Chapter II: Part 2

The assumption of the “evolution of species” lays all its advocates under the necessity of assuming that a low state of barbarism lies behind the civilization known in the history of the race as the primitive or first condition of intellect. Now, as this is a question of fact, an examination of the evidence pertaining to this second assumption is a matter of primary importance. What are the facts bearing upon the question? With Darwinians the “primeval savage” is a stereotyped idea, finding expression in every-day language; and an idea that some scientists (rather sciolists) never get tired of promulgating. With them primitive man was little removed from the brute beasts, devoid of knowledge, art, and language—a creature in a small degree above; and in a great degree below, the anthropoid apes, from whom it is claimed he has descended by evolution. Is there any proof of this primitive inferiority, or savagery, as opposed to civilization? How does the voice of history speak? It doubtless shows many instances of improvement, of an advance from a low condition to a higher one; but what does the earliest history say as respects the _primitive condition of mankind_? Waiving an examination of the Bible history, we will at once proceed to other sources. In Egypt there are no indications of an early period of barbarism. All authorities agree that we find no rude or heathenish time in the far off history of Egypt out of which civilization was evolved. The first king known in Egyptian history, Menes, changes the channel of the river Nile, makes a great reservoir, and erects the Temple of Phthah at Memphis. His son Athothis is known as the builder of the Memphite Palace, and as a physician, who wrote books on anatomy. The pyramid times are early in Egyptian history; the portrayed scenes in the tombs of this early period reveal the same habits which existed in after times. That writing had been long in use is demonstrated by the hieroglyphics in the Great Pyramid. Go as far back as you may in Egyptian history, you will find no primitive barbarous mode of life. Sir Charles Lyell admitted, in “Antiquity of Man,” p. 90, that “we have no distinct _geological evidence_ that the appearance of what are called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in chronological order that of the higher races.”

George Rawlinson says Mr. Pengelly made a similar confession at the meeting of the British Association at Bristol, in August, 1875. So far as this question of evolution is concerned, it is just as easy to establish involution of civilization into barbarism as evolution of civilization out of barbarism. Herodotus gives an account of the Geloni, a Greek people, who were driven from the cities on the northern coast of the Euxine, and retiring into the interior, lived in wooden huts, and used a language half Scythian and half Greek. We follow this people down to the times of Mala and find them fully barbarous, using the skins of those slain in battle as coverings both for themselves and their horses. The Copts, of our times, are degraded descendants of the ancient Egyptians. In North and South America the descendants of the Spanish conquerers are poor representatives of those Castilians who, under Pizarro and Cortez mastered the Peruvian and Mexican kingdoms, and planted the civilization of the old world in the new. Civilization is liable to decay, to wane, to deteriorate, to sink so low that it may be a question whether it is any longer civilization. In the cases we have alluded to we have a low degradation retaining evidences of something higher. In comparative philology we have cases where it is presumed by the best of critics that a higher state of civilization sank to the lowest conceivable state of heathenism. The race existing in Ceylon, known as the “Weddas,” is of this type. The language of the Weddas is regarded as a base descendant of the most complete and first known form of Aryan speech, the Sanskrit; and the Weddas are set down as descendants of the Sanskritic Aryans, who conquered India. There are no savages of a more debased type. They do not count beyond two or three; they have no idea of letters; of all the animals the dog alone is domesticated; their art consists in making bows and arrows and constructing rude huts; they are dwindling and threaten to become extinct. See “Report of the British Association for the advancement of science, for the Year 1875,” part 3, p. 175.

Civilization and barbarism are states between which men oscillate, passing from one to the other with equal ease, according to the influences brought to bear upon them.

