34 EVOLUTION OF MAN NOT FULLY ESTABLISHED. Which, and not him, the sceptic seeing, Exclaims, there is no God;' and "Never did a Christian's adoration so praise him, "As this sceptic's blasphemy. 4. A subjective condition is regarded as an objective. cause; for example, the environment is taken as the cause of the development, but we find, according to the evolution theory, legs and lungs developing in an aquatic embryo; is the water the cause? 5. Objective condition is mistaken for cause; for example, shell mollusks develop in lime-water; silicious trees grow in silicious soil; this is but the condition. 6. They make organs appear as the product of their own action; faculties as the outcome of their own functions. In view of all these difficulties, I do not wonder that scientific men are becoming cautious; that many of them are doubting, and that many of them are acknowledging that evolution without a God to begin it and to work it, is impossible. Prof. Le Conte says, Any evolution of the whole cosmos can only take place, by a constant influx of divine energy." App. to Stewart's Conservation of Energy. And again, "I do not agree with those who seem to think that we already know all, or at least the most important factors of evolution, on the contrary, I am quite sure that the most fundamental factors are still unknown, that there are more and greater factors than are yet dreamed of in our philosophy." Prof. Virchow of Berlin, in his address before the assembled scholars of Great Britain and Europe at the tricentenary of the University of Edinburgh, in 1884, said, with great emphasis, that evolution has no scientific basis. See Christian Thought, July and Aug. 1884, p. 74. And again, he said, before the German Association of Naturalists and Physiologists, "Every positive progress which we have made in the region of pre-historic anthropology has removed us farther from the demonstration of this theory." Referring to the theory that man is descended from the ape. Prof. Harris of Yale in his masterly work on the Philosophical Basis of Theism, says, pages 457, 8, of the theory of evolution, "I cannot think that, as yet, it has been either apprehended in its full significance, or scientifically established;" "Even if the theory of evolution is a grand insight of genius, it is not surprising, especially considering how recently it was announced, that it remains neither adequately formulated, nor approved; and that only fragments which EVOLUTION OF MAN NOT FULLY ESTABLISHED. 35 35 may ultimately find place in a comprehensive theory, seem to be assuming the definiteness and certainty of scientific facts." Professor Tyndall says, on this subject: "If asked whether science has solved, or is in our day likely to solve, the problem of the universe, I must shake my head in doubt. Behind, above, and around us, the real mystery of the universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution. The problem of the connection of the body and the soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages. There ought to be a clear distinction made between science in the state of hypothesis and science in the state of fact, and, inasmuch as it is still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of exclusion ought to fall upon the theory of evolution." And again, in his Belfast address, he said, "The profession of atheism would be an impossible answer to the question whether there are not in nature manifestations of knowledge and skill superior to man." App. p. 102, "The whole process of evolution is the manifestation of a power absolutely inscrutable to the intellect of man." "Considered fundamentally, then, it is by the operation of an insoluble mystery that life on earth is evolved, and mind unfolded from their prepotent elements in the immeasurable past." App. p. 91. The Victoria Philosophical Institute of London appointed a commission a few years since, to make a thorough investigation of the whole subject of evolution, weigh all alleged evidence accumulated in the world to the present time, and make a report. That investigation was made by Prof. Stokes, F.R.S., Sir J. R. Bennett, Vice-President of the Royal Society, and Prof. Lionel S. Beale, President of the Microscopal Society and F.R.S. They sum up their conclusions as follows:- "No scientific evidence has been met with, giving countenance to the theory that man has been evolved from a lower order in animals; and Prof. Virchow has declared that there is a complete absence of any fossil type of a lower stage in the development of man; and that any positive advance in the province of pre-historic anthropology has actually removed us farther from proofs of such connection,-namely, with the rest of the animal kingdom. In this, Prof. Barrande, the great paleontologist has concurred, declaring that in none of his investigations had he found any one fossil species developed from another. In fact, it would seem that no scientific man has yet discovered a link between man and the ape, between fish and frog, or between the vertebrate and invertebrate animals; farther, there is no 36 DIFFICULTIES OF EVOLUTION WITHOUT A CREATOR. evidence of any one species, fossil or other, losing its peculiar characteristics to acquire new ones belonging to other species; for