and the order of events both being in exact
accord with the requirements of Evolution ; that
Special Creations in a human point of view do
not indicate the Omnipotence and Omniscience
which creation by Evolution implies; that de-
velopment by Evolution is full of hope that
pain, misery, and sin will eventually be abol-
ished, whereas there is nothing but gloom for
[80]

Special Creations or Evolution

man and beast if God has finished His Creation;
and finally that Special Creations are refuted
in every revolving planet, by every stratum of
the earth's crust, and in every fossil allied with
other forms, dead and living, and by the
changes now going on among living organisms.
In a word, there is no warrant in God's Holy
Word that a profound agreement should not
exist between physical Evolution and orthodox
Christianity.

[8i]

EVOLUTION AND MAN

ALMOST all the advocates of Evolution are
agreed man has been as much the pro-
duct of evolution as any other animal. The
proposition that the human race has sprung
from lower orders of life has been and still is
shocking to many individuals and accordingly
is indignantly rejected by them. A leading and
valuable characteristic of mankind is personal
vanity if controlled by facts, but vicious if
based solely on self-esteem. Before the inven-
tion of the telescope man supposed the stars
revolved around his abode for his delectation ;
the sun was created for the express purpose
of lighting this little globe ; the earth was made
for himself; and even within the past year, a
distinguished scientist has asserted our sun is
the centre of all of God's universes. With such
vainglorious conceptions of his importance, it
is difficult for such a creature to pass judg-
ment on his own origin and merits, and to ar-
rive at the conclusion that he, in many respects,
is an animal pure and simple, with an ancestry
leading back through the lowest forms of life.
But with this hypothesis of the descent of
man the Christian Evolutionist should have no
[82]

Evolution and Man

quarrel. There is nothing in the revealed Word
antagonistic to this humble origin of physical
and mental man, but on the contrary it is rather
strongly confirmatory of its truth. In the second
chapter of Genesis, verse nineteen, it is written,
" And out of the ground the Lord God formed
every beast of the field and every fowl of the
air." The " ground " is thereby declared ex-
pressly to be the material from which the beast
was formed. Again, in the second chapter of
Genesis, verse seven, it is written, "And the
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,"
etc. The " dust of the ground," which in sub-
stance is " the ground," is thereby declared
expressly to be the material from which man
was formed.^

So that as far as the Inspired narrative dis-
closes the physical origin of beast and of man,
they were both made of the same material, and
Evolution and Christianity on this point should
not be at war.

1 The phrase "dust of the ground" may have been in-
tended to indicate that as " dust " was the uppermost, or last
stratum of the earth, so man was the last of the great fami-
lies of animals to be formed therefrom.

[83]

EVOLUTION AND MENTALITY

EVOLUTIONISTS, such as Darwin and
Spencer, assert substantially that all life,
including man's, probably sprang from a blurred,
undetermined feeling in some protoplasmic cell
which answered to a single nervous pulsation
or shock. From this shock it is supposed a
consciousness was developed ; and next, sensa-
tions, by a number of rapid successions of such
shocks or feelings; these sensations growing
more vivid and complex with the physical ad-
vance of the animal, until the dawn of mental
life.

Let it be noticed, this theory does not ac-
count for the creation of the first nervous
shock, but given that, however feeble, simple,
and undetermined, evolution is competent to
build on it, to render it more complex, and
finally to develop mentality of the highest
order.

With this hypothesis it is submitted the Chris-
tian should also have no quarrel. Indeed, if
the scientist should be able to develop pri-
mordial cells, from inorganic matter, and by
electricity or otherwise to start a pulsation or

[H]

Evolution and Mentality

nervous shock therein, and then by food, adapta-
tion to environment, etc., cause such pulsations
to become so frequent as to produce sensations
and distinct feelings, and thus actually to origi-
nate life, the Christian need have no concern,
for fear it would rob his God of the credit of
creation, for any capacity of inorganic matter to
evolve into organic life would be inherent in
such matter, and was put therein when " the
Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters."
The case would be different only in quality of
effect and not in causation from the chemical
union, — for example, of chlorine and sodium.
The former is a dense yellow, suffocating, poi-
sonous gas, and the latter, a soft, silver-like metal
which takes fire in contact with water. To-
gether they form common table salt, a valuable
substance having new and distinct properties
from each of its constituents. Man may bring
matter in juxtaposition, but he cannot add to
it, or withdraw anything from it. Whatever
changes take place are all inherent in the sub-
stances awaiting solely for appropriate oppor-
tunities.

We have seen in the preceding chapter that
the material out of which God formed beasts,
etc., was the " ground." So far as the divine
account indicates, the entire animal, physical
and mental, sprang from a material substance
— " the ground," which is doubtless a figurative
[85]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

expression for " matter " with its several quali-
ties. No special creation of the mind is stated,
but only that " beasts " were formed from the
" ground " ; and if it can be shown animals pos-
sess, in addition to a physical organism, the
mental faculties of reasoning and the emotional
qualities and memory, then the power to reason,
and to love, to hate, to remember, etc., has the
warrant of Holy Scripture that they may have
been formed from the ground, or in other words,
they may be the result of the physical proper-
ties of matter. It is repeated, there should
be no reluctance in investigating the legiti-
mate phenomena of nature, and all the old-time
fear of endowing animals with logical powers
and the desire of reducing their mental ac-
tions to mere instincts should be laid aside in
a fearless and truthful consideration of the
subject.

A blind dog has been known to recognize his
master by the scent given off. This recognition
involves as much logical and mnemonic pro-
cesses as the proposition that a law of a State
of the United States relieving its citizens from
paying their debts to citizens of other States is
a violation of the Federal Constitution and void.
Each may be expanded into the syllogism
whereby the mental process will be more clearly
seen. The blind dog goes through this train of
reasoning.

[86]

Evolution and Mentality-
Major premise : My master, I remember, has

a certain kind of odor;
Minor premise : This odor I now smell on

putting my nose to a person

is of that character.
Conclusion : Therefore the person I now

smell is my master.

The jurist adopts the same logic.

Major premise : The Federal Constitution de-
clares to be void laws of a
State impairing the obligations
of contracts.

Minor premise : This law by relieving its citi-
zens from paying their debts to
citizens of other States is of
that character.

Conclusion : Therefore this law is a viola-

tion of the Federal Constitution
and void.

A number of instances of both inductive and
deductive reasoning in animals might be cited
and expanded into syllogisms, showing that
their processes of thought are exactly similar
to those of man's.

No extended argument is needed to prove

animals possess, more or less strongly, all the

emotional faculties, as fear, hatred, revenge,

maternal love, love of associates, generosity,

[87]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

and in some instances denial of self, or altru-
ism. They are also endowed with Memory
and Free-Will to give effect to these faculties.
The writer, with the most casual observation,
has seen the following instances of emotional
characteristics in animals: A male fowl of the
barnyard species hunt for and find a worm,
and then by a peculiar cluck call a hen ; she
recognizing the invitation came quickly and ate
the worm. A mare in a field with her colt
deliberately and continually place herself be-
tween the colt and a bad-tempered horse, and
receive on her jaw a kick from the latter in
protecting her young. A dog, which had been
fired at with a pistol from a window to pre-
vent his prowling about a country-house at
night, run away as soon as he heard the win-
dow open. An otherwise peaceable bull en-
deavor to attack persons who were seeking to
administer medicine to a cow with colic, the
cow being of his herd. A cow share her bran
with her calf. A dog which had been struck at
with a whip by an ill-tempered man riding in a
vehicle, actually lie in wait again and again for
the same man to pass and then revengefully and
with hatred attack him. Another dog and a
small boy have been shown to the writer by the
mother, who declared her child had been rescued
from drowning in an adjacent canal by the
animal.

[88]

Evolution and Mentality

The above acts embraced love, courage,
fear, social obligation, maternal care, hatred,
revenge, kindness, and memory, and were
all similar in character and sprang from the
same mental processes as those performed by
mankind.

Evolutionists generally believe these logical
and emotional faculties have developed by ex-
perience, and been transmitted by heredity to
each animal in its upward progress. The writer,
who trusts he is a Christian in the most ortho-
dox sense, is of opinion that the conclusion of
the evolutionist is probably correct, and Chris-
tians need have no fear in accepting the propo-
sition as fully as the most extreme evolutionist
has promulgated it. Indeed if it be true, then
to reject it will be injurious to Christianity; for
setting up unsound or untenable propositions
as the basis of any doctrine or philosophy
must eventually, when the truth becomes known,
injure it, until the doctrine is recast and it is
shown that such unsound propositions were not
essential.

Now if the logical process, memory and the
emotional faculties, including Will Power similar
in character to man's, can in beasts be evolved
from " the ground," or inorganic matter, and
mankind has the same physical origin, — "the
dust of the ground," — it follows that man's
mentality may likewise be the product of the
[89]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

same processes which have evolved mentality
among beasts.^

Nothing in nature is more susceptible of
growth and cultivation than the intellect. No
greater mental difference probably exists be-
tween an ape and a P"iji Islander than distin-
guished the latter and Milton, Shakespeare, or
Newton. A matter of the most universal ob-
servation is the vast change produced in every
child by education. The entire nature of man
is practically altered by intellectual pursuits and
by association with his fellow-man. There is a
limit, it is true, to the acquisition of knowledge,
and the ability of abstraction and generalization
of such knowledge in each person depending on
the natural capacity of the individual ; but this
natural capacity to acquire facts and their bene-
ficial use are susceptible of vast enlargement in
every case of a normally constituted mind.

Mental qualities, it is well known, are also
frequently transmitted to progeny. Breeders
of animals claim they can render permanent
certain characteristics, mental as well as physi-
cal, by artificial selection in a few generations.
If this be true, there is no reason why the same
effects may not' be produced in the human race.
This whole subject of the application of breed-
ing as to mankind has been very much neglected.

^ " For he knoweth whereof we are made ; he remem-
bereth that we are but dust," Psalm of David, ciii. 14.

[90]

Evolution and Mentality

In the freedom, or rather license of his will, and
in the indulgence of caprices and emotions, man
has practically ignored calm judgment in the
selection of mates. No rule having for its ob-
ject improved offspring has been adopted, and
the most hap-hazard alliances have been effected.
Occasionally and by chance a desirable combi-
nation of male and female is made, and children
of superior mental calibre are born; and these
in too large a number of instances are placed
among so unfavorable circumstances as not to
allow of adequate development. It is believed,
however, by many that in future centuries when
the vast effects for good in Evolution are realized,
much more attention will be given to matri-
monial alliances, and thereby children be pro-
duced with highly specialized and desirable
mental and emotional characteristics.

But this creation at will of men and women
with great artistic capacity, or mathematical
acumen, or oratorical expression, etc., will come
only as the traits have been produced, by effort.
Take a youth of ordinary mind, train him to
numbers, and have him devote his whole life
to mathematical science ; let him marry a woman
springing from parents devoted to the same
pursuit; select the offspring showing the most
adaptation to mathematical analysis, with also
an otherwise all-rounded physical and mental
development, and have them make every effort
[91]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

to master the science, and adhere to the pro-
cess for a few generations, and a mathematician
would probably be produced excelling any the
world has yet known. Indeed, for Christian
sentiment to oppose the true and just claims
of Evolution is, in view of the above remarks,
a great injury to civilization, for Christian senti-
ment rules, and properly so, the world to-day.
The result of a correct appreciation of what
Evolution might accomplish for the human race
no man can estimate. Under Christian patron-
age, laws would soon be enacted, and advice
given, providing for the selection of proper
mates in marriage, and they might possibly
in a few generations produce the most wonder-
fully beneficial results, and be generally accep-
table.

The lesson to be learned from this discussion
is that evolution applies to the mental faculties
as well as to physical function and structure,
and that all mental evolution is the result of
effort. Persistent effort, aided by an ever-differ-
entiating organism under the most favorable
natural environment, may have been the physi-
cal cause why man has finally attained his
present exalted mental status — the physical
cause, it is repeated, because it is believed by
the Christian evolutionist God uses the laws
of nature and the qualities of matter to develop
His Creation.

[92]

Evolution and Mentality

If the physical and mental man had a com-
mon origin with other animals, for some reason
known to Himself, God doubtless allowed some
distant animal to be the root from which should
spring His yet highest earthly creation. Placed
under the most favorable environment this early
creature far outstripped all others in the struggle
of life. As he grew in body and adaptation
to his surroundings his mentality expanded and
ability of expression increased, until at this day
his power of abstraction is so metaphysical,
he formulates conceptions of time and space ;
his generalizations are almost as broad as the
cosmos ; his mathematical statements of the
laws of nature so accurate and profound and
God-like, that Evolution is once more in accord
with Genesis wherein it is stated, " And God
said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness : and let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the
earth. So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God created he him; male and
female created he them."

The conclusion arrived at in this chapter is
not that the mind necessarily is the product
of highly organized matter, for this treatise
is not an argument to demonstrate the origin
of mind, but that there is nothing in the Inspired
[93]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

Narrative of Creation which compels the Chris-
tian who implicitly accepts it as the divine word
of God, and therefore truthful, to believe that
mentality could not have been developed from
the " dust of the ground." Scripture, it is sub-
mitted, is thus found to offer no objection to
one of the extreme deductions of Evolution.

[94]

EVOLUTION AND THE SOUL

IN his later writings Mr. Darwin, and Mr.
Herbert Spencer as well, have attempted to
show that the idea of a Supreme Being, and
what is usually denominated moral conduct ap-
plicable to the social intercourse of men, had
their origin in the experiences of mankind.

It is agreed the human intellect has always in-
stinctively recognized that its body and mind
were weak and frail existences. Death has con-
stantly reminded men of their uncertain tenure of
hfe. Disease has taught them of the infirmities
of the flesh. The powers of nature, such as grav-
itation, electricity, tornadoes, floods, and fire, of
their incapacity to oppose them successfully.
The constant exhibition of these forces has im-
pressed upon mankind the ever-present conclu-
sion of the reality of some power greater than
its own. Besides, it has seen on every hand the
most abundant evidences of creation, and yet
without the ability on its own part to bring into
existence one atom of matter. These things
have operated to make men look upwards to
some First Cause and Supreme Ruler of the
cosmos.