The mythical traditions of almost all peoples place at the beginning of the history of the race, a “golden age,” which is the opposite of savagery and barbarism. The Chinese speak of a “first heaven,” an age of innocence and a state of happiness, when “all was beautiful and good, and all beings were perfect.” Mexican tradition speaks of the golden age of Tezcuco; and Peruvian history commences with two “Children of the Sun,” who established civilization on the borders of Lake Titicaca. The Greeks described their golden age as follows:

“The immortal gods, that tread the courts of heaven,
First made a golden race of mortal men.
Like gods they lived, with happy, careless souls,
From toil and pain exempt; nor on them crept
Wretched old age, but all their life was passed
In feasting, and their limbs no changes knew.
Nought evil came them nigh; and, when they died,
’Twas but as if they were o’ercome by sleep.
All good things were their portion; the fat soil
Bare them its fruit spontaneous, fruit ungrudged
And plentiful; they, at their own sweet will,
Pursued in peace the tasks that seemed them good,
Laden with blessings, rich in flocks, and dear
To the great gods.”—_Hesiod._

Such is the light that shines from the region where myth and history meet and wed. Can we go beyond this? There is no people, east or west, characterized by an uninterrupted _progress_ from barbarism to civilization. So the theory of time based upon such an idea is altogether without foundation.

THE FLOOD VIEWED FROM A SCIENTIFIC AND BIBLICAL STANDPOINT.

Unbelievers usually pass over the events of the flood with mockery. There is something about them that is only reconcilable with the mental condition of the man who says in his heart, “There is no God.” The old methods of their interpretation of the Scriptures have been abandoned in many particulars. This is the result of two things: first, progression in scientific knowledge; and, second, the Bible was always ahead of science in its scientific allusions. Now, it is known to scientists that there is, at the lowest calculation, forty-eight times more water in our seas and oceans than Keill was willing to allow when he made the objection that it would require the waters of twenty-eight oceans to give us Noah’s flood. The objection was, “there is not water enough.” Men seemed to think that the earth contained the water; that the water was standing in the earth. This was very natural, for people generally live upon the land. The Bible, however, presented a different idea, saying, the earth was “standing out of the water and in the water.”

When the Scriptures speak upon this subject they refer to the waters just as a man would who never had any misgivings upon the subject of their sufficiency. Their teachings are in harmony with recent scientific discovery, and against old-fashioned unbelief.

Before Galileo’s time men would have been regarded insane if they had asserted the gravity of the air, but the Bible contained the fact. It was laid away in Job 28: 25: “For he looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth under the whole heaven to make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.”

The force that is required annually in nature to give us the upper waters, to form the clouds, is estimated by Arago to be more than the labor of four hundred million of able bodied men, continued two hundred thousand years.—_Aunuaire du bur. des. longit._, 1835, p. 196.

The Scriptures speak of floods and disorders that unbelievers of the bygone considered incredible, but in the present time geologists feel that the half was not told, for they are unable to account for all the destructions found in their investigations. The events known in the geological history are only in harmony with the fact that our planet has been subjected to immense submersions. They are scientifically described thus: An internal fire which, raising the temperature of the seas and of the deep waters, caused on the one side an enormous evaporation and impetuous rains, as if the flood-gates of heaven were opened; and, on the other, an irresistible dilation, which not only raised the waters from their depths, broke up the fountains of the GREAT ABYSS, and raised its powerful waves to the level of the highest mountains, but which caused immense stratifications of calcareous carbonate, under the double pressure of a great heat and a pressure equal to eight thousand atmospheres.—_Gansen_, p. 195.

The same author gives us the following, which will be beneficial to the scholar: “Water is dilated 1-23 in passing from the temperature of ice melting to that of water boiling. An elevation of from sixteen to seventeen degrees Reaumer will then increase its volume 1-111. Now, we find by an easy calculation that the quantity of water necessary to submerge the earth to the height of 1-1000 of the radius of our globe is equal to 1-333 of its entire volume, or 1-111 of its third. If, then, we suppose that the one third of the terrestrial globe is metallic (at the mean specific gravity of 12-1/2), that the second third is solid (at the weight of 21), and that the remaining third is water; then, first, the specific gravity of the entire globe will be equal to 5-1/2 (according to the conclusions of Maskeline and of Cavendish); and, secondly, it will have been sufficient for the submersion of the earth to the height of 6,368 metres, or 1,546 metres above Mount Blanc; that the temperature of the mass of the water in the days of the deluge should have risen to sixteen degrees Reaumer is a reasonable conclusion.” This calculation also has reference to the unnecessary idea that the flood was universal. But why is it that a few men recognize the existence of a God omnipotent and ridicule the flood?