instance, however similar the dog to the wolf, there is no connecting link, and among extinct species the same is the case; there is no passage from one to another. Moreover, the first animals that existed on the earth were by no means to be considered as inferior or degraded.' Pres. Rudolf Schmid says in his work on the theories of Darwin that, "The theories of descent, of selection, and of development, have not yet passed beyond the rank of hypotheses," p. 61; and he thinks that natural selection never will pass beyond a hypothesis. Edward von Hartmann, one of the first scholars in Germany, in his "Truth and Error in Darwinism," says that, "Darwinism has passed the summit of its influence in Germany." Clerk Maxwell said that he had tried all the atheistic theories of the universe, and that there is not one of them which does not need theism to make it work. The great scientist, Du Bois Reymond, in an essay a few years since, before the Berlin Academy of Sciences, said there were seven unsolved problems. 1. The existence of matter and of power. 2. The source of motion. 3. The beginning of life. 4. The manifest proofs of design in nature. 5. The origin of simple perception. 6. Logical thinking and the origin of language. 7. Free will. Rev. T. T. Munger, D. D., thus sums up the difference between man and the brute, and the difficulties in the way of man's evolution from the brute without a Creator. FIRST: "The respects in which evolution, as a necessary process in the natural and brute worlds, does not wholly apply to man. 1. Instinct yields to conscious intelligence. 2. The struggle for existence yields to a moral law of preservation, and so is reversed. 3. Intelligence takes the place of natural selection. 4. The will comes into supremacy, and so there is a complete person; man, instead of being wholly under force, becomes himself a force. 5. Man attains full, reflective consciousness. 6. Conscience takes the place of desire. 7. The rudimentary and instinctive virtues of the brutes become moral under will and conscience. 8. Man comes into a consciousness of God. 10. Man recognises and realises the spirit. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MAN AND THE BRUTE. 37 SECOND-Contrasting phenomena of evolution under necessity, and evolution under freedom. 1. Man changes and tends to create his environment; achieves it largely, and so may improve and prolong it. The brute adapts himself to environment, but has no power over it. 2. Man progresses under freedom. The brute progresses under laws and environment; man under will and moral principles of action. 3. Man thinks reflectively, systematises knowledge and reasons upon it; The brute does not, except in a rudimentary and forecasting way. 4. Man has dominion; the brute is a subject. 5. Man worships, having become conscious of the infinite one; the brute does not. 6. Man is the end of creation, and the final object of it; the brute is a step in the progress. The end of a process cannot be identified with the process. See The Century, 1886, Vol. 2, page 117, 118. We might go on to speak of other difficulties; for instance, design, plan, order, arrangement in the universe, and the universal belief of mankind in a Creator, or higher power, but it will be better to reserve those till later, among the direct proofs. CHAPTER THIRD. "For of him, and through him, and unto him are all things." Paul; Rom. XI. 36. Second proof of the existence of a personal First Cause of the universe, from the fact that such a hypothesis solves all the difficulties which we have found and satisfies all the conditions of the problem. We have seen how the atheistic hypothesis fails to meet the conditions of the problem, and leaves unnumbered problems unsolved. When, however, we take the hypothesis of a Creator, it solves all these difficulties and fully meets all the conditions of the problem. The existence of matter is accounted for. Whether we take the ground that God created matter out of nothing, or whether we suppose that the essence of matter has existed from all eternity with God, upheld and controlled by him, there is no difficulty about its existence. If the universe has been created from an original germ, or from an original fire-mist, the origin of that germ, or of that fire-mist is accounted for. The beginning and the continuance of motion are accounted for. When the universe reaches its final stage, the great First Cause can avert the final catastrophe, and re-form the universe, before it falls a wreck into the great centre, or he can let it fall, and then form and set in motion another universe, and so on forever. The origin of life is also accounted for, the action of bioplasm is accounted for; God may be potentially present in every bioplast, as also in every flower and leaf, as well as in every force of nature, working there. The origin of man is accounted for; all the difficulties in the theory of evolution are accounted for. The existence of such a Creator is in harmony with all the facts of evolution, so far as they are known. Let us consider for a moment how a God of infinite wisdom and power would work in the creation and the sustentation of a universe. Being infinitely wise, he would know from the beginning the best way to do everything; he would, as a |