[95]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

The Christian evolutionist has no fault to find
with this recognition of God in nature. He
believes all physical phenomena to be the work
of His hand; why should he not have faith in
the evidences of his senses, and ascribe them to
His Omniscience and Omnipotence? The as-
sumptions of materialists that they have dem-
onstrated the conceptions of the Godhead are
derived conjointly from fear, a sense of depen-
dence, and a feeling of wonder, and therefore
that such conceptions are the result of evolution,
are in the views presented herein entirely unim-
portant. Many of the highly developed animals
certainly exhibit two of these emotions, namely,
fear and a sense of dependence. Numerous in-
stances might be mentioned of each class of
these phenomena. Inasmuch as admiration or
wonder is so purely a subjective emotion not
translatable into exclusive action we cannot tell
if animals possess it or not. But with the two
emotions of fear and dependence most promi-
nently developed in the nature of dumb animals,
there is yet no visible apprehension of the Deity.
There is no act beasts perform which indicates
they have the faintest conception of a Supreme
Creator, or of the Immortality of the Soul.^
And yet they perform unconsciously the syl-
logistic process of reasoning; they analyze,
they generalize, they remember, they possess
1 Man alone is moral. — Darwin's " Descent of Man."
[96]

Evolution and the Soul

^almost every good and evil emotion of the
Inhuman heart, and their acts are the result of
^Free Will. Possibly, and for sufficient reasons,
}J/under the order of Divine Providence they have
-^not been endowed with sufficient ability to ap-
prehend Him.

Whether the birth of the soul is due to a
more highly developed quality of mentality, as
in man, than the brute possesses; or to man's
greater sense of fear and dependence and won-
der; or to the direct gift of God, one thing is as
certain as the nature of the proposition allows to
be demonstrated that this conception of Deity
exists only in man, and distinguishes him most
significantly from beasts, and places him in a
class from all other created things.

As we have seen, " to create " does not imply
any particular method of creation — evolution-
ary or special. But the similarity of man's body
and the processes of his reasoning to those of
lower animals are highly persuasive that their
physical origins were similar and the product of
evolution. Why may not the birth and growth
of the soul in man have been, under the guidance
of God, the result of mental development, the
same as the mind may have been the product
of organized matter? Almighty God may have
intended all these things to follow when " His
Spirit moved over the face of the deep " ; all
of these, and yet higher developments, may have
7 [97]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

been potentially impressed on matter to be un-
folded and evolved in the due order He has
foreordained. There is no word in the Mosaic
narrative against this evolution of mind from
matter. What it does affirm, and that only that
God made man, and man alone, a " living soul."
No materialist has shown the faculty to recog-
nize God is possessed by any other animal ex-
cept man, and until he does the Christian may
rest absolutely content that there is no fallacy
in the Mosaic account, and no disagreement
provable by the Inspired Narrative between
Evolution and Christianity.

It is this very capacity in man to recognize
God, and the sense of duty to obey His com-
mandments, which constitutes the soul as dis-
tinguished from mind. It is by this important
attribute the human race is separated from all
other animals. It differentiates it from the
brutes and makes it responsible, according to
the intelligence given it, for the adoration and
glorification of the God which its soul capaci-
ties teach must exist.

In regard to moral behavior in the social
relations of men, Darwin and others claim it was
demonstrated to even the earliest peoples that
the truthful narration of facts, fidelity to prom-
ises and to social obligations, kindness to all,
etc., were more conducive to longevity, to the
well-being and happiness of the individual, or
[98]

Evolution and the Soul

to the society practising them than falsehood,
trickery, theft, cruelty, etc. The value of these
virtues and the ill effects of their opposites
being observed by all, in many cases the good
and the true were handed down from generation
to generation by precept, by example, and by
heredity — their worth and their necessity ever
growing in importance as the civilization of the
human race advanced. The history of mankind
affirms rather than denies the above propositions
to be correct.

The Christian need have no dispute with this
deduction from observed facts. Wise men teach
their children the cardinal virtues as rules for
successful careers. Men who have practised
these principles will in some instances trans-
mit a tendency towards them to their off-
spring. If a predisposition to vice may be
inherited — as criminologists assert — why not
to virtue?

But the observance of virtue because it is
profitable does not constitute a moral act. It
may be a purely intellectual deduction ; but to
practise virtue because it is believed to be the
command of God and pleasing to Him is an
entirely different conception, not springing out
of any utilitarian origin, and bearing no anal-
ogy to the seeking of gain from accommo-
dation to environment. A man may refrain
from theft because he fears the criminal laws
[99]

} /•* .' - iT^. >"»

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

may punish him, or he may lose thereby the
respect of his fellow-citizens. This is not moral-
ity. It is a purely intellectual conclusion. He
prefers liberty and the good opinion of his
neighbors to the thing coveted. But when the
same man abstains from stealing because his
God has enlightened him with the intelligence
that it is against His will, and he has a desire
to conform to that Will, this is morality. This
is a conception of the soul, and it is the posses-
sion of a soul that enables him to form the con-
ception. The fact that abstaining from theft,
because recognized by the intellectual faculties
to be advantageous to the person, is not in con-
flict with the teachings of the moral sense, is no
proof that the latter is the development of the
former. Their agreement being conducive to
the welfare of the individual is the result of the
harmonious workings of creation in every part
of its domain. To do right is always best in
every view of every case.

Nor can it be affirmed that the moral sense is
the legitimate product of such experience ; for
animals in many cases regard the rights of
others when it is apparent to them a violation
of such rights will bring punishment as a con-
sequence. For example, cats, notwithstanding
a powerful impulse to kill caged birds, will
refrain from fear of punishment. Hunting dogs
with a natural instinct to jump at game will

Evolution and the Soul

pause immovably before it, when they know
chastisement will follow their transgression,
etc., and this characteristic has been made
hereditary to a considerable extent in pointers
and setters.

There is consequently a well-defined distinc-
tion between the intellect and the moral sense.

It is probably true and for the purpose of this
discussion it is assumed that when the intellect
had attained the capacities of abstraction and
generalization possessed by man, when it could
conceive of time and space, when it could recog-
nize and formulate the conception that nature
had not made itself, then the individual became
advanced adequately to be endowed with the
moral sense as distinguished from an intellect-
ual conception. Then it perceived more or less
dimly or clearly that a great power had created
this wonderful cosmos; that truth and justice
were its attributes ; that this power was its God,
who demanded instinctively adoration for His
creation and obedience for His wisdom.

Then was born the Soul.

This should be the doctrine of Christian Evo-
lution. This also is the revelation of the Scrip-
tures, for no other interpretation of the Mosaic
narrative can be given, when taken as a whole,
when interpreted as a judicial tribunal would
construe it, so as to make an harmonious agree-
ment of observed and clearly revealed facts.

[lOl]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

God made animals and men from " the
ground." They are both similar in physical
structure and physiological function — often
bone for bone, muscle for muscle, and nerve
for nerve. They possess intellectual and emo-
tional faculties of the same kind — man's, how-
ever, being so great as to be in the image and
after the likeness of God. Here the resem-
blance ceases. Here scientific Evolution pauses
in its deductions. Beyond this materialism is
silent; but divine Scripture takes up the subject
and makes this further revelation — Genesis,
second chapter, seventh verse, " And the Lord
God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and
man became a Living Soul."

The rational interpretation of this remarkable
and important revelation with a view to harmo-
nizing it: I. With the sentence that the Lord
God formed man of " the dust of the ground " ;

2. With man's unmistakable physical and mental
similiarity to the other animal creation; and

3. To give full effect to the affirmation, "And
man became a living soul," should be: i. That
physical man was formed of the inorganic ele-
ments of which other animals were composed.
This is in plain accord with the teachings of
organic chemistry; 2. That his evolution was on
lines analogous to those of other animals. To
deny this proposition would be to defy the

[ 102 ]

Evolution and the Soul

resemblance of his physiological structure and
functions to the animal creation; 3. That from
causes of which we are hopelessly ignorant
man's development ages ago probably became
more complex and heterogeneous than any
other creature; 4. That having attained an in-
tellectual and emotional capacity so great as to
be able to reason from metaphysical premises,
the Lord God endowed him with the ability to
recognize Himself as His Creator and God ;
5. That this endowment is expressed in the
figurative style of speech so commonly em-
ployed in the Scriptures, "And the Lord God
. . . breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life," etc. ; 6. That the statement " breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life," is defined
by the qualification which immediately follows,
" and man became a living soul," and demon-
strates that the " breath of life " was not the
physical existence and mental power of which
he was a participator in common with all other
animals, but a life — an eternal life — suitable
as an attribute for the " living soul " ; 7. That
man alone of all animals is possessed of a soul ; ^
that is, an ability to apprehend God ; a conclu-
sion which agrees with the fact that no other
animal exhibits a capacity to recognize God,

1 " Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and
the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth."
Ecclesiastes iii. 21.

[ 103 ]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

the duty of obedience to His Commandments,
or immortality.

We have now arrived at the conclusion of the
consideration of the agreements between the
Mosaic Revelation and the revelations of Sci-
entific Inquiry.

It is believed that the unprejudiced mind can-
not escape the impress of such a wonderful
accordance as has been shown to exist between
Scientific Evolution and the Divine Word, and
like the reciprocal effect of all truth, Evolution
proves the truth of the Inspired Narrative, and
the Inspired Narrative proves the truth of
Evolution.

[ 104]

Part II

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowl-
edge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure
of the stature of the fulness of Christ. — Eph. iv. 13.

EVOLUTIONARY CHARACTER OF
CHRISTIANITY

THE attention of the reader has been here-
tofore invited to the agreements existing
between the material works of God and His
revelation of their creation, contained in the
Mosaic narrative, and as part of the same sub-
ject the physical, intellectual, and moral genesis
of mankind. The discussion attempted briefly
the demonstration of the threefold nature of
man, namely, a material body, a mind, and a
soul. No argument was deemed necessary to
establish the existence of a corpus composed of
the inorganic elements of the earth, vivified by
the mysterious potency we call life. It was
briefly shown, it is hoped, there is no disagree-
ment between the conclusions of evolutionists
in regard to the development of mind in animals
including man, and Revelation, because the
[105 J

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

processes of thought, although immensely in-
ferior in brutes, are identical in their logical
characteristics with man's ; both are possessed
of free-will ; both are moved by the same
emotions; both have the faculty of memory;
and both are declared in the Word of God to
have been formed from " the ground." If the
mentality of " beasts of the field," which is
identical in quality with man's, could origi-
nate " from the ground " ; and man was formed
from the same substance, "the dust of the
ground," the conclusion is legitimate that the
human mind had probably the same origin.

But at this point, it was argued, all resem-
blance ceased between beasts and man. The
beast possesses body and mind ; man's con-
stituents are body, and mind, and soul. Not
that the brute may not be taught by love or
fear to regard the rights of others, an apparently
moral act, but there is no evidence of the brute
creation having any conception whatever of
God, and of obedience to His commandments
because He has commanded them to be obeyed.
The ability to recognize this Godhead and His
moral laws it was claimed resides in a distinct
capacity, denominated the Soul — a gift to man
alone, and which was conferred upon him when
the " Lord God breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life " (eternal life), " And man be-
came a living soul." In a word, the power to
[106]

Evolutionary Character of Christianity-
think constitutes the mind ; the ability to ap-
prehend God constitutes the soul.

Man being composed of a tripartite nature
any evolution commensurate for his perfect
development must comprise the advancement
of each of these essential components. To
accommodate the body to its environment with-
out a due regard to the intellectual and moral
sense, a poor specimen of manhood is pro-
duced ; to educate the mind and neglect either
the phj'sique or morals develops a being with-
out physical strength to enforce his thoughts,
or without respect to claim credence from his
fellow-man. The perfect man is he alone who
has a sound body, an educated mind, and a
moral sense. This moral sense is not, however,
to be mistaken for its counterfeit that springs
from utilitarian motives, and vaccilates with
circumstances, but that sure and abiding moral-
ity, firm under all complications and tempta-
tions, because its motive is obedience to its
God.

The fundamental principle underlying material
and intellectual evolution, it was attempted to
be shown, is Effort on the part of organisms to
accommodate themselves to their environment.
These efforts, for example, to secure healthful
air, abundant food, agreeable mates, etc., have
modified functions and structures, and their
transmission to offspring have produced new
[107 J

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity-
types of plants and new races of animals. The
efforts to acquire the above necessities in the
easiest and most certain manner have also de-
veloped mentality among animals, and as to men
have in a large measure contributed to an intel-
lectual development marvellous in the extreme.

If the body had been planned on the principle
that it should have no necessities, or if these,
necessities had been supplied in such abun-
dance that no effort was needed to appropriate
them, there would have been no physical evolu-
tion. If the mind had been born with full
knowledge of all things, with nothing to learn
from observation and experience, there would
have been no mental development. The circum-
stance that there are necessities which may be
partially and sufficiently gratified but never fully
administered to, which gratification must un-
ceasingly and forever be met by renewed efforts,
it is repeated is the keystone in the arch of
life developm.ent.

Now when we turn our attention to the third
component of man's nature, namely, the soul, if
we find necessities exist, as in his material and
intellectual organization, for example, a hunger
for a knowledge of the Godhead, a thirst for
righteousness, a yearning to comprehend the
future state, etc., each one of these emotions as
veritable, as overpowering, and as persistent as
the craving for food, or the desire for water,
[108]

Evolutionary Character of Christianity

which spiritual hunger and thirst may be ap-
peased by efforts but not fully gratified, in con-
sequence of only partial and yet sufficient
Revelations of Christianity, which efforts enrich
the soul of man — like the strivings to acquire
food and air do the body — with high thoughts of
God, and thereby evolve a more complex and
nobler spirituality, it is asserted, if these things
be so, the analogy is complete and perfect
between the schemes of physical and mental
evolution, and the scheme of spiritual evolution
as contained in the Christian Religion.

The plan of the following chapters will be to
take up separately the principal dogmas agreed
to by all Christians, and attempt to show that
Christianity offers most wonderfully — mirac-
ulously— a religion adapted to evolve the soul
of man to the highest perfection of earthly ex-
istence, and as a consequence of this ability to
produce this superhuman result — as the laws
of nature by their capacity to evolve higher
and higher functional and intellectual character-
istics in animals prove their Divine origin —
Christianity demonstrates likewise its truthful-
ness and its Divine origin.

[ 109]

SOUL EVOLUTION

THE spirituality of man like his intellect-
uality is susceptible of extraordinary im-
provement. By education it is rendered more
definite in its conceptions ; errors the result
of ignorance are corrected when found to be
irreconcilable to ascertained facts; and con-
clusions more and more accurate and legitimate
are drawn from wider and deeper contempla-
tions of the subjects of which it takes cogni-
zance, until the idolatrous worship of a brazen
calf is changed to the glorification of a God rep-
resenting the metaphysical idealities of omni-
science, omnipotence, and omnipresence. The
field, therefore, for soul evolution is as broad,
as complex, as productive of beneficial results
as mind evolution. By his constitution man
may grow in grace no less than in knowledge,
and when the infinite future is considered and
an infinite number of individuals are to be
affected, no lower limits can be assigned to the
high eminence the human soul may attain than
those defined by the loving of God with all the
heart, with all the soul, and with all the mind,
and our neighbors as ourselves. This standard,
[no]

Soul Evolution

in the opinion of the writer, represents the very-
highest elevation of human spirituality, and is
the goal towards which all the moral forces
of humanity are now tending; a goal which
Almighty God has most probably, in the per-
fectness of His works, planned to be reached
in the far distant future by man as the result
of soul evolution — the product of free-will
efforts.