The sufficiency of the ark is also called in question. Buffon says the various species of four-footed animals may be reduced to two hundred and fifty. And Dr. Hales shows conclusively that the ark had the capacity of bearing forty-two thousand four hundred and thirteen tons. He says: Can we doubt of it being sufficient to contain eight persons and about two hundred and fifty pair of four-footed animals, together with all the subsistence necessary for twelve months, with the fowls of the air and such reptiles and insects as can not live in water? Besides places for the beasts and birds and their provisions, Noah might find room in the third story for thirty-six cabins occupied by household utensils, instruments of husbandry, books, grains and seeds, for a kitchen, a hall, and a space of about forty-eight cubits in length to walk in. In addition to all this, it is conceded, by the very best minds conversant with ship building, that Moses’ description of the dimensions of the ark are the descriptions of one of the very best floating vessels that ever rested upon the waters. This fact has puzzled the minds of many unbelievers who seem to think there was but little scientific knowledge in that early period. They do not believe that God was with Noah. HE WAS.

THE MOSAIC LAW IN GREECE, IN ROME, AND IN THE COMMON LAW OF ENGLAND.

There is no logical reason against the thought that God gave to man law in the gift of speech or language. Speech is not natural to man. He does not express his feelings and passions with sighs and groans systematically and invariably as do the lower animals. The speechless child has no order of this kind; the lower kingdom differs widely from man in this respect; the same animals have the same manner of expressing their feelings and passions throughout the world; but man has language to express _ideas_. Infants learn to speak by imitation; they do not speak naturally. Language is the result of education, of the imitative faculty of man. “It has been experimentally demonstrated that a man who has never heard the articulations of the human voice can never speak.” So deafness always carries dumbness along with it when that deafness is from birth, or contracted in early childhood. I have in my mind at the present moment two bright-eyed girls in their “teens,” who contracted deafness in infancy from the spotted fever; both are destitute of speech. If there ever was a language of nature it was abandoned when artificial language was taught. The greatest philosophers have failed to account for the origin of language or speech. The Pagans have declared that it was a gift from the gods. If all the inhabitants of the world could be congregated, and all would consent to the use of one and the same vocabulary, then we might, through universal training in that vocabulary, have an universal language. How could such a convention be assembled? The truth is, the origin of language or speech is neither natural or conventional, but imitative, and it is a fact, beyond the possibility of cavil, that the thing must have existed before it could have been imitated. With whom did it exist? “We think by words, and infants think by things.” Words were from God.

Two lessons we must have as a capital to work with, and all else that we need will grow legitimately out of exercise in those two. “First, The elementary ideas. Second, The elementary words significant to them.” Such was doubtless given man, as the Bible teaches, as a capital stock, and all languages are, directly or indirectly, from this original stock, and its results upon the human understanding; for who can set limits to possibilities of the human mind when once it is furnished with a capital stock and learned the art of its use? In Europe twenty-seven languages are known, which are kindred branches from three roots, and these three roots are scions of one stock; all languages are traceable to one stock. The Bible _alone_ accounts for the origin of speech, which was, doubtless, the origin of law. Chaldea, Media, Persia, Phœnicia and Egypt, under the sovereignty of Chedorlaomer, had everything in legislative knowledge to learn from the Hebrews. This “Chedorlaomer was king of Elam, in Persia, in the times of Abraham. He made the cities in the region of the Dead Sea his tributaries; and on their rebelling he came with four allied kings and overran the whole country south and east of the Jordan. Lot was among his captives, but was rescued by Abraham.” _See Zell’s Encyclopedia._ Lycurgus, a celebrated legislator of Sparta, who was born 926 years before Christ, gave an agrarian law that finds its prototype, without its defects, in the agrarian law of the Hebrews. Solon, one of the seven wise men of Greece, who died 558 years before Christ, transcribed, from the laws of Moses, the laws prohibiting certain degrees in marriage. The laws of descent, among the Grecians, are almost identical with the laws of descent among the Jews. The Grecians borrowed many laws from the Hebrews. They had their harvest vintage festival; the presentation of the best of their flocks; the offering of their first fruits, and the portion prescribed to their priests; the law against garments of divers colors; protection from violence to the man who fled to their altars; the law prohibiting all from the altar who had touched a dead body or any other impurity; the law prohibiting from the priesthood all those having blemishes upon their persons. All these laws, found in the Athenian code, had their origin with the laws of the Hebrews—were taken from Moses.

