Chapter I: Creation (2)

7. The true sense of the record as to the origin (1) of vegetable life (vs. 11, 12), and (2) of animal life (vs. 20, 21, 24, 25.)――――The important words are, “Let the earth bring forth grass” (v. 11); “and the earth brought forth grass” (v. 12). “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature,” etc. (v. 20); “and God created every living creature that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly” (v. 21). “Let the earth bring forth the living creature” (v. 24); “and God made the beast of the earth,” etc. (v. 25).――――Here note that the _historical statements give the true sense of the imperatives_, and show plainly that the earth and the waters are not creative but only sustaining powers, and that they bring forth and sustain only under the fiat of the Almighty――only _when_ and _as_ God said, Do it. For the whole tenor of these chapters (Gen. 1 and 2) presents to us God himself as sole and supreme Creator. In the closest connection with the earth’s bringing forth the living creature, we are told that _God made_ the beast of the field. Though the waters brought forth abundantly, yet it was still God himself who created “every living creature that moveth.” The agency of the earth in producing grass is presented in a popular way――the precise, fundamental thought being, that God made the earth his instrument in bringing forth all things that grow; and in like manner in sustaining animal life.

If we will, we are at liberty to push our queries and ask not only _who_ gave life, vegetable and animal, but _how_? In just _what way_ did he impart that something――be it quality or power or substance――which we call _life_? and deeper still――What _is_ life? Is it some subtle form of matter, or only some indefinable force given to matter; and if this be it, To what special form of matter is it given? If it be matter, did God sow the tiny germs thereof in the waters and on the land and leave them to be developed under auspicious circumstances? Or did he breathe forth from his own infinite life these life-forces into material things to make plants or animals?――――And yet again; What was the status of that lump of dead matter (small or great) at the point when God put into it the life-force and it became living matter, vegetable or animal? Was the first form of the living animal the egg, or its microscopic cell; or was it the fully developed animal, prepared for all life’s functions, and ready to furnish other life-bearing cells for reproduction? On these points what says the record? Not much at the utmost. It does seem to assume that Adam began existence, not an infant in the normally helpless condition of human birth, but with fully developed powers. Beyond this we look in vain to the record for light. We only know that the life-force――that subtle entity which always eludes the most vigilant search――which distances all the strides of scientific scrutiny――which mocks at chemical analysis and never comes to our call;――this life-force we simply know is _from God himself_ and _from God alone_. The original gift of it is his prerogative and the secret thereof is for evermore with him.

8. In the passage――“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (v. 26) there are two special points to be considered:――(a.) In _what sense_ is man made in the image of God? (b.) The explanation of the plural pronouns, “_us_” and “_our_”――“Let _us_ make man in _our_ image.”

(a.) Inasmuch as God is a spirit and never to be thought of as having a corporeal nature――material, tangible to our bodily senses, we are at once shut off from all reference to man’s physical, corporeal nature and shut up to his spiritual nature to find in it the points of this resemblance. Consequently man is made in God’s image as being gifted like his Maker with intelligence and with capacities for moral action――beyond comparison the noblest possible elements of being. He has the sense of moral obligation and the voluntary powers requisite to fulfill such obligation. He can find his supreme joy in voluntarily seeking the good of others, even of all other sentient beings, and in laboring even to the extent of self-sacrifice to promote their welfare. This is the pre-eminent perfection of God――the very point ultimately in which man is made in his image, and capable of becoming more and more Godlike, forever approximating toward his holiness and blessedness.――――His intellectual powers are only the servants of these highest and noblest activities of his being.――――(b.) The use of the plural pronouns――“Let _us_ make, in _our_ image”――has been accounted for variously. Some would make this plural intensive, corresponding to the emphatic plural in Hebrew nouns. But there seems to be no real analogy in the two cases.――――Some make it the plural of dignity (“pluralis excellentiae”), as an oriental monarch puts forth his edict, saying “we,” not I. But the great simplicity of this whole narrative goes against this explanation. Moreover, this usage, so far as it appears in literature, sacred or profane, is later by many ages than Moses. Besides, there is no apparent reason why God should assume more dignity in saying――“Let us make man,” than in saying, Let us make light, or the sun in the heavens. Indeed, the form of the divine behest――“Let there be light,” seems to our ideas the more sublime and the more expressive of God’s supreme dignity.――――I see no explanation of this plural that is at all satisfactory save that which assumes a reference to the persons of the Trinity. As one reason for such reference it may be suggested as certainly not improbable――that the idea of man, God’s chief work in creation, was coupled with his future history (all present to the divine mind)――as fallen, yet also as redeemed, and specially as redeemed _by means of the incarnation of the Son of God in human flesh_. Supposing this incarnation present to the divine thought, the significance of this plural would be――Let us proceed to make in our own image this wonderful being whose nature the eternal Son shall one day assume――this man who is to bear relations to us so extraordinary, so wonderful before the angels, so signal before all created minds, so glorious in its results to the whole moral universe! Have not _we_――Father, Son and Holy Ghost――a most surpassing interest in the creation of this being, man!