It is undoubtedly true, advancement in intel-
lectuality contributes as a rule to spirituality.
No one will maintain that the ignorant snake-
worshippers of Hayti, or the uneducated cow-
idolaters of India are comparable in religious
thought to learned Christians. This very fact
has led many to confound the existences of
mind and soul, and to conclude spirituality was
the offspring of mentality — particularly as cor-
rect mental deductions lead men universally to
acknowledge the inherent value of virtue, and
the desirability of its being practised. But it
is clear, as said heretofore, the performance of
a seemingly virtuous act because it is desirable
for its beneficial results is not moral conduct
It is purely and simply an intellectual process
in which the soul has no part. Unfortunately
it often bears the outward stamp of the true
coin, and passes current for a soul act, because
men cannot look into the hearts of other men
and divine motives.

[Ill]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

An act springing from the mental weighing
of circumstances with the result that it ought
to be performed because, it is repeated, its con-
sequences will be beneficial is entirely different
in every moral characteristic from the same act
having its motive in obedience to God, irrespec-
tive of mundane consequences. Intelligent
brutes perform the former, heretofore shown,
as well as men, but the soul possessed by man
is only competent to conceive of the latter.
Individuals of great intellectual acumen are
often vastly deficient in soul-morality. With
such almost every act is the result, consciously
or sub-consciously, of the calculation of bene-
fits ; whereas others of less knowledge and
mental acumen, but of more spirituality, make
the performance of many moral acts the result
of a desire to obey the Deity.

It is a matter of common observation for the
entire nature of all animals to contribute to
their general advancement. A strong body
improves the mind, an intelligent mind contri-
butes to the development of the body, and with
men a high spirituality elevates mentality and
a strong mentality gives clearness to soul con-
ceptions. Man is therefore a composite being,
wherein all his parts correlate to produce the
unit organism. One may have been evolved
from the other — the mind from highly organ-
ized matter and the soul from intellectual con-

[112]

Soul Evolution

cepts possessed only by man. But if this has
been the process, there is nothing in the Mosaic
narrative contradictory to it. The First Cause
(which the Christian believes is God, and Mr.
Herbert Spencer assumes as a necessity for
Evolution) which made matter possibly en-
dowed it with the qualities to evolve conscious-
ness, next intellectuality, and finally, when this
mentality reached the power to take cognizance
of its own mental conclusions, and uncon-
sciously to create major and minor premises of
them, then to develop the soul ability to recog-
nize the Godhead. But as the body, mind, and
soul of man exist to-day, they represent a mys-
terious trinity to be perceived as matter is per-
ceived, but not comprehended any more than
matter can be understood. A trinity in which
each component has its special functions to per-
form— the body under the impulse of the mind
to harmonize itself with its environment; the
mind to comprehend the laws of nature and
make them servants to the wants of the body ;
the soul to lift both body and mind from the
carnal things of this earth by the contemplation
of the Godhead, and to love its neighbor be-
cause its Heavenly Father has so commanded.
This command being founded on the well-
known fact that the highest development of
the human race can take place only when Love
binds the hearts of men.
S [113]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

There is yet a further analogy between mind
and soul evolution. Individuals starting in
youth without experience or knowledge may
become by effort, for example, learned and
profound logicians, much like a crude machine
of rough castings, badly fitting parts, slow and
defective movements, etc., is transformed by in-
telligent improvements, lubrication of the wear-
ing surfaces, and adjustments into a highly
complex and perfect mechanism for the per-
formance of its purposes, so the individual mind
scarcely able at first to concentrate its attention
for a short period on any subjective matter of
reasoning is enabled by constant practice to
hold its mental vision with wonderful per-
spicuity upon the most abstruse and transcen-
dental problems until they are solved and even
to revel with delight in the process. What
must have been the mental exhilaration of Sir
Isaac Newton when he was investigating and
proving to men for the first time that the radius
vector of each planet describes equal areas in
equal times, notwithstanding a planet moves
immensely faster when it approaches the sun;
or that if a body move in an ellipse having a
centre of force at its focus, then the force at
different points in the orbit must vary inversely
as the square of the distance from that centre?
To attain such mastery over the power of
thought, to hold in subjection the attention, to
[114]

Soul Evolution

see with the mental vision mental deductions
as clearly as material objects are seen with the
eye, this demonstrates the marvellous evolution
of the mind as the result of effort.

So with the soul. Witness the fetichism of
the savage changed to the worship of a civilized
people — lifting their thoughts by effort to the
ideal contemplation of the attributes of Divinity.
Individualizing, many men have started life with
almost an entire ignorance of the Deity, and of
their obHgation to Him. In some way or
another their attention has been called to the
subject. Consideration is then given to His
existence. At first, slightly. Next, more seri-
ously. Finally, the whole soul is enrapt in His
contemplation. The individual is spiritually
born again, and as great a change is wrought
in his soul as existed between the mind of
Newton as a boy and the mind of Newton
solving the laws of gravitation.

This is Soul Evolution.

[115]

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES

THE Holy Scriptures as now read by man-
kind have been the object of many
attacks. Some writers have declared them to
be composed largely of fables or myths. The
German materialist, Strauss, stands at the head
of this class. Others have attacked their relia-
bility because of their allegories, alleged dis-
crepancies in facts, asserted interpolations, and
incompatibility of some parts with other parts.
Infidels have always deemed it vital in order to
sustain themselves in their infidelity to show
errors in these writings, and granted errors are
proven, they claim that a God of all knowledge
could not have been their author. From this
argument they have sought to draw the conclu-
sion that the Scriptures not being inerrant, the
God therein revealed does not exist.

The purpose of this treatise does not require
any discussion to prove the inerrancy of the
Scriptures. But it does assert, and it will be
undertaken to be demonstrated broadly, that
the Scriptures, if they were intended to play
any part in the evolution of mankind, are
exactly, in every respect, what they should be.
[ii6]

The Holy Scriptures

In other words, if the Holy Writings had been
dictated in such a manner by the Supreme
Being as to carry overwhelming conviction to
the human mind — such a certitude that the
contradictory of its revelation could be demon-
strated to be impossible — then there could not
have been, and could not now be, any growth
in the knowledge of God, or soul evolution.
To repeat this important evolutionary maxim,
if the revelations of the Holy Scriptures had
been given in such a clear manner as to import
their inspiration beyond all possible doubt to
those classes of men who are now disbelievers,
then their words would have left no room for
Faith, for the exercise of Free Will in believ-
ing or not believing in the Godhead, or for
efforts on the part of the soul to grow in
spirituality.

The basic principles of Evolution are two :
namely. That the great Author of organized
matter, of mind, and of soul has determined.

1. That none of these states should be created
perfect — that excellencies should be reached
only from lower conditions by growth ; and

2. This growth should be attained solely by
efforts — by efforts to modify the physical struc-
ture and functions ; by efforts which enable the
intellectual faculties to hold their attention on
a single subject until its components are an-
alyzed and they are classed in their appropriate

[117J

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity-
category; by efforts which reveal God to the
soul, the more and more He is contemplated,
thereby giving it the wisdom to overturn the
worship of idols, of beasts, and of matter, and
the ability to resist sin — sin, in the sense here
used, being broadly another name for soul de-
generation. But as no effort would be made
to search for food if abundance was at hand ;
no effort would be persevered in to solve the
problems, for example, of electricity and steam
power, if these sciences were so absolutely per-
fect that nothing more was to be learned ; so
no effort would be attempted to work out the
infinitudes of the Supreme Being, the love and
atonement of the Saviour and the Immortality
of the Soul as revealed, if the Scriptures were
so clear as to enforce conviction by demonstra-
tion. The whole scheme of Divine Revelation
is in accord with this fundamental principle of
Evolution ; otherwise there would exist this
anomalous state that growth and development
would be the rule as to the body and the mind,
but as to spiritual matters man would be en-
dowed with full knowledge of all divine things.
None can estimate the effect of such an unbal-
anced character. Man would be the feeble
creature he is to-day as to his physical state —
the comparatively ignorant being of even this
twentieth century, who has scarcely more than
reached the threshold of the temple of knowl-
[ii8]

The Holy Scriptures

edge, and yet as to spiritual matters, he would
possess a certitude and fulness of knowledge as
to the nature of God and immortality, which
would make him God-like. It is submitted
that the Supreme Being has been wiser than the
infidel. He has not allowed Himself to be seen
by men. His essence is just so far veiled as to
be apprehensible but not understood. Christ
did not demonstrate Himself beyond a doubt
either to the apostles or to the Jews, yet He
gave enough knowledge of Himself to them
and to the world for untold millions of men
to look up to Him with faith. The future state
has not been made a provable certainty, but
men's hearts instinctively strive to penetrate
the thin veil which hangs before the life beyond
the grave. So with the Holy Scriptures. They
take a corresponding place in the evolutionary
scheme. They never were intended to dispense
with Faith in them. Their so-called discrepan-
cies, their allegorical style,, their narratives of
supernatural events, their revelations of the
Deity, their records of the life and love of
Christ, their perfect precepts for moral conduct,
their violation of some of the rules of credibility
which men adopt to deceive are all mingled
together, and have this extraordinary effect
that their inspiration is more and more convinc-
ing to those who study them in a spirit of right-
eousness, and less and less persuasive to those
[119]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

who read their pages seeking to find a founda-
tion for their infidelity.

In this respect these materialistic evolutionists ^
are the most strangely unscientific of all men.
Huxley, Haeckel, Strauss, Clifford, Lewes, etc.,
have minds of great natural and acquired ability.
They understand, equally with any other men
of the world, the fundamental principles of Evo-
lution. None know better than they that evolu-
tion only follows effort, and that effort will not
be made to acquire either food or knowledge,
if either already exists, and consequently by
analogy, they should know, if the aspirations
of the soul — the soul whether viewed as a
special creation, or the development of intel-
lectual faculties — were entirely satisfied by
plenary evidence and conviction of the truths
of Christianity, that then it would make no
effort to grow in the knowledge of God, and
evolutionary advancement, based on Free-VVill
efforts and self-denial, would be unknown.

These same materialists are also most contra-
dictory in another view of the subject. There
is not one who will deny these same Scriptures
have been a most potent agent for civilization
in modern days. Such men are philosophers
— students of wisdom to benefit humanity —
and yet with this main object of their lives con-

1 Agnosticism and Materialism discussed as scientific
propositions, see "The Testimony of Reason."

[ 120]

The Holy Scriptures

stantly before them, with the knowledge of the
vast good the Scriptures have wrought, greater
than all other causes together, they seek to tear
down and utterly destroy this great aid to the
physical, intellectual, and moral evolution of
mankind, and to substitute nothing in its place.
The conclusion, therefore, of this brief appli-
cation of the fundamental position of Evolution
to the Holy Scriptures is that to be the inspired
word of God, they are exactly as definite, as
convincing, as inerrant as they should be ; and
the Christian may look without the slightest
solicitude upon the attacks of materialists to
prove their recorded events to be myths, and
regard with indifference the efforts of infidel
scholars to show discrepancies and interpola-
tions, knowing full well that if their character is
allegorical in places, and their statements some-
times hard to be reconciled, they were made so
for the express purpose by the Supreme Being
to promote study of their mysteries and revela-
tions, and to develop Faith and thus advance
soul evolution.

[121]

GODi

THE primary concept of the soul is the
existence of some being or power supe-
rior to nature. This idea has been and is, as
far as the writer is aware, ahvays and only, a part
of humanity. Notwithstanding the abyss of his
degradation the savage instinctively feels there
is a force, an intelligence beyond his comprehen-
sion governing the storm, the flood, the return of
the seasons, his own life and death. Depend-
ent upon the general knowledge and modified by
the mentality of each individual, this primary
conception of God has taken almost every con-
ceivable form of thought. Idols in the shape
of animals have been made to embody the idea
of this supernatural being; fire has been wor-
shipped ; toads and birds have been adored ;
composite images of part man and part beast;
a multitudinous deity invented, assigning special
beings to rule over special phenomena of nature
and the various affections of men, as in the
Grecian mythology ; in a sentence, the soul
guided by its best intelligence has in all ages, in
all parts of the earth, among all men, been en-

1 For a demonstration of the existence of an intelligent
Supreme Being, see "The Testimony of Reason."
[ 122]

God

deavoring to grasp and gratify a great instinct
of its existence and render the best homage it
could to its God.

But it is apparent the endowment of unclean
animals with the attributes of divinity must be
debasing to the worshipper, because mankind is
so constituted it cannot entertain low thoughts
without their modifying its entire character and
conduct; it cannot associate with evil without
becoming contaminated; it cannot hold to the
belief in a Jupiter or a Venus, as a god and god-
dess, without impairing most sadly its morals,
and finding in their supposed licentiousness a
satisfactory excuse for any excesses it may
choose to indulge in.

So that the religious sentiment, being so uni-
versal among nearly all men, and so potent in
modifying their conduct, constitutes a most im-
portant element of their characters and its devel-
opment along lines of debasing tendencies, or
those of high and ennobling spirituality must
make the most tremendous difference in their
evolution.

At the period of which Moses wrote, about
fifteen hundred years B. C, the most enlightened
portions of the world, as far as history speaks,
were oppressed with pagan idolatry. The wor-
ship of idols was common and many base prac-
tices accompanied their adoration. It was at
that time the Christian's God revealed Himself
[ 123 ]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

in the Divine Word of the Old Testament, mirac-
ulously preserved to us through the destructions
of fire and vandalism which have so persistently
devastated all the ancient seats of learning.
Nothing comparable to the power and infinitude
of His majesty revealed through the Mosaic
narrative of Creation had been previously con-
ceived of by the enlightened mind. A grand
thought illuminating the conception of God as
revealed in the Old Testament was His incompre-
hensibility. Overpowering sublimity ; fathom-
less infinitude as to time and space, — " I am what
I am," — are some of the attributes which stimu-
late apprehension and contemplation of the
Godhead, and in so doing raise the soul of the
idealistic thinker to regions of spirituality un-
attainable otherwise.

