Evolution | Page 7

constrained to offer some explanation of the
origin of the simplest plant and animal life after the globe had,
according to the hypothesis, sufficiently cooled to present areas in
which life might arise. Necessarily, the assumption must be that life
was generated out of lifeless matter. Huxley says: "If the hypothesis of
evolution be true, living matter must have arisen from not-living matter,
for by the hypothesis, the condition of the globe was at one time such
that living matter could not have existed on it, life being entirely
incompatible with a gaseous state." (The earth having been a ball of
gases at the time.) Tyndall is a little more specific; he says that the
combination of electrical and chemical forces acting on the primal ooze
caused germs of life to originate in small bubble-like forms, (vesicles).
His words are: "The first step in the creation of life upon this planet
was a chemico-electric operation by which simple germinal vesicles

were produced." The vesicles consisted of protoplasm, the simple
substance (white-of-egg) which exists in the cells of animal and
vegetable tissues, and which is composed of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen,
nitrogen and traces of other elements. From this original protoplasm the
great variety of living things has been developed.
The Bearing of Evolution on Christianity.
It is evident that the evolutionary theory not only contradicts the Bible
story of creation but, if true, deprives Christianity of every claim of
being the true religion. If all things have come into being through the
action of forces residing in matter then the world did not come into
being through a divine fiat or command. As Haeckel says: "Every
supernatural creation is completely excluded." (Quoted by John Fiske
in "A Century of Science," 1899, p. 51.) Thomas Huxley is quite as
definite: "Not only do I hold it to be proven that the story of the Deluge
is a pure fiction; but I have no hesitation in affirming the same thing of
the story of the Creation." ("Science and Hebrew Tradition," 1896, p.
230.) Furthermore, the theory, by its implications, disposes summarily
of the immortality of the soul. The belief in an immortal soul is termed
by Haeckel as "quite excluded" by the bearing of evolution on the
origin of man. The fall of man becomes a myth, since man has not
fallen from a high estate but has through many ages of slow
development arrived at the use of reason and the dominion over nature;
not a perfect man, made in the image of God, but a cousin to the
tail-less apes, newly accustomed to walking on two feet, is the ancestor
of our race. Without a fall of man there is no possibility nor even a
necessity of redemption; our entire Christian theology would be
dealing with shadowy abstractions, unreasonable fears and hopes, and
purposeless strivings. The belief of the Christian is to the evolutionist
of some value as a phenomenon in the history of the mind, but not the
slightest intrinsic value is recognized in any of the doctrines of
Christian faith, not even in the belief in a personal God. God is,
according to Spencer, the Unknowable. Naturally, there can not be
miracles, since all processes in nature are conceived as governed by
laws not directed by a Divine Intelligence but by forces resident in
nature. Hence, too, there can be no inspired revelation of God, since

that would presume not only the existence of a personal God but an
intervention in natural processes of thought (miracle). John Fiske wrote:
The hypothesis of inspiration "conveys most certainly a conception of
Divine action as local, special, and transitory; and in so far as it does
this, it bears the marks of that heathen mode of philosophy which was
current when Christian monotheism arose." ("Darwinism and Other
Essays," 1895.) Evolution says: If there is a God we have no means of
knowing Him; and what we know of nature certainly precludes the idea
that God, if He exists, will concern Himself about man or break down
the laws of nature even for an instant in his behalf. The conclusion is,
that there is no inspired Bible. Nor indeed an absolute religion. All
religious truths are considered relative, with no such distinction as true
religion and false religion, since there is no criterion revealed
(according to the theory) by which we can test a religion whether it be
true or false. Finally, there is no absolute standard of morals. Moral
truths, like the religious, are relative only. In other words, the teaching
that "Christ has atoned for sin," is as little to be accepted as an absolute
truth, as the command: "Thou shalt not steal" must be accepted as
embodying an absolute rule of conduct. Clodd says in "The Story of
Creation": "Man by himself