During the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, who was the brother of Darius, and who ascended the throne of the kingdom of Persia in the year 465 before Christ, the Jews were scattered all over the kingdom of Persia, and their laws were the subject of conversation and notoriety. Haman speaks of them to the king as differing from the laws of all other people.

The oldest and most noted legislators and wise men took their laws from the law of Moses. The Egyptians and the Phœnicians borrowed from the Jewish laws. Ancient and modern writers affirm that the individuals commissioned by the Senate and tribune under Justinian to form the “Twelve Tables” were directed to examine the laws of Athens and the Grecian cities. This took them at once to the consideration of many of the laws of Moses. Zell, in his Encyclopedia, says: The glory of Justinian’s reign is the famous digest of the Roman law, known generally as the Justinian code, which was compiled out of the Gregorian, Theodorian and Hermogenian codes, by ten of the ablest lawyers of the empire, under the guiding genius of the Jurisconsult Tribonian. Their labors consisted, first, of the “Statute Law.” Second, The “Pandects,” a digest of the decisions and opinions of former magistrates and lawyers. These two compilations consisted of matter that lay scattered through more than two thousand volumes, now reduced to fifty. Third, The “Institutes,” an abridgement in four books, containing the substance of all the laws in the elementary form. Fourth, The laws of _modern date_, including Justinian’s own edicts, collected into one volume and called the “New Code.”

The word “Pandects” is a term of great importance in the investigation of the origin of the Roman laws; it points directly and certainly to the fact that the Roman laws, known as the _Pandects_, were gathered from all laws, for such is the import of the term itself when it is associated with the term _laws_. Moreover, it is a Greek term, showing at once that the Grecian laws contributed largely to the _Pandects_ of the Roman laws. The term is defined by Liddel and Scott in the words, _all-receiving, all-containing_, so the _Pandects_ were gathered from _all laws_, consequently from the laws of Moses as well as from the Grecian laws, which were largely from the laws of Moses. This relationship, existing in the science of law, between the laws of the Bible and the Roman laws gotten up under Justinian, can be set aside by the infidels when stubborn facts, as well as similitude, are set aside.

Sir Matthew Hale says: Among the many preferences which the laws of England have above others, the two principal ones are, the hereditary transmission of property and the trial by jury, which originated with the Jews, for, by the law of Moses, the succession in the descending line was to the sons, the oldest having a double portion. If the son died in his father’s lifetime, the grandson heired the portion of his father. Trial by jury was first suggested in the administration of penal justice among the Jews. Such trials came off publicly in the gates of the city, and their judges were elders and Levites, taken from the general mass of the citizens. “A part of the common law, as it now stands, was first collected by Alfred the Great, youngest son of Athelwolf, or Ethelwolf, King of the West Saxons, who took the crown in 871. It is asserted by Sismondi, in his history of the fall of the Roman Empire, that when the above named prince caused a republication of the Saxon laws he inserted several laws taken from the Judaical ritual into his statutes to give new strength and cogency to the principles of morality. So it is a common thing in the early English reports to find frequent references to the Mosaic law. Sismondi also states that one of the first acts of the clergy under Pepin and Charlemagne, of France, was to introduce into the legislation of the Franks several of the Mosaic laws found in the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. It is truthfully said that the entire code of civil and judicial statutes throughout New England, and throughout the States first settled by the descendants of New England, were the judicial laws of God as they were delivered by Moses. From God himself one nation, and one only, received their laws, and they are worthy of being regarded as models for all succeeding ages. The learned Michaelis, who was professor of law in the University of Gottingen, says that a man who considers laws philosophically, who would survey them with the eye of a Montesquieu, would never overlook the laws of Moses.”