No man hath seen God and lived. Nothing
would have been more destructive to the evolu-
tion of the soul than for the Deity to have been
visible. Full knowledge causes effort to cease
— for effort cannot struggle for knowledge if
knowledge is already possessed. The world has,
therefore, in the partial revelation God has
given of Himself, just so much knowledge and
no more, namely, an apprehension of His power
and personality, but not comprehension, as the
profoundest wisdom would have revealed in
order to produce the result of continuous and
fascinating contemplation.
[ 124]

God

So, too, by His moral attributes does the God
worshipped by the Christian world draw all men
to higher and ever higher standards of excel-
lence. Reverence for His Holy Name teaches
the soul dignity and respect for holy things.
Inflexible obedience to His commands cultivates
self-denial and control. His commandments
without exception are elevating, tending to evolve
the noblest traits of the entire man, while correl-
ative disobedience surelydrags the individual into
degradation. In fine, it is fearlessly asserted, no
scheme devised by the united wisdom of the
world to produce evolution or development of
moral improvement in mankind could have con-
ceived of a nobler God than that revealed in the
Bible. He is therein represented to be omnipo-
tent; no limit restrains His powers. The mind
tries to grasp the meaning of this word, but fails
as much as it would in the conception of a quin-
tillion of acts, and a quintillion of them is only
a small unit in the scale of omnipotence. He
is omnipresent. God's Being permeates all space
— alike those distant nebulae of the Galaxy and
the cell of the flesh whose last division has yet
baffled the power of the microscope. His omni-
science knows all things. Even the secret
workings of the heart of man are as distinctly
perceived as his spoken words are heard by his
fellow-men. He has revealed Himself as infi-
nite in the past, eternal in the future. Pages
[125]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

have been written of the infinitudes of God, and
every page has evolved, in the writer and in the
reader, an intenser spirituality by the soul con-
templation of this impersonification of power
and hoHness — of righteousness and morahty,
not obscured by one blot, one earthly spot.
The highest transcendentalism of the soul
cannot divine His essence. There is still
something beyond, something overpowering,
something grander than thought, something
engaging, ever stimulating contemplation, ever
feeding with delight the unappeasable appetite
for holy things.

But in addition to all this sublimity, the Chris-
tian's God has revealed Himself as a loving
Father. The poor suffering heart of humanity
longs for a father — some soul on which it may
recline its weak and wearied nature. Like an
earthly father His person demands reverence,
His commands must be obeyed because they
are for the good of His child, but to the obedi-
ent, to even the erring but repentant prodigal,
His arms and heart are ever open to receive and
comfort him. No juggernaut car to immolate
beloved infants, no burning of human flesh to
appease a demoniacal thirst for blood soils the
Christian's God. He is a loving and righteous
Father, and develops the souls of His children
by His own example of parental love.

It is seriously asked. Is the necessity for effort to
[126]

God

acquire food or air or water more evolutionary in
its efifects on organisms than the revelation God
has given of Himself in the Scriptures is on the
soul of man? Can the enlightened mind of the
most profound philosopher conceive of a scheme
better adapted to elevate and ennoble spirit-
uality than the conception the Christian mind
entertains of God ? If it cannot, then this revela-
tion of Himself proves the strong probability of
two things : first, that the partial revelation of the
Jehovah of the Bible is as much a plan of soul
evolution as the necessity of animals accommoda-
ting themselves to their unsatisfying environ-
ments; and second, if the laws of material and
mental evolution were ordained by a Supreme
Being, then inasmuch as the moral nature of
mankind is as important to be developed as its
body and mind, the revelation of this Godhead
had the same origin.

[ 127]

CHRIST A FACTOR OF SOUL
EVOLUTION 1

THE second fundamental article of Chris-
tian belief is the Divinity of the Lord
Jesus Christ, as recorded in the New Testament.

It is impossible in a purposely brief treatise
to encompass the narration of the evolutionary
influence on mankind of Christ's mission and
sacrifice. A volume would scarcely suffice to
specify adequately His most wonderful — noth-
ing short of miraculous — effect on the physical,
mental, and moral evolution of man.

God has revealed Himself to mankind as the
Creator of heaven and earth, and as a Ruler
who has established moral laws for the govern-
ment and development of the human race, with
punishment for disobedience. For some cause,
and for the purpose of this treatise it is unim-
portant to inquire what, man finds himself prone
to disobey the commands of this Supreme
Being. He has the innate knowledge of his
inability to love God with all his heart, his
soul, and his mind, and his neighbor as himself.

1 For circumstantial proof that Christ was the Son of Cod,
see " The Testimony of Reason."

[I2S]

Christ a Factor of Soul Evolution

He knows, moreover, the attainment of this soul
development represents the highest spiritual
evolution of humanity, and yet he persists either
in direct violation of his duty or in passive
neglect of its injunctions, and is, therefore, un-
worthy to claim recognition and favor of his
supreme and just Creator.

In such a state of affairs man would be hope-
less if some advocate was not available to plead
his cause and propitiate offended Majesty.

A person absolutely without hope is des-
perate, relaxes effort and submits supinely to
fate. The cessation of effort is death to
evolution. The life of all evolution is effort,
continuous, unremitting effort. The revelation,
therefore, of a Saviour sent from God to be a
sacrifice by death upon the cross for the sins of
the whole world, and thereby to establish a
mediatorship, unceasing in its advocacy for all
those who with faithful hearts are striving to
obey the commands of God, though they fail
daily seventy times seven, has the most extraor-
dinary power to stimulate zeal in well-doing
and faith in the Messiahship of Christ, and these
efforts lift the soul to a high degree of moral
evolution.

Having this advocate with the Father — thus
being " not without hope " — and man realizing
his desire for eternal salvation is dependent on
9 [129]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

his faith in Christ — an environment most con-
ducive to stimulate moral energy — the Chris-
tian Religion offers, as a Messiah, a messenger
of good-will; not a warrior, or earthly king
with temporal power, but a " Prince of Peace."

Neither physical, mental, nor moral evolution
can take place in a state of personal insecurity.
A prime necessity which displaces all other
considerations is self-preservation. Threatened
destruction will occupy the mind to the exclu-
sion of the sciences. The intellect must be
calm for it to investigate the laws of nature and
make them subject to its will — in a word, peace
must abide in the heart. Now Christ taught,
above all things else, peace. If thy brother
smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the
other also. Like a lamb before its slayer which
opens not its mouth, He allowed Himself to be
crucified, as if He could not have summoned a
legion of angels to have delivered Himself from
the handful of Jews and Roman soldiers who
put Him to death. Those who take up the
sword shall perish by the sword. Love thy
brother. These were some of the messages He
delivered to men. When the student of history
recalls the conflicts of ante-Christian centuries
— times in which there was literally nothing
but wars and subjugation of neighboring peo-
ples over the whole of those parts of Asia,
Africa, and Europe, of which the world has
[ 130 j

Christ a Factor of Soul Evolution

any record, and the consequent slavery and
slaughter of all captured, as have recently been
perpetrated on the Christian Bulgarians by the
Turks ; when population was kept down to the
lowest numbers in consequence of such destruc-
tion, and it is compared with the ever-growing
reign of peace in Christendom, wherein men
have had such comparative security as to per-
mit them to cultivate the soil more intelligently,
and thereby cause more abundant food to be
produced for the nourishment of the body, the
effect of which has been increased physical
development and larger populations; wherein
men have under the influences of greater per-
sonal safety expanded their intellects by the
acquisition of useful knowledge and the practice
of the arts, — aye, this very book they are read-
ing, the clothes they wear, the luxurious resi-
dences which shelter them, and the ten thousand
temples wherein they offer their thanks, their
prayers, and raise their voices in praise to God,
are the proximate results of the peaceful teach-
ings of this Christ, — all men must admit that
the Christian's Saviour has been the most im-
portant factor in physical, mental, and moral
evolution mankind has known. No philosopher
can estimate the myriad ways in which His
influence has worked for good. No skeptic is
beyond its refining power, although he partakes
of its benign benefits without thanking the
[131]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

Giver. The whole civilized world — Jew and
Turk, Chinese and Indian — all, more or less,
bask in the advancement wrought by the moral
influence exerted by Christ.

The logical deduction from the mere existence
of this extraordinary moralizing power in a
world where everything is apparently the result
of design under the rule of a beneficent provi-
dence, is, that no such effects would probably
have been allowed to operate unless they had
had the immediate sanction of the Supreme
Ruler, and having that sanction they must stand
for truth.

If Christ had come as a mighty earthly king,
wielding the sceptre of power, putting men and
nations under His dominion by moral persua-
sion if He could, and if not, by force of arms,
and in so far as He controlled by force, de-
stroying the free will of those He subjugated,
His kingdom would be analogous to the reigns
of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, and no
more moral evolution would have attended His
advent than was consequent on theirs.

But singularly, even superhumanly in fore-
thought, every recorded circumstance of Christ's
life indicates the intensest humility. He was
born in a manger, passed His early years not
among princes, but as a poor Nazarene, began
His ministry without friends or money, and
[ 132 J

Christ a Factor of Soul Evolution

suffered an ignominious death upon the cross
between two thieves. It would never have
occurred to the wisest son of man to have
inaugurated a world-compelling reign under
such apparently disadvantageous circumstances.
Men would have sought then, as now, all the
adventitious aids which wait on wealth, official
connections, and the pandering to public opinion
or prejudice. And yet so it has turned out in
looking over the past that this very lowliness
and humility combined with the unswerving and
uncompromising moral uprightness of Christ
have been the most powerful attractions of His
ministry.

There can be no all-engrossing love of God if
it is allied with luxury ; there can be no love of
neighbor as one's self if an individual is seeking
to dominate from pride his fellow-man. Poverty
within reasonable limits and humility of heart
are absolutely essential for high soul evolution,
and Christ in His poverty; in His spotless,
sinless life ; by His extraordinarily elevated
sentiments, teaches both in the most perfect
manner. These circumstances have, therefore,
combined on their side of the problem to ad-
vance soul evolution.

All men are more or less skeptical. In pro-
portion to their knowledge they demand to
know the causes of things. A child accepts
[ 133 ]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

the statement of his father as sufficient. This
same child grown to be an analytic scientist,
who has spent his life accepting no proposition
except after investigation, is disposed to reject
all statements contrary to ordinary experience.
Things supernatural, not clearing themselves to
his understanding, are in many cases regarded
as unworthy of belief. Yet this same scientist
does not understand the essential nature of
matter, the reason for the existence of any
law of nature ; nor can he disprove the super-
natural. His argument against the supernatural
is purely negative, — namely, in his personal ex-
perience he has never known the thing to exist.
But it is plain as a mere proposition of logic a
thing cannot be declared not to have existed
until it can be proven it could not have taken
place. This no philosopher can prove as to
any spiritual fact.

If our Lord had not died and risen, had not
performed in His Resurrection the greatest of
all His miracles in attestation of His divinity,
men would have declared He was simply a
mortal, and His claims to be the Son of God,
a falsehood. It is inconceivable for His minis-
try to have had and still have an evolutionary
effect without His death and ascension. And
this is exactly what took place. The most ap-
propriate events were employed to produce the
most desirable results. These circumstances
[134]

Christ a Factor of Soul Evolution

alone dispel the theory of chance, and raise
the case to one of the most profound and far-
sighted intelligence.

Not only as an attestation of His being the
Son of God do His crucifixion and resurrection
contribute, but these great evidences of His
love for mankind forever draw the souls of all
who contemplate that love with the most en-
dearing and tender sympathies. Love begets
love. We involuntarily love those who sacrifice
themselves for us. Life is the most prized pos-
session man owns. To give one's life for another
is the greatest gift. Christ gave His life for
men ; therefore, men are most powerfully drawn
to love this Saviour, or to state the proposition
more generally, the very best agency to effect
soul evolution has been employed.

The above rapid presentation of a few of the
points in our Lord's ministry will show how, by
the same train of reasoning, every circumstance
of His personal conduct. His teachings, and His
revelation of His own Divine Origin can be
elaborated and proved to have been the wisest
means to lift the spiritual nature of mankind.

[135]

THE HOLY GHOST

THE third basic article of Christian faith
is the recognition of the Holy Ghost
as a component of a triune Godhead.

The Trinity is a great mystery. It was
doubtless intended by God it should be so.
He has not revealed the ultimate essence of
matter or mind, or the reason for the de-
velopment of the Cosmos on the lines which
exist, or why the laws of nature operate. He
has not made known the elements of the
spirit of man. If all of these things are un-
known, why should He have disclosed His
own inelTable Spirit? What possible good in
the moral development of man would have
come from Jehovah unfolding Himself to His
creatures? On the contrary, all the efiforts to
fathom the fathomless infinitudes of Deity
would be rendered supererogatory, and the
ennobling effects wrought by persevering con-
templation of the essence of the Godhead would
be lost to mankind.

The Trinity is only one of many mysteries
met with by advanced intellect. Nature is full
[136]

The Holy Ghost

of the occult. The limit of the understanding
in this respect is the mere observance of phe-
nomena and their classification, without in a
single instance being able to state their causes.
A stone released from an elevation falls to the
earth. No one really knows why it does so.
The usual answer is, the earth attracts it. But
why does matter attract matter? Hypotheses
have been advanced, but no scientist has dem-
onstrated an explanation. Animal organism is
either composed of matter and mind, or the
latter is the sequence of the former. Who
comprehends this dual composition or this se-
quence ? It is as much a mystery as the Trinity
of God. Shall we declare the living animal
organism does not exist because we do not
fathom its dual nature? If not, why shall we
reject the Trinity because its metaphysical
quality is beyond our understanding? Scientific
men are actively engaged, endeavoring to solve
the mysterious union of matter and mind, and
start a spark of life in inorganic matter, and
in so doing are practising a process of mental
evolution. So Christian disciples are forever
contemplating the nature of the revealed Triune
God, and in the process of unravelling this
incomprehensible yet apprehensible concep-
tion, are growing in soul evolution. The mo-
ment all the relations of matter and mind are
known, scientists will stop their investigations
[137]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

— the moment man comprehends God, he will
probably lose all interest in contemplating
Him.

Wonderful, most wonderful is the power of
the Holy Ghost on the destinies of many men.
Hundreds of thousands of persons in the United
States of America would be able to testify how
His mysterious influence has entered their souls
and shaken them to their life-centres, as no
other emotion, as not even the love for their
life-mates has done, and mate-love is the most
powerful of the passions. Away down, reaching
deeper depths, encompassing the noblest senti-
ments, goes this mighty power, irresistible, into
the souls of many men. Its manifestations are
not always identical, but there are certain quali-
ties ever present — a recognition of God, a
sense of disobedience to Him and unworthi-
ness ; a desire for pardon to be obtained only
by the mediation of Jesus Christ. The uni-
versality of these sentiments proves the proba-
bility of the truth of the ideas they represent.
This working of the Holy Spirit of God is a
mighty factor in soul evolution. It often comes
as violently as the wind of a tornado ; as terri-
fying as a prairie fire ; as overpowering as water
in a flood with sweeping, drowning violence.
To others, as the blessed and gentle dew of
heaven; as sunshine vivifying the heart; as
[138]

The Holy Ghost

the whispering breeze speaking softly to the
soul ; but whether one or the other, praise
be to God for the regenerating influence of
His Holy Spirit in the evolution of the soul
of man.

[ 139]

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL^

IF man was assured his life on this earth was
the end of his existence, the greatest induce-
ment he now possesses for good conduct would
be lost. While this is a most beautiful world
to live in, and so attractive that all sane and
healthy persons are loth to leave its fascinations
and to pass either to a blissful immortality or
to nothingness — yet so severe is the labor
essential to provide for the necessities and com-
forts of life : so feeble the body in contest with
the productive forces of nature ; so disappoint-
ing are the results of man's best efforts in what-
ever department his energies may be engaged ;
so vain and illusory his ambitions that rapine
and plunder would take the place of fatiguing
effort if he was not restrained by State and
divine laws; listless idleness would dwarf the
mind, and in the general stagnation, self-respect
and ambition would be unknown.

It is the thought, he is only a sojourner here;
that in a few short years he will enter upon an

^ For a discussion of the probability of the Immortality of
the Soul from rational considerations, see " The Testimony of
Reason."

[ 140]

Immortality of the Soul

existence incomparably superior to all present
experiences that endows this mundane life with
its chief joy to those hearts which have realized
its comparative nothingness. In it they see
a school where the virtues of heaven are to be
learned, and the evil propensities of humanity
to be curbed and subdued to the extent of ren-
dering themselves acceptable inhabitants for an
abode of purity and love. Its trials they trust
will be of short duration, with an existence of
ineffable peace and happiness awaiting them,
provided they are worthy ; because it is against
common reason, unsupported by even the uni-
versal conceit of the heart, for men who have
recklessly given over their lives to debauchery,
murder, and evil to believe they will inherit
without repentance the bliss of heaven. It is
consequently impossible to overestimate the
evolutionary value on the soul of the hope of
immortality which Christianity inculcates. The
belief in a future life distinctly raises man above
the level of the brute creation. It makes his
existence extend to infinity. It causes the
soul to take on some of the attributes of the
Deity. Without immortality man becomes a
brother of the beasts ; with immortality, a son
of God.

Prolongation of this argument in unnecessary.
Nothing can be plainer than that the Christian
belief of Immortality is a most powerful motive
[141]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

in spiritual evolution, and for which belief no
other dogma has been efficiently substituted.

Nor does Christianity ask adherence to any
proposition the contradictory of which can be
proved to be true. That the soul of man is not
immortal cannot be demonstrated. It is ad-
mitted that so far as human knowledge extends
no one has any experience of either a mind or
soul independent of a physical body, and this is
the sole circumstance of value capable of being
urged by materialists against immortality. But
on the other hand :

1. Who knows the nature of mind ? Who can
define the substance of that faculty which recog-
nizes God? It is unscientific to declare such
entities cannot exist without a body until their
essential components can with accuracy be de-
fined ; and this no philosopher or scientist has
done.

2. If it be conceded that there was a First
Cause which created matter, force, and motion,
and subjected them to rigorous obedience of
definite laws; and also established, as far as
the human race is concerned, moral laws for
its governance ; and if such First Cause could
not have ordained the complex laws of matter
and motion without itself understanding their
nature, or have formulated commandments for
morality without itself possessing the moral

[142]

Immortality of the Soul

sense, then it follows immediately that such
First Cause must have been possessed of both
a mental and a moral nature. But it is incon-
ceivable that such First Cause which made all
the millions of spheres revolving in space, and
implanted in the human soul the innate prin-
ciples of charity, love, truth, and virtue, etc.,
was formed of bodily parts — of bone, flesh,
and nerve — subject to the laws of gravitation
and chemical affinities, or its morality was as
imperfect as that of man. Therefore the human
reason is forced to this conclusion that Mental-
ity and Morality can exist independently of a
material body similar to that possessed by man,
and the Immortality of the Mind and Soul is
consequently not disproved by the apparent
cessation of vital functions on the death of the
body.

3. All the phenomena of nature stand for
truth. The laws which govern the physical
world never deceive. The rules for moral con-
duct are as uncompromising as the sternest
natural laws. If the nature of a being may
be judged by its works, one of the distinguish-
ing characteristics of the great Author of the
Cosmos is Truth. Nowhere is there deception.
To this statement there is no exception. Sin is
never confounded by the soul with righteous-
ness ; evil is never believed to be virtue. The
processes of the sane mind in its discrimination
[143]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

between right and wrong are as certain as the
laws of physics. When therefore there is every-
where, among all peoples an innate, instinctive
belief in the immortality of its spiritual nature,
a strong probability by analogy is created that
such belief represents the truth.

[ 144]

REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

AVERY prominent and unmistakable prin-
ciple of the Christian Religion is the
unqualified doctrine that reward will wait upon
faith in Christ and effort at righteousness, and
punishment will be the portion of the ungodly,
and these consequences will follow the soul
after death.

It is a natural characteristic of man to seek
his own well-being. Every part of him has
needs — his body, his mind, his soul. He is
in constant realization of ever-pressing wants;
he is always conscious of his inability to supply
them fully — more than that, even partial sup-
ply would fail if serious effort was intermitted.
These demands are not confined to necessities.
His mind in its activities soon changes a luxury
into a want, so that the more he possesses the
more he desires. Desire is always an advance
myth beckoning him on ; and he toils, he
schemes, he frets, he oftentimes consumes his
life in seeking to accomplish a state of falsely
supposed betterment.

Correlative to these yearnings for reward is
the fear of punishment. Punishment is not
lo [ 145 ]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

only a denial of a coveted blessing, but an
infliction of some appreciable pain. Men may
in their supineness endure to a limited extent
absence of gratification, — they often do forego
pleasure from indolence, — but none fail to es-
cape punishment if they can. So, when the
multitude is considered, threatened punishment
is more conducive to good conduct than prom-
ised reward.

In a broad generalization the whole scheme
of natural evolution is based on reward and
punishment. When effort is made to accom-
modate the organism to its environment the
reward of supply of necessities is realized, and
contentment follows ; when no effort is made,
for example, to secure food, or to avoid dangers,
pain as a punishment quickly supervenes. Evo-
lution, therefore, holds out an inducement of a
double character for effort. The absence of
effort in most cases does not result in simple
self-denial and abstaining from enjoyment, but
in positive pain ; but if effort is made, enjoy-
ment follows as a decided reward. So effort
is doubly rewarded. Organized society is based
on the same evolutionary principle. Rewards
wait quickly on brave and noble deeds done for
the State. Every community honors the hero
of successful battle, and elevates to the highest
posts of influence its public servants. The
vicious and depraved are punished with im-
[146]

Reward and Punishment

prlsonment or made to give their lives for their
crimes. There is no exception to this general
rule. What pandemoniums the crowded cities
of the world would be if there was no punish-
ment for crime? Civilization would halt, and
in a few generations, depopulation and barbar-
ism would result.

Soul evolution is founded on the same prin-
ciple. From the delivery of the Second Com-
mandment to Moses on Mount Sinai down
through the pages of the New Testament, pun-
ishment is declared to be the portion of the
ungodly — punishment not only in this life as
the natural result of bad conduct, but punish-
ment of the soul in the life beyond the grave.
This is the dreadful sentence of Divine Law,
and when appreciated fully is proportionally to
its length and its character just so much more
powerfully deterrent to the commission of sin.

The justice of God cannot be impeached
because He has established punishment for evil
conduct. On the contrary, if He had not
ordered it to follow sin, His wisdom might well
be assailed. He has made man with free will ;
He has intended that the human race with all
the balance of creation should evolve into
higher states ; He has endowed it with a soul
and immortality; for Him under such circum-
stances to allow vice — which is the parent of
degeneracy — to go unpunished would be an
[M7]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

encouragement for its indulgence, and one of
the most powerful aids for soul evolution would
be wanting, and man consequently would fail to
make efforts to improve. In a purely rational
consideration of the subject, it would seem,
therefore, God was under the necessity of or-
daining that punishment should in the future
existence of the soul be the result of sin in this
life. Further, by analogy punishment must
follow vice. It does on this earth of its own
effect. If the soul exists after death, is it rea-
sonable to suppose that by the death of the
body it changes its characteristics? On the
contrary, every natural analogy would lead to
the conclusion that it holds to its previous
methods. A contemner of God will be a con-
temner still ; a vicious heart towards fellow-men
will entertain the same sentiments. How then
in a strictly human view of the subject could
such a creature come into the presence of an all
Holy God? Of necessity he must be banished
from the sight of Righteousness ; of necessity
he would banish himself, like the wicked in this
life shun the companionship of the virtuous.

The reverse agency applies to rewards.
More than the applause of grateful fellow-citi-
zens, or bronze statue, is the portion of those
who die in the Lord. A vista, extending into
the infinite future of eternal happiness and of
proximity to God, is offered to the vision of the
[148]

Reward and Punishment

soul for faith and good works. What a grand
scheme for soul evolution ! Exactly analogous
to natural evolution. If this world is the result
of intelligent design by an all-wise Creator, then
the agreement of soul evolution to natural evo-
lution establishes a strong probability in favor
of the verity of the former.

[ 149]

FREE WILL

NOTWITHSTANDING the fore-knowl-
edge of God, the Christian ReHgion
teaches in the most unequivocal manner the
possession of Free Will by humanity. How
these two apparently contradictory states can
co-exist has been much discussed by theo-
logians, and no full reconcilement has been
made of the perplexity. The case, however, is
not different from any other metaphysical in-
quiry, except the consciousness that we exist;
or in the schoolmen's words, the recognition by
each individual of the " ego." As an instance
of metaphysical indecision in such matters,
philosophers and thinkers have divided in
opinion and waged intellectual warfare for cen-
turies as to whether we perceive matter at all ;
some contending that what Ave see and hear
and feel are our own sensations and not things
themselves, and therefore that there is no cer-
tainty as to the external world. On a survey of
the phenomena of nature it may be stated
broadly there is mystery in all things where
the intellect seeks to unravel Cause ; and con-
sequently to believe that it is within the power
[150 J

Free Will

of God to know the future ; to know how each
individual will act, though perfectly free to
pursue one course or another, is no more an
unsolvable problem than every other situation
which surrounds us on all sides at every mo-
ment of our lives.

If a study of nature teaches one lesson more
than another, it is God's scheme of creation is
development by individual effort. The fossil-
iferous strata of the earth offer the most certain
testimony that life has, in the main, advanced
by effort from simpler forms to those of more
complex structure and function. The vast im-
provement, accomplished in the short lifetime
of each man by appropriate physical and mental
exertions, demonstrates how effort is the agency
by which all human growth is effected. Those
organisms making proper efforts ascend in the
scale of life, while those which fail to meet the
requirements of this stern law do not. For this
law to be just wherein each is the architect of
his own fortune, Free Will must exist.

To be thoroughly persuaded that success or
failure depends on self — on individual efforts
— is a strong motive to action. Each organism
holds the key ; it has but to search for the lock
which will open the blessings of this life to it.
The Christian doctrine of Free Will as to the
physical, mental, and moral life of man is em-
inently conducive to effort. No Mohammedan
[151]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

fatalism cramps energy; no superstitious in-
cantations or orgies constrain the effect of
natural laws evoked by endeavor ; but all of
the temporal good things of life and the grace
of God are as free as air, as light, awaiting only
the effort to make them one's own.

Free Will is God's justification for the success
or failure of every creature. Each class of or-
ganisms, and each individual of each class, are
enjoying the blessings or discomforts caused by
the efforts of either their ancestors or them-
selves. They all started from the same plane.
Some have adapted themselves more perfectly
to their environments than others. Some have
advanced in the scale of life — others have made
less progress — others again have even become
extinct. None can complain. Failure is their
own work, success their own due. In the
great contest of life, where all classes of organ-
isms should have an equal chance, a special
protectorate of one would of necessity operate
as a detriment to others. The field has been
free, the intelligently industrious have been the
winners. How fair this all is ! How compat-
ible with pure abstract justice !

Another lesson to be learned is the impor-
tance of effort by each individual as affecting
the fortunes of his progeny. Every act of every
creature of all the multitudinous orders, families,
species, and varieties of life inhabiting the earth,
[152]

Free Will

is not only making history, but character, for its
offspring; and whether the latter advance or
retrograde depends largely on the efforts of its
ancestors. It has the free will to act or not.
Its choice is free. The justice of the Second
Commandment, wherein it is said God will visit
the sins of the fathers upon the children to
the third and fourth generations, is most clearly
demonstrated when the evolutionary develop-
ment of organism is thus interpreted. If a
man violates a law, and by so doing injures
the functions of his body or mind, evolution
often transmits these evil effects to his progeny ;
so conversely, if in his free will he makes efforts
to live in accordance with the laws of his exist-
ence and develops functions and structure ad-
vantageous to himself, these improvements will
also be inherited by his offspring. For the Sec-
ond Commandment not to have been the law,
organism would have lacked the power of inherit-
ance and all the development of animal and men-
tal life abounding on the globe at this time would
never have materialized. In other words, should
evil be protected against itself, and as a conse-
quence no attainment of higher life be made?
Should the wise scheme which has brought to
the blossom our beautiful world and evolved
the God-like animal — man — have been sacri-
ficed in order that sin might be spared the legit-
imate consequences of its own conduct? Moses
[153]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity-
was an evolutionist in the narration of the Crea-
tion. He was no less an evolutionist when he
announced as God's servant one of its funda-
mental laws in the Second Commandment,
namely, the transmission of acquired charac-
teristics to progeny.

Every soul has the innate feeling that there
is reverence due to some being, or essence, or
principle outside of itself It may deny the
God revealed by Moses, but in His place it
sets up either the laws of nature, or pantheism,
or idolatrous practices, or some other figment
beyond itself, which more or less clearly it
deifies. There is no escape from an instinctive
acknowledgment of man's feebleness in the pres-
ence of natural forces ; no capacity to ignore
deity ; but free will exists to worship a brazen
calf, the laws of physics, or the Christians' God.
Recognition of the Godhead in one form or
another is a consequence of soul existence.

Likewise in reference to man's duty to his
fellows. The soul instinctively perceiv^es man-
kind has a common origin ; that more or less
remotely men are akin ; and independently of
all utilitarian consideration it is their duty to
love one another. This is a great constraining
principle, man has no power to flee from. It
dominates his nature. And yet he has, subject
to this innate consciousness, the ability to re-
[154]

Free Will

gard or disregard its teachings in particular
instances and either hand the cup of cold water
to the thirsty under the influence of a common
brotherhood, or to murder his victim in dis-
regard of the dictates of his conscience.