Goguet, in his learned treatise upon the origin of laws, says: The more we meditate on the laws of Moses the more we shall perceive their wisdom and inspiration. They alone have undergone no changes, amendments or retrenchments for more than three thousand years, while all others have been receiving amendments and additions.

Milman, in his history of the Jews, says: The Hebrew law-giver exercised a more extensive and permanent influence over the destinies of mankind than any other individual in the annals of the world. The late Fisher Ames, a distinguished statesman and jurist, said, “No man can be a sound lawyer who is not well read in the laws of Moses.” The seat of this law is the bosom of God, and her voice is the order, peace and happiness of the world.

DID ADAM FALL OR RISE?

The old scholastic ideas of “total hereditary depravity, and miraculous conversion,” with their correllates, have driven more minds into doubt and skepticism than most of men are apprised of. The reasons are evident. First. Common sense shrinks from them as ideas which are destructive of every principle of human responsibility. Second. They are opposed to the testimony of consciousness which asserts the soul’s freedom. Third. They are opposed to correct ideas of justice as it is administered in all governments, both human and divine.

“And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil.” Our fathers, of Calvinistic type of faith, used to tell us that this language only asserted Adam’s experience of conscious guilt; that he knew good before he transgressed, and had experimental knowledge of evil after he transgressed. This was the best they could do and save their Calvinism, and even this would not have saved it in the days of investigation like ours. The Lord did not say, “The man is become as one of us knowing good and evil,” but “the man is become as one of us _to know_ good and evil.” The old view of the subject virtually says, The Lord had experimental knowledge of both good and evil, and that the way in which Adam became Godlike was the way of the transgressor. Then the greatest Godlikeness is the result of the greatest sinning. _What nonsense!_ The Bible says: “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.” The account also asserts that the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” was “a tree to be desired to make one wise.” Total depravity and its correllates could never have been found in this context. This history is not responsible for it, nor for the mischiefs it has produced.

The Heavenly Father knew, when he created man, that he would fail upon trial. To have prevented this would have been nothing short of an interference with man’s freedom, and consequently his responsibility, without which he could not have been man. The Lord saw man in his alien state and in his return to holiness. He “made of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon all the face of the earth, and determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, that they _should seek the Lord_.”—See Acts 17: 26. It was necessary that man should become as God _to know good and evil_ in order that he might be continued upon trial in a world of good and evil. To this end the Divine Ruler placed in the test fruit, the fruit of the tree that was forbidden, a mental lever to endow man with wisdom as God to know good and evil, without which the man’s responsibility in relation to good and evil could never have been.

The fruit of the tree of life was for man’s physical nature; was to control the law of organic being, regulating waste and supply so as to prevent the present effects of old age, and keep man in perpetual conditions of youth. After man had sinned, with the knowledge of good and evil, he was master of his position, and now, lest he “put forth his hand and take of the tree of life, and eat and live forever,” subjected to shame, to torment, to anguish and tribulation, mental suffering, a lost being in the state of abandoned fallen angels, with a possibility of corrupting his conscience until it should be past feeling, seared as with a hot iron, and so glory in his shame; or, otherwise, be beyond the motive power of life and the restraining power of death, the Infinite One placed him beyond the reach of the tree of life. All of these ways or doings of the Heavenly Father were right, were merciful, were best for man. THE WAYS OF GOD ARE RIGHT. THE WAYS OF GOD ARE BEST. Farewell to “total hereditary depravity, and farewell to all its necessary correllations, such as miraculous conversion,” etc.

Man is mentally endowed with wisdom by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; is kept from ruining himself forever by being placed beyond the reach of the tree of life; is continued upon trial in a world of good and evil; is responsible through his knowledge of good and evil, and the motive power of life, and the restraining power of death is preserved to control him for his own eternal good; and, blessed be the name of our Heavenly Father, his eyes are open; so if man goes to perdition he must go _with his eyes open_. In all this we have perfect harmony with all Bible duty and truth, and also with science and universal consciousness of freedom and ability to choose and act. Not by a hair’s breadth has God ever infringed upon the freedom of the soul to shape and mould its own moral character, and shape its own moral destiny; but he has done many wonderful things to better the condition of the free soul—not forsaking it in the hour of greatest need.