[155]

FAITH

NO man has seen God. The skeptic can-
not subdue his self-conceit and declares
God should manifest Himself to his senses. He
demands to know more of God than he knows
of the ground on which his feet tread. The
most learned physicist has not discovered what
matter is. Faraday was unable to describe the
nature of electricity, and advanced electricians
of the present day are giving out about every
five years new theories of this wonderful natural
phenomenon ; and yet the atheist, if there is
really one, cries out, " Why does your God not
reveal Himself to man?" It is answered, " He
has revealed Himself as far as the law of spirit-
ual evolution allows. Deism exists in your
heart — in the soul of every man — in the soul
of that profound agnostic, Herbert Spencer —
not defined by a concrete essence, but none the
less truly in the vague and hazy consciousness
of a ' First Cause.' "

There is merit in believing in God. To real-
ize His existence somewhat as if we had seen
Him face to face requires a very persistent
training of the soul — a metaphysical intro-
[156]

Faith

spection. We learn to apprehend God by con-
templating His works — His omnipotence by
viewing the nightly display of the stars; His
omnipresence, by observing the harmonious
workings of the laws of matter and of force ;
His omniscience, by the consciousness that He
knows the secrets of our hearts; His love, by
this beautiful world He has evolved for us to
live in. There is no part of the universe, but
God has revealed Himself somewhat in it, to
those who seek Him ; and with evolutionary
exactitude He reveals Himself the more to
those who the more earnestly wish to know
Him.

There could be no growth in the knowledge
of God if He had made Himself as plain to the
mind as the trees are to the vision. When a
thing is known fully there is nothing to stimu-
late inquiry — it becomes commonplace and
uninteresting. Photographers no longer experi-
ment to ascertain if iodide and bromide of silver
are sensitive to light. This is fully understood,
but it was once the subject of unwearied investi-
gation. Their efforts are now directed to the
problem of photographing the colors of the
spectrum. If this should be accomplished, it
would lose much of its interest and some other
unattained knowledge, such as the photography
of objects invisible to the human eye would
beckon on the insatiable greed of the intellect
[157]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

of man. The witchery of mystery is fascinating.
It stimulates contemplation of the Deity, and
thought of God elevates the soul.

On lines precisely similar to the revelation
of Himself has God made known the Lord
Jesus Christ. If the Deity has left ground for
speculation as to His own nature, would it not
have been extraordinary for Him to have en-
forced conviction in regard to the Messiahship?
As to His own nature He has revealed Himself
in every material object, in every law of the
universe, in the Holy Scriptures, in the souls of
men adequately for soul evolution. In regard
to His Son the same method has been pursued.
He appeared on the theatre of the world at a
most opportune period for human evolution.
A minute history of His life, of His miracles
attesting His divinity, of His death and resur-
rection and ascension has been singularly pre-
served for the use of men ; also a full account
of the principles He taught. There has been
vouchsafed to us the knowledge that soon after
His death — soon is repeated because in that
age the printing press was unknown, and com-
munication between peoples slow, difficult, and
infrequent — His religion largely supplanted
heathenism. More extraordinary yet, in a world
where everything is under the reign of law — of
Evolution — established by a beneficent Being,
we have had the most surprising evolutionary de-
[158 J

Faith

velopment, physically, mentally, and spiritually,
of man, unmistakably and proximately attribut-
able to the doctrines of peace and good-will
He taught These in general terms are briefly
some of the evidence of the verity of Christ,
adequate in every particular on which to found
a reasonable faith. The soul is the soil, and
these facts the seed. If the ground is culti-
vated as the prudent husbandman does his
fields, and the weeds are turned under by the
plough, the revelation of Christ is ample to bring
forth the most abundant harvest — the deepest,
sweetest, most consoling faith and moral con-
duct.

Faith is inconsistent with absolute knowledge.
A thing known, as said before, is no longer
investigated — but faith stimulates contempla-
tion; and contemplation eventuates in either
mental or soul evolution. To illustrate the
thought, take one example.

Fortunately for soul evolution there has been
no authentic account of the personal appearance
of the Saviour. If the world had been favored
with a true portrait of His features. His bearing
and general manner. He would be as common-
place to us as Napoleon or Washington. This
extraordinary absence of all personal descrip-
tion of our Lord is in exact accord with all
other revelation. Just enough has been un-
folded to increase the desire for further knowl-
[159]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

edge ; enough to call for the exercise of the
highest development of faith, and therefore
of the imagination. Imagination is a meta-
physical reality, powerfully affecting the will
power, and the will controls the acts.

As it is, the spirit is constantly seeking to
picture to itself the divine lineaments of our
Lord. ]\Iichael Angelo, Raphael, and the whole
line of the most gifted artists of the past and
present, have looked into their souls for the
Christ and endeavored on canvas and in marble
to symbolize their most sublime conceptions.
Not only these, but every heart throughout
Christendom that raises itself ideally in suppli-
cation to His feet, clothes His person with the
most beautiful embodiment it can figure, thus
elevating by effort, by the process of evolution,
the individual soul to a higher sphere.

While no man knows whether the Saviour's
skin was bronzed or fair as woman's ; whether
auburn locks surrounded His brow, or dark
masses of hair rested on his shoulders; if a
straight Greek or modern Hebrew nose domi-
nated His countenance; or whether He grew
tall among men or was robust ; but this I know
as plainly as if I was looking at His person at
this moment — for the spirit then as now illumi-
nated all the features of the face, every movement
of the body, the whole being, with its own es-
sence — that the walk of Jesus was neither
[i6oj

Faith

hurried with nervous excitement nor slow with
sluggishness. A sweet but composedly sad
expression at all times rested on the lines of
His mouth — its sweetness, expressive of His
sympathy and love for humanity — its sadness,
of His inexpressible grief for man's sins. There
was no moroseness in His lonely moments ; no
complaint when grieved the most; but a calm
benignity dominated every emotion in even His
last hours. I know not whether His eyes were
dark or blue or gray, but this I know, the living
spirit of the man beamed from them with ineffa-
ble tenderness, and the light of love lit them as
a lantern with kindly rays. He was meek but
not cringing, for Christ was a moral hero. Did
He not fearlessly pronounce the judgments of
the law on the chief men of His nation with the
words, " Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites " ? No mortal man has equalled
Him in calm courage — none has so deliber-
ately walked to martyrdom as Jesus. When
I describe Him to my soul as a preacher, repose
and earnestness seem to have emanated from
every movement of His body — from His whole
being — exercising even before He spoke a pro-
found influence — that influence which great
men exert over the weaker ; that reserve power
which conquers all obstacles, which impels
smaller souls to put their trust in the strong. His
gestures neither soared with undue frequency,
" [ i6i ]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

nor were impassive with coldness, but dignified,
impressive, and graceful. His voice was musi-
cal, and the modulation of His words various
and exquisite ; for I have ever noticed a fine
delivery of speech is accompanied with mental
capacity. I see the multitude hanging on His
words, some weeping, many following Him from
place to place, eager to hear more of eternal
salvation spoken in such stirring and solemn
tones. And notwithstanding their homage, I
see this Man, easily recognized as Master of
them all and by them all, not puff'ed up with
self-approbation, but calm and earnest and lowly.

The contemplation of such things, the effort
to bring the person of the Saviour visibly to
the spirit and thus elevate it, is as much a mat-
ter of soul evolution as the seeking of a favorable
habitat is among animals and plants.

This brief illustration of the effort to picture
some of the characteristics of Jesus shows how
contemplation — delightful and ennobling con-
templation — would be extinguished if knowl-
edge had been allowed to usurp the place of
faith, and soul evolution thus far be rendered
impossible.

[162 J

GOOD WORKS

THE Christian Religion teaches not only
the necessity for Faith but the perform-
ance of Good Works. By Good Works is
meant to love God, and to love one's neighbors
because God has commanded it. Faith and
Good Works are inseparably connected and
reciprocally the effect of the other. Faith in
itself begets Good Works. To believe, to
thoroughly believe, God is the Lord and Father
of us all, that Jesus Christ by His death made
atonement for our sins, that this Godhead has
enjoined abstinence from sin, and righteous
conduct, such a faith of its own force will impel
the believer to Good Works. So, on the other
hand, the individual who devotes his best efforts
to loving God and obeying the precepts taught
by the Saviour, and because they were taught
by Him, must of necessity have Faith in the
Deity he strives to obey. Consequently there
can be no Christianity without Good Works.
But work is effort, and effort as we have fre-
quently seen is the proximate cause of Evolu-
tion. In requiring, therefore, Good Works, the
Christian Religion is as absolutely and essen-
tially evolutionary as the law of natural selection.
[163]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

By effort the organism becomes more complex
in function and structure ; by effort the human
soul attains more perfectness.

It is impossible to conceive of a system better
adapted for spiritual development than Chris-
tianity. Effort is necessary to attain to a satis-
factory apprehension of God, faith in Christ,
and the performance of Good Works. There is
no free gift of perfected spirituality. It is only
acquired after the abasement of intellectual con-
ceit, by the submission of a rebellious will, by
the denial of vicious pleasures made alluring by
the worldly, by the loving of the brother man.
In all this system for the creation of righteous-
ness there is not one flaw in its code, not one
sin is tolerated or unpunished. If this immacu-
lateness be admitted, and no atheist even will
deny the morality of Christianity, then if the
moral nature of man is the subject of Divine
solicitude as much as his physical development,
and it must be so, for physical development
broadly considered can only take place propor-
tionally with moral development, it follows that
Christianity, aiding in the most efficient manner
the evolution of man, is by analogy as much the
institution of the Creator as the laws of physical
evolution.

The effects of Good Works wrought under
the influence of Christianity are marvellous.
[164]

Good Works

On a previous page, the writer has called at-
tention to the results of this Religion, showing
how men must have peace and security of life
to enable them to devote their minds to the
arts and sciences, and thereby make the best
use of the laws of nature ; how in consequence
of the teachings of the " Prince of Peace " wars
and the butchery of wars have comparatively
ceased in the present era ; how the most extra-
ordinary advance has been made along all the
lines of physical, mental, and moral develop-
ment until schools and hospitals and churches
fill nearly all Christian — but only Christian —
lands, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness are the birthright of every man.

Unfriendly readers may answer this picture is
a glittering generality and we dispute its truth-
fulness. Then let there be cited one instance,
and a most important one, because it affects the
male youth of our country, with facts taken
from the official report showing what Chris-
tianity is doing for soul evolution in that
case. The number of well-established Young
Men's Christian Associations of North Amer-
ica in May, 1903, was 1,736, with a member-
ship of 350,455, owning establishments valued
at $28,827,886. The associations have 739
reading-rooms and expend annually $42,100
for periodicals. They have 699 libraries with
544,450 volumes. Courses in education are
[165]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

given by 913, to young men and boys. Last
year 70,286 religious meetings were held, at
which there was an attendance of 3,954,207.
The number of men and boys enrolled in
definite Bible classes was 31,300.

Think of the benignant effect this one insti-
tution, and of comparatively recent origin, is
having on soul evolution ! How it is purifying
the morals of every youth of our land who
comes within its blessed influence. Can a thorn
tree bear such figs — a thistle such roses — a
dive be the nursery of pure minds in sound
bodies?

Following the same line of thought an ex-
amination of the Directory of the City of
Chicago for 1903 will show that there are in
that city approximately nine hundred churches
devoted to the cause of Christianity. There
are also in that book the names of one hundred
and fifty-eight schools, nineteen asylums, four-
teen hospitals, and five hundred and ninety-two
religious societies, all bearing as their designa-
tion some name intimately connected with the
life of Christ.

If it be estimated that each church has one
religious society, and they have between them
on an average an active membership of four
hundred persons, it is plain that some three
hundred and sixty thousand people in that city
are devoting themselves more or less to the en-
[166]

Good Works

nobling worship of God, to helping those un-
able to help themselves, to teaching correct
and temperate living, to the practising of virtue,
to cultivating the intellect, to the advancement
of honesty and brotherly love, in a word to the
development of the physical, mental, and moral
evolution of themselves and their fellow-men.

The writer has examined in vain this direc-
tory to find the name of a single society, organi-
zation, or association whose title would indicate
that it was composed of infidels having for its
object the evolution of the human race. There
is no reason to think that the directories of
New York,^ Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Washington, St. Louis, San Francisco, and other
cities of the United States, will present any sub-
stantial difference from that of Chicago.

This showing, if it be true, and the directory
can be easily consulted, is a terrible indictment
of infidelity. The accusation is that there is no
charity, no brotherly love, no desire on the part
of infidels to better humanity; that it neither
teaches nor practises the physical, mental, or
moral advancement of mankind ; that it stands
for degeneracy; and that its legitimate result
is retrograde evolution.

It would seem that on this showing the honest
agnostic would of his own accord pause and

1 For a similar analysis of New York City Directory, see
" The Testimony of Reason."

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity-
ask himself the question, Can I be right in my
infidelity? If infidelity is practically synony-
mous with degeneracy, is it not contradicted by
the progressive evolution of all nature in which
I am a firm believer? The position of the
agnostic scientist is therefore of the most in-
conceivable contradiction. As a rule such men
are of more than ordinary knowledge and power
of analysis. They are firm believers in Evolu-
tion. They must know that morality and Good
Works contribute to longevity, to physical de-
velopment, to peace of mind, and thereby to
the leisure to investigate and the disposition to
solve and utilize the natural forces. In fine,
that evolution is largely dependent on brotherly
love, and the highest brotherly love is that in-
spired by obedience to Divine Command as
promulgated by Christianity; and yet, they
ignore this cause of evolution, this factor which
is of no less importance in the high development
of man than the survival of the fittest to live,
and substitute nothing in its place. A strange
inconsistency for men who believe in the Reign
of Law in a world where every law has an intel-
ligent and sufficient Cause.

But it is not surprising there are no agnostic
societies for the propagation of virtue, for the
founding of hospitals, or the cultivation of Good
Works, because there is no cohesion in vice or
infidelity. Criminals will imite to perpetrate a
[i68]

Good Works

theft, but when detection overtakes a member
and he can escape by disclosing the plot, he
makes confession and violates his compact of
secrecy. The infidel never rises to any higher
plane than a balancing of gains as the motive
for a good act, and as this balance is as various
as the different minds which weigh the subject,
owing to their different points of view and cir-
cumstances, there can be no united efforts, no
union of infidels in altruistic acts.

Christian unity is unlike all this shifting of
sands. Throughout all Christendom there is
but one chart, one common platform, one high-
est law — love God with all thy heart and thy
neighbor as thyself. Is it wondrous, then,
that such countries are everywhere filled with
churches, with societies and hospitals and col-
leges bearing Christian names and embracing
millions of souls devoted to the noblest philan-
thropy in the cause of Evolution?

Enough. A volume might be written and
hardly adequately emblazon the twice blessed
effects of Christianity on him who gives and on
him who receives.

[169]

ATONEMENT FOR SIN

IN this treatise sin is understood to be either
a wilful violation of the commandments of.
God or an omission to use one's best efforts to
conform to such commandments. It is unneces-
sary for the argument to discuss the original
cause of sin ; whether it came by man's dis-
obedience in eating the forbidden fruit in an
actual Eden, or whether that account is sym-
bolical of a deeper cause ; which it may be, for
it is an undeniable fact that much of the Scrip-
tures is written in and illustrated by a figurative
style, and often with poetic license. The Saviour
Himself resorted to parables most frequently
to enforce His revelations and teachings. But
taking the world as we find it, many sins to
which man is addicted are directly attributable
to the edict that by the sweat of his brow he
should earn his bread. Rarely does man find
something for nothing. For the most part
nature is such a reluctant mistress she yields
her treasures only after the most laborious and
persistent toil, and in such scant abundance
and of such perishable quality there is no lay-
ing up of stores for the future. The muscles
[ 170]

Atonement for Sin

of the toiler are feeble ; his nerves are weak ;
his years of infancy and of old age many; and
his period of active work not adequate to ac-
complish individually great things ; moreover,
disease, injuries, and lassitude are ever curtailing
his vigorous days. The necessities of himself
and of a dependent family are numerous, and
so imaginative are their minds that luxuries
soon take on the garb of indispensable require-
ments. Every inducement of nature, his love,
his desire to please those who look up to him,
his parental instincts, all urge him to supply
these wants. He is oppressed with the convic-
tion he cannot successfully earn them, and that
he is surrounded by fellow-men in sharp com-
petition with himself bent on seizing what he
would obtain. The opportunity presents itself
to appropriate what another has produced.
His desire is so great to possess it, he steals.
With this crime of theft is always associated
falsehood — ■ sometimes arson and sometimes
murder; often the breaking of the Sabbath,
the dishonoring of parents, and always covet-
ousness.

Many sins may thus be traced to a covetous-
ness springing out of the parsimony of nature
and the feebleness of man's best efforts to over-
come the reluctance of the soil to yield without
exhausting labor. Men everywhere realize they
are sinful. This condition is emphasized when
[171]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

they find themselves in a state of civilization ;
for civilization increases wants, and wants with-
out effort are the natural parents of sin.

There comes a time in the life of many souls
when the conviction of sin plays a very intense
r6le. The soul by the influence of the Holy
Spirit of God sometimes wakes up to a realiza-
tion of its duty to its Creator, namely, to love
Him with all its power, and to love its neighbor
as itself. It appreciates it has fallen far short
of the performance of these obligations. It
undergoes a regeneration, modified, it is true, by
the physical and mental characteristics of the
individual, but a regeneration — a conversion —
the most prominent quality of which is a rec-
ognition of the Holiness and Righteousness of
God and the unworthiness of the sinner — a
conviction that the soul is unfit to enter into
the ineffable Presence of its Maker; that there
is a certainty of punishment for misdeeds, and
an impossibility ever to acquire by its own
efforts any worthiness sufficient to render it
pure enough to approach its august God.

To be convinced of this state of affairs — to
be permeated with these thoughts — that the
soul is powerless to do anything to render it
either fit to enjoy the presence of its Creator, or
to escape damnation, despair would seize it
within its enervating grasp, effort would be fore-
gone, and in its place the man would abandon
[ ^72]

Atonement for Sin

himself to gratification of his vicious propensities
under the behef that to-morrow he dies.

Just here comes in the evolutionary doctrine
of the Atonement for Sin by the Lord Jesus
Christ, and the poor soul — in the vivid realiza-
tion of its sin and unworthiness, of the unutter-
able perfection of its God, and of its incapacity
to sanctify itself adequately to meet His Holiness
— catches, as a drowning man to a floating spar,
rapturously, sometimes frantically, to the Cross
of Christ as its salvation, and for the balance of
life with varying grasp holds on to it as the
great inspiring cause for its best efforts in resist-
ing sin and growing in soul evolution.

[173]

EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY

IT is not important for the argument of this
treatise to discuss the conclusiveness of
the Evidences of Christianity. According to
the theory of Evolution, if they produced cer-
tain conviction of their truths, there could be
no spiritual development as the result of effort
in studying and testing their values. The fact
that men have an opportunity to doubt, and
need to investigate, gives rise to a spiritual
growth analogous to the information and power
gained by study in those divisions of physics
and intellectual matters, the knowledge of which
is still incomplete.

The Deity, however, has taken care that
mankind has not been left in darkness as to
the facts essential to stimulate religious contem-
plation; but only so much light has been shed
on the subject as not to dispense with effort to
understand His Divinity and the other truths
of Christianity.

How different the scheme of God is from that
of man ! The writer in his humanity is bring-
ing forward every argument and collateral fact
he knows of and thinks pertinent, to convince
[174]

Evidences of Christianity

the reader that Christianity is as evolutionary
in character as natural selection is in the animal
kingdom. The divine method, on the other
hand, compels conviction on none, and while
offering evidences cumulative and more and
more convincing to those who study them with
reverence, yet it never enforces certainty by full
knowledge. To have gone further and com-
pelled belief in Himself and in Christ by the
most indisputable proofs ; to drive men by su-
perior force as the shepherd does his sheep into
the fold, would prevent soul growth, soul evo-
lution. Sheep so driven and protected would
never evolve the capacity to escape from or
defend themselves against wolves.

The opportunity should not, however, be lost
to mention one of the Evidences of Christianity
which should particularly appeal to evolutionists.
It may be termed " The Witness of Christian
Civilization." The world has. had many great
religions and systems of philosophy, and each
has contained valuable moral precepts. In
their day and place they have respectively
moulded the civilization of races to an extent
beyond any other causes. Chinese life in its
highest phases is the incarnation of the teach-
ings of Confucius. These are based on a utili-
tarian morality that it is most profitable to do
right. India has reached all that Buddhism can
[175]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

develop ; which consists of a pantheistic divinity
wherein the highest good does not contemplate
benevolence by the individual, but absorption
into an all-pervading essence. Persian thought
in its best form is the result of the philosophy
of Zoroaster — a philosophy which sanctifies
evil when the emergency is adequate. The
hieroglyphics of Egypt and the frescoes of
Pompeii tell in pictures what their mythologies
could accompUsh. Even the Jew may be cited
as the product of Judaism, and the Turk is the
living exponent of the Koran. So, the almost
entire absence of support by infidels, agnostics,
and materialists of institutions and associations
for the amelioration or advancement of human-
ity is proof there is no virtue for altruism and
brotherly love in their creeds.
( When these people, numbering millions, are
compared with those reared under the influence
of Christianity, it is impossible for a man not
unfriendly to Christ to believe that all the benig-
nant fruitage of Christian civilization has been
the result of falsehood and superstition con-
cocted by a lowly Nazarene and a few ignorant
fishermen of Galilee. In a word, where cause
and effect are as invariable as gravitation ;
where the results of fraud are failures, and sin
is death to any enterprise ; where things founded
on truth alone abide, and those on justice are
always beneficent, it follows as a legitimate
[176]

Evidences of Christianity

deduction from this rational premise that the
wonderful civilization of Christendom must be
a consequence of truth, as contained in the
Christian Religion, and prepares the logical
mind to give more than ordinary weight and
credence to its supernatural claims and evidences. ,>

^Imagine the status man would occupy if en-
dowed with a positive knowledge of God, of
Jesus Christ before He became man, of His
inconceivable glory at this moment; think of
this creature understanding fully the character
of immortality, and what the angels in heaven
and the imps of Satan are engaged in doing;
conceive of him grasping the infinitudes of
time past, of space, and of time future; and
then regard him as the animal he is — weak in
his muscles and nerves, erring in his judgments,
capricious in his emotions, understanding not
even why his heart beats automatically or his
eyes enable him to see, or why he can think
or the secret of memory. Such a being, with
components so unbalanced, would be a mon-
strosity more disproportioned than an ant
surmounted with a human head. God is wiser
than the agnostic.J

The conclusions arrived at are that certitude
in the evidences of Christianity would militate
against effort to accomplish spiritual develop-
[177]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

ment proportionally to their conclusiveness;
that the demands of agnostics for more con-
vincing testimony in support of the tenets of
Christianity are unscientific and founded on a
misapprehension of its basic principle, namely,
that spirituality must be sought, the same as
food for the body and knowledge for the mind ;
that any Christian advocate who claims God has
revealed, beyond doubt and the necessity of
endeavor to search. Himself, His Son, the
Immortality of the Soul, Rewards and Punish-
ments in the Future Life, etc., does not un-
derstand the underlying principles of either
Revelation or Christianity; that the Christian
World may regard with supreme indifference
all the attacks of Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr.
Ingersoll, Professors Strauss, Huxley, etc., be-
cause they are demanding proofs of a religion
which its founder expressly ordained should
not be granted, by declaring it was to be built
on faith; knowing that, if granted, its vital es-
sence, its spirit would be gone, and all the good
it was intended to accomplish — namely, soul
evolution — would be lost forever; or stated
in the converse form, the position of Christianity
as to divine grace is, " Seek and ye shall find,
knock and it shall be opened unto you " ; and
finally that the evidences of Christianity are
perfect in quantity and quality — proved by the
present and prospectively advancing civilization
[178]

Evidences of Christianity

of Christendom, — and most intelligently adapted
by an All-wise Providence to accomplish their
end — the growth of spirituality in man, and
consequent on that growth, his physical, mental,
and moral evolution.

[ 179]

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST

MAN is a social being. He finds his
safety, his development, and his pleas-
ures in intercourse with his fellows. His phy-
sique is so weak in comparison to the force of
gravitation, he is unable without assistance
from others to till adequately the soil, or to
build enduring structures, or to provide even
for his own necessities. He is compelled to
combine with persons in situations similar to
his own to resist the attacks of fierce beasts and
bad men. Deprived of association, he is the
wild man of the woods. The accomplishment
of such prime necessities requires agreement
among the several workers, and this agreement
to produce a desirable result for common bene-
fit is government. Government is, therefore,
evolutionary. Now those things a good gov-
ernment accomplishes for the general advance-
ment of its citizens, the Church of Christ, as to
spiritual matters, performs for its members. It
offers an organization, a concrete idea around
which its adherents may rally. Rallying around
any standard gratifies the social instinct and
fascinates. It stimulates enthusiasm and action.
[i8o]

The Church of Christ

It affords a field for combined endeavor, the
individual being spurred to the highest effort
in his desire for approbation from others. Self-
approbation if controlled by good judgment is
a desirable quality. The Church restrains un-
worthy actions for fear of condemnation by
fellow-members whose good opinion is cher-
ished. It sets forth constantly the virtues of
the Lord Jesus Christ as an example for men
to imitate, and presents His death and resur-
rection as evidences of what He suffered for
them. It ever reminds the relapsing memory of
the great necessity for faith in the Saviour as
Mediator with God.

It is unnecessary to elaborate minutely the
inestimable moral precepts the Church of Christ
has been the active agent in preaching to man-
kind. If morality — not morality practised as
a species of speculation wherein it is mentally
concluded that a certain act will produce desira-
ble results, but that morality which has its main-
spring of action in doing or not doing a thing
because it will be in obedience to the command
of God — has produced beneficial results in the
development of mankind, then the Church of
Christ as the concrete embodiment of that mo-
rality has, in its sphere of influence, been a
most potent agent in the evolution of the altru-
ism which distinguishes Christendom above all
other parts of the world.

[i8i]

THE SACRAMENTS

OWING to a limited range of thought and
the necessity to gratify the same recur-
ring necessities of his nature, almost all of man's
acts take on the character of habits, and these
habits are manifested constantly by the same
outward acts. In other words, he does things
continually in a practically identical manner.
He clothes himself from year to year with
garments of like shapes. He moves about his
household ways with each day a repetition of
the preceding. His pleasures and his labors
are a combination of similar movements. This
general principle applies to every department
of his life, to his business, to his government,
and to his church. Irrespective of a desire
to ignore all ritual he is of necessity a ritualist.
His religious services repeat themselves on Sun-
day after Sunday. His prayers are a reitera-
tion of ideas worded in substantially similar
language, whether written or oral. He cannot
avoid repetition if he would. He has the same
soul emotions to utter, the same wants and
thanks to offer to God, and he has not the

[I82]

The Sacraments

intellectual capacity to vary their expression
indefinitely.

It follows from these facts that a Church
must have a form of worship — whether the
congregation be composed of Quakers or Epis-
copalians or Congregationalists.

But in addition to the adoption by compul-
sion of forms and ceremonies expressive of the
ideas of the worshippers, there is much inherent
value in transmuting spiritual conceptions into
symbolical acts. Some minds, either by nature,
or from want of education, or from preoccupa-
tion by other subjects, are unable to expand
mentally to themselves a satisfying worship ;
whereas when the attention is attracted by some
fully expressed act of devotion, the visible
representative of a reverential idea, the religious
sentiment is elevated and gratified, and drawn
towards the right direction. It goes farther;
it makes definite and intensifies the thought;
it bestows part of its own purity; it gives grace
to the believing worshipper.

Herein again by the establishment of sacra-
ments is found the superhuman wisdom of
Christ. Exactly the correct thing has been
done in every point of view to make His
Church the most enduring evolutionary moral
factor the world has experienced.

Take the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper — a
sacrament as to which entire Christendom is
[ 183]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity-
agreed. Can any outward act of worship be
more touching than this divine institution? It
was founded at the most earnest period of the
life of our Lord — in the midst of His little
band of Disciples and on the eve of His cruci-
fixion. If there is a solemn moment in life, it
is when we stand, in full health, consciously, on
the threshold of eternity. He brake bread and
poured out wine, and declared of those who
should worthily partake of them that He
would dwell in them and they in Him. It
is impossible to imagine a more intimate
communion of soul with soul than was thus
established. What mortal mind would have
conceived of the practice of such an act for
the purpose of typifying the coalescing of the
soul of the disciple into that of its Master?