The soul’s free, voluntary service is that which constitutes the requirement of religion in all the ages.

DID THEY DREAM IT, OR WAS IT SO?

That there was such a person as Jesus Christ living in the land of Judea at the time allowed by all Christians is no longer disputed by unbelievers. That he lived a life far superior to the lives of all other men is also conceded. If the powers of life and death were under his control he was more than human. If he rose from the dead he was the Son of God. Did he rise? This is a question upon which the whole Christian scheme hinges. What was the nature of the fact? Was it one about which men could be mistaken? Was it a fact which, occurring, addressed itself to the senses? If it was the witnesses could not be mistaken. There is not a court in the universe that would allow it.

There are things about which wise men may be mistaken, but they are not things which address themselves to the senses. Those are things in which fools may not, can not, be mistaken. It is impossible for my wife to be mistaken about my presence at this moment, but it is just as possible as it was for any of the first witnesses of Christ’s resurrection to be mistaken. They were not, they could not be mistaken. Then what becomes of Strauss’s mythical idea. What folly it is to allow that those witnesses were perfectly honest, enthusiastically and proverbially honest in all they said, and yet mistaken.

This moral honesty and enthusiasm which Strauss and others allow to the credit of the witnesses is undoubtedly designed as a feeler—a mere catering to the views of Christians upon the character of the first Christians. Very good fellows (?) after all. How is that? If one of my neighbors would go into a court room to-morrow and testify under oath that he was with me yesterday, and the court was in possession of the fact that I was not with him, or near him at all, would it allow honesty to the witness? Would not every sensible man say, in his heart, he is a perjured witness? If he was with Walker he knew it; and if he was not with him he knew it.

Gentlemen, exercise all your shrewdness, adopt Strauss’s idea of a mythical origin of the gospel of Christ, both as respects his miracles, which were either seen or not seen, and as respects his resurrection, then spread the blanket of honesty and warm-hearted enthusiasm over those men who sacrificed everything, life not excepted, for the testimony which they bore, and the next day any well-instructed judge of our courts would say, it is nonsense; they could not be mistaken about any fact which addressed itself to their eyes and ears. Christ rose from the dead if the witnesses told the truth; and the witnesses told the truth if they were honest men; and if they were not honest, labor, toil, suffering and martyrdom are no evidences of sincerity.

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Can you believe in harmony without believing in a harmonist?

Can you believe that all things in nature adjusted themselves to each other?

Can you believe that life, and mind, and moral nature, each and all came from where neither existed?

MISCELLANEOUS.

Voltaire built a church to God at Ferney.

Can you believe that your great ancestors were apes?

Do you oppose the Bible and prefer its legitimate effects?

Huxley wants the Bible introduced into boarding schools.

Can you believe in design without believing in a designer?

Tyndal says the theory of evolution of species is utterly uncredited.

Can you believe that the type which made these letters set themselves up?

The _Saturday Review_ says Hume used to go to church sometimes in Scotland.

Can you believe that mind is the result of blind, unintelligent, mechanical forces?

Tyndal says spontaneous generation is the one essential pillar of evolution of species.

Tyndal says the failures to produce spontaneous life by experimenting are lamentable.

Collins insisted on his servants going to church “that they might not rob or murder him.”

Can you believe that worlds hung themselves together and move themselves, as one grand whole, through space?

Can you believe that the correllation of things in nature was without design? that such adaptations as light to the eye was unintended?

Can you be honest in exerting your influence against the religion of Jesus Christ while it is your candid conviction that a country is better off with it than without it?

Do you sometimes say you prefer to live where there are churches and Sunday-schools, and all their appliances for the bettering of the condition of humanity, and at the same time constantly find fault with the Bible and religion which creates such things? If such is your course, are you strictly honest?