It was not to be a secret worship, like individ-
ual prayer, but a feast, — the gathering together
of disciples, the visible communion on equal
terms of all believers in an act of co-eating
which more than any other performance signifies
brotherhood. It was to be done reverently, and
Christ's apostle with His usual bold denuncia-
tion of sin, pronounced the sentence of condem-
nation that unworthy partakers should eat and
drink to their damnation. Of all acts of worship,
it is the culminating sacrament, most powerful
in maintaining the unity of the Church — its
virility — its dignity — its sacredness.
[184]

The Sacraments

No man can partake worthily of the feast,
mark well ! worthily, without experiencing an
inward spiritual grace to come over him and to
possess his soul. And in so far as it, and it
alone of all acts which man can perform, raises
him to a sublime state, unapproachable by all
other states, it is the most powerfully unique
evolutionary factor the moral world possesses.

[185]

CHRISTIANITY AN AID TO PHYSICAL
AND MENTAL EVOLUTION

THE influence of Christianity as an evo-
lutionary agent in the advancement of
the physical and mental faculties of mankind
although alluded to heretofore deserves from its
importance a rather more expanded considera-
tion.

The religion of Christ, while inculcating love
of God and faith in His own Messiahship, also
teaches that the Kingdom of Heaven is to be
the abode only of such men as are temperate
in their meat and drink, pure in their lives,
honest in their conduct, diligent in their respec-
tive callings, merciful and charitable with their
fellows, etc.

Now the practice of these cardinal rules of
conduct has each an immediate efifect on the
physical well-being and development of men.
Intemperance saps the goodness of bone and
muscle and nerve. Temperance enables the vis
vitcB — the power of life — to appropriate in the
best manner the supply of food, and correspond-
ing growth takes place. It conduces to the
avoidance of accidents, to long life, to the health-
[186]

Christianity an Aid to Mental Evolution

fulness and rearing of progeny, to the accom-
plishment of the best results in life-work.

Christianity enjoins virtue. The reward of
virtue is a sound mind in a sound body. The
punishment for immorality is often tainted blood,
childlessness, a broken nervous system, insanity,
etc. No mere whitewashing of the outside of
the temple of the soul with foulness within, no
abstaining from acts while the tongue speaks
and the eye beams lasciviousness, is the morahty
taught by the Saviour. His virtue reaches the
plane of sublime inward purity.

He was an uncompromising advocate for the
sanctity of the marriage vow. The married
state is conducive to health, physical comfort,
avoidance of unclean habitation with its micro-
scopic enemies to life. The married state is an
agent of peace in preventing wars. The married
state is at the root of the family tree, whose
broad limbs shelter with its shade and feed with
its fruits the youth of the land — making them
as a rule valuable members of society instead
of a curse to their race.

" Be diligent " is a motto of Christianity, which
command, allied with " Peace " and " Brotherly
Love," contains all the essentials for the suc-
cessful prosecution of commerce, the arts, the
sciences, literature, and philosophy.

These injunctions practised by the unit organ-
isms become incorporated in the body-politic,
[187]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

and government based on such precepts of
Christianity spreads its broad and benignant
aegis over all its people aiding each, one and
all, in the final evolution of a humanity physi-
cally and mentally stronger from age to age.

It seems to be supererogation to follow further
in detail the proximate results, on the body and
mind, of obedience to the rules of Christian life.
There is not one precept, but the legitimate
effect of which is increased physical and mental
well-being. The religion of Christ meets every
demand of the highest civilization. More yet,
it has a reserve of ideals which has never been
equalled and will serve as a moral code for a
millennium.

Practically everything great, everything val-
uable, everything ennobling the world pos-
sesses to-day is the product of Christendom.
Are not these facts, where there is no chance,
but only ordained laws, a most convincing testi-
mony of the value of Christianity to physical
and mental development? Are they not the
strongest proof of its evolutionary character?
And if they are, and evolution as to the body
and mind be conceded to be a law of an all-
wise God, Christianity, because of the powerful
influence it has exerted in evolving mankind to
its present high physical and mental state, must
be ranked in the same category, namely, as the
direct and immediate work of the same Creator.
[188]

Christianity an Aid to Mental Evolution

In other words, all evolution must be denied as
the law of Divine Creation, or Christianity must
be included; or to state the proposition in
another way, there can be no God, and this
wonderful Cosmos with its intricate and har-
monious laws, its adaptation to environments and
developments of life, its beauty, its sublimity,
its love, must all have been the work of chance
— blind chance (and where has chance pro-
duced sequence or law or order?) — or else
Christianity, and all that the sacred word implies,
is among the absolute facts and verities of this
Cosmos ordained by a loving and omnipotent
Father and God.

[189]

MISSIONS

IF Christianity has within itself the inherent
power to cause men to evolve into higher
states of humanity, it would lack in the full and
practical application of its own principles if it
did not teach the extension of its blessings to
all mankind. It is claimed in this treatise, its
Divine Founder left no essential provision for its
successful practice untouched, and as an example
of the perfectness of His religion He com-
manded all His disciples, for all time, to carry
His Gospel to all nations. This is in exact
accord with His great generalization of the Law
and the Prophets, "Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it ;
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Any
less altruism than that which includes the whole
of mankind would, in a purely rational consid-
eration and practice of Christianity, have been a
very great imperfection.

[ 190]

Missions

There have been enumerated some of its bless-
ings to the individual soul, to the family, to the
neighborhood, to each little body of Christians
worshipping under the same roof, to the State, to
communities of Christian States, but Christianity
is broader than all of these. Its evolutionary
power takes in the whole brotherhood of man
wherever he is found. Its love is as boundless
and as free as the air. The love of God and of
the Saviour are the only possessions men are
willing to share with their neighbors. How
marvellous this fact ! It matters not how rich a
Croesus may grow, he is jealous of his friend's
wealth if it approaches in amount to his own.
Statesmen, jurists, medical men, and the whole
class of worldly workers look with displeasure on
the growing reputations of their rivals. Even
children watch with envy a mother's love for
their brethren. But when a soul becomes im-
bued with the Holy Spirit of God, it does not
seek to secure exclusively the divine love for
itself, or to render heaven tenantless except with
its own kindred ; but instantly it takes on the
character of universal love, and an earnest and
supreme desire possesses and fills its whole being
that all men should enjoy equally with itself
the blessed privileges of a blissful immortality,
and share alike with it the love of a Heavenly
Father.

If the temperance, the peace, and the charity
[191]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

Christianity teaches tend to the development of
mankind, then the express command to take
these virtues to every square mile of the earth's
surface is another expression of its complete
evolutionary character.

[ 192]

THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY

IF the highest evolution of humanity is to be
found, as heretofore shown, in the symmet-
rical development of physical, mental, and moral
attributes ; and if the most efficient morality
(not a morality which does a seemingly good act
because it will bring the doer a personal benefit,
but a morality having its source in a desire to
conform conduct to the commandments of the
Supreme Deity) may be formulated as obedi-
ence to the precepts to love God with all the
soul, and our neighbors as ourselves, then Chris-
tianity, which is the living and uncompromising
exponent of this morality, presents a system of
moral laws beyond which there is nothing con-
ceivably better or higher.

It is impossible to imagine a more ennobling
motive for obedience than love for and conform-
ity to the will of the Being who made the mil-
lions of worlds revolving in space — a Being all
powerful, all wise, all holy, and all loving.

When men shall come to love their neighbors
as themselves, murder and theft, slander and
adultery and covetousness will all have ceased
^3 [ 193 ]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

to exist, and universal honor and peace will
abide in the heart of humanity.

These are the ends Christianity has set for the
complete development of mankind — this is the
goal, and none other; and inasmuch as there
can be no loftier or more complex evolution
than is represented by these attainments, and as
evolution will endure, if the history of the past
is a prophet of the future, it follows that Chris-
tianity must continue to be an agent of Evo-
lution ; and as it represents the highest and
noblest principles the mind of man can conceive,
it is impossible, on any reasonable grounds, to
conclude either how Christianity can cease to
exist, or how it can be superseded by another
and better system of religion.

[ 194]

CONCLUSION

THE broad generalization of the arguments
presented in the foregoing pages is — in-
asmuch as man reaches his highest development
in the correlated and balanced growth of his
physical, mental, and moral faculties, and as
Christianity has been a direct and the most effi-
cient factor known in the history of mankind
contributing to his moral advancement, and inci-
dentally to his bodily and intellectual progress
— that the Religion established by Jesus Christ
is entitled to be considered and actually is in its
sphere of influence, as evolutionary as either nat-
ural selection, the effect of use or disuse of parts
on organisms, or the inheritance by progeny of
desirable structures or physiological functions.

If this proposition be granted, and it is not
perceived how it can fairly be denied, when it is
borne in mind that only Christian countries have
advanced splendidly in civilization, and if it is
further believed that nature with its harmonies
of laws, its correlation of matter and force, its
beauty of phenomena, and its development of
life is not the product of chance, but the work
of an all-wise and all-powerful Creator, then it
[195]

Agreement of Evolution and Christianity

follows immediately and legitimately that Chris-
tianity has been ordained and established by
Almighty God.

Again, if this last conclusion be accepted, and
no such world-compelling power could have
flourished without the cognizance of a Supreme
Being, who has given so much attention to both
the grandest and minutest laws and phenomena
of the universe, then Christianity — because it
controls in the most potent manner man's inter-
course with man, modifying his natural savagery,
advancing truth and virtue, temperance and
honesty, charity and love, and thus aids his
bodily and mental progress — must be consid-
ered as regards the Evolution of Mankind as
much a Science in its principles and an Art in its
application as any division of Physics. This is
the resultant thought of this book, namely,
Christianity is a Science established by God to
suit the exigencies of its field of operation, and
is to be classed with all the other sciences and
agencies He has ordained for the Evolution of
His Creation.

When this proposition, and all implied by it, is
fully comprehended, then Christianity will be
viewed in its true light, and the agnostic scien-
tist will recognize that the most efficient means
have been employed to evolve the highest unit
of creation, the Christian will learn that nature
and its laws hold nothing to be feared as antag-
[196]

Conclusion

onlstic to his consoling and ennobling faith —
then too may they approach with hand extended
to hand, each convinced from his distinct line of
reasoning that the Religion of the Lord Jesus
Christ must of necessity be Divine.

[197]

THE TESTIMONY OF REASON

By Samuel Louis Phillips,

A. B. (Princeton).

Zion's Herald. — The author writes mainly for
students of science who have rejected the doctrines
of the orthodox churches. He seeks to estabHsh the
probabihty of the most important truths of Chris-
tianity by purely rational considerations from facts,
so that doubters may be led to recognize the real
strength of the Christian position, and yield them-
selves to the glorifying faith in the Saviour of man-
kind. It is a most excellent aim.

Courier-Journal, Louisville. — An argument
founded upon known facts and known laws for
the Christian religion. It is written with profound
earnestness and clear logic. Its elevated and in-
spiring sentiments should have a wide circulation.

The Sunny South, Atlanta, Ga. — The object of
the author is sensibly stated, and is to meet the
negatives of scientific agnostics with facts out of their
own data, which prove their know-nothingisms palpably
inconsistent. Upon the salient propositions of the-
ology, pure and simple, Mr. Phillips presents fairly
the attitude of those who doubt, deny, or "don't
know " what Christians in common believe. He ex-

[ 199]

The Testimony of Reason

amines the grounds of their unbelief, or faith inertia,
and answers them with the logic of facts and theories
that they profess to be scientifically true and tenable.

A reading of " The Testimony of Reason " will en-
force the conclusion that what is popularly known as
"scientific doubt " in the field of theological knowl-
edge is no more than self-imposed ignorance by the
refusal of knowledge.

. . . expert, cogent, and convincing to those who
have enough of both theological and scientific infor-
mation to follow his arguments.

Tlie Gazette, Terre Haute, Ind. — Believers in
the Christian religion will find much to gratify and
satisfy them in this admirable little book.

Times-Union, Albany, N. Y. — This is a book
which is good to read and profitable to remember.
In it the writer endeavors to prove the truth of the
Bible in its entirety, and argues scientists, atheists,
agnostics, and pantheists on their own grounds. His
quiet earnestness is convincing, and his knowledge is
not limited to the usual refutations of his opponents'
points. He advances new thoughts from an opti-
mistic viewpoint, and stands firm for the " glorifying
and ennobling " Christian faith. His principles of
belief are clearly and concisely presented, and the
work is full of cheer and encouragement.

The Buffalo Courier ; Gazette, Montreal, Canada. —

This volume seeks to combat with " arguments founded
upon known facts and known laws," the representa-
tions of agnostics and scientists, who dispute the
[ 200 ]

The Testimony of Reason

commonly accepted Christian religion. Rather a
clever defence of Christianity from a somewhat origi-
nal standpoint.

Courant, Hartford, Conn. ; Baltimore American.

— The purpose of " The Testimony of Reason," by
Samuel L. Phillips, cannot be too highly commended
as an effort to meet the objectors to religious truths
on the grounds of fair deduction and unprejudiced de-
bate. Mr. Phillips believes that these opponents can
be " made to see . . . that many of the important
truths of Christianity can be established to a high
degree of probability by purely rational considerations
from facts in whose truth they firmly believe," and
that thus they may be brought into a more receptive
frame of mind for further argument.

Oregonian, Portland, Ore. — The book will doubt-
less prove a comfort to many that have been dis-
quieted by vague rumors of attacks on religion by
science.

Savannah Morning News. — An interesting and
valuable little book.

Times Democrat, New Orleans, La. — Mr. PhilHps's
little treatise upon the testimony of reason, when ap-
plied to the principles of revealed religion, is the out-
come of a conviction that more attention should be
given by the representatives of the Christian church
to arguments founded upon known facts and known
laws; that the scientist and agnostic should be ap-
proached upon their own battle-ground, their weapons
[201 ]

The Testimony of Reason

seized, and the fight waged with arguments from na-
ture against arguments from nature. He has there-
fore examined briefly the position taken by the atheist,
the agnostic, and the pantheist, and shown why, in
his opinion, they are, one and all, untenable. Mr.
Phillips's arguments • . . are well put, and they have
never, as he says, been satisfactorily answered.

BuflFalo Sunday News. — The argument ... is
well carried forward and the evidences in human con-
sciousness in verification of the claims of faith are
skilfully marshalled.

The Presbyterian. — In the fulfilment of its pur-
pose it will doubtless prove helpful to many a strug-
gling soul.

The Times, Pittsburg, Pa. — The author believes
truth and nature to be one and harmonious, and that
Christianity is truth. He has advanced some strong
arguments in support of his faith.

"THE TESTIMONY OF REASON"

Cloth, pp. 1 1 6, Price 50 cents. The Phillips Com-
paiiy> 33^ John Marshall Place, Washington, D.C.

[ 202 ]

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
REFERENCE DEPARTMENT

This book is
tak

under no circumstances to be
en from the Building

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y

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