9. _The relation of Gen. 2: 4–25 to Gen. 1._

Here are two points of some importance to be considered.

(1.) Are the two passages by the same author?

(2.) Do they both speak of the creation of the same first man, _i. e._ the same Adam, or is the Adam of Gen. 2 another and different first man, brought into being long subsequent to him of Gen. 1: 26–28?

(1.) That the two passages are from different authors has been maintained on the following grounds.――――(a.) That v. 4――“These are the generations[8] of the heavens and the earth”――appears like the heading of a new and distinct portion of history.――――But nothing forbids that it should be the heading of a new section or chapter of the same continuous history by the same author, resuming his subject with only a very comprehensive allusion to the great facts of creation which he had given in chap. 1, as fully as his plan required. This done he may proceed to a more full account of the creation of man and the events of his early history.――――(b.) That the account here differs somewhat from that in Gen. 1, _e. g._ as to the creation of man, and yet more especially, the creation of woman.――――But these differences are not ♦discrepancies and are fully accounted for by the scope and design of this portion, viz. to give the history of the first man and woman in much more detail.――――(c.) But especially this diversity of authors has been argued from the different names of God which appear in these two passages. In chap. 1 and 2: 1–3, the name is simply and exclusively God (Elohim). In chap. 2: 4–25 and in chap. 3, the name is “the Lord God” (Jehovah Elohim).――――This difference is indeed a palpable fact, and has been the theme of an indefinite amount of critical speculation based for the most part on the utterly groundless assumption that the same author can not be supposed to have used both these names for God. Those critics (mostly German) who have flooded their literature with disquisitions on this subject assume in the outset that none but a “Jehovist” ever used the name Jehovah, and none but an “Elohist,” the name Elohim, it being in their view impossible or at least absurd that the same author should use sometimes one of these names and sometimes the other――which assumption seems to me supremely arbitrary, irrational, and uncritical. Authors now use at their option the various names for God, either for the mere sake of variety, or because in some connections one seems more euphonious or more significant than another. Why may not an equal license of choice be accorded to Hebrew writers? It is unquestionable that the same Hebrew author _does_ use both of these names for God.――――They made far more account than we of the various senses of the several names for the Deity. The names Jehovah and Elohim, were not precisely identical in their suggested ideas, although both are legitimately used of the one true God. Elohim suggests that he is the Exalted, Eternal One, the Infinite Creator of all. This name is therefore specially appropriate in chap. 1. “Jehovah” conceives of him as the Immutable and ever faithful One, coming into covenant relation with his people as the Maker and the Fulfiller of promise. (See remarks on this as God’s memorial name in my Notes on Hos. 12: 5). Hence as the narrative in Gen. 2 and 3 brings God before the mind in these special relations to the first human pair and to the race, this name is here specially appropriate. But lest some might suppose that this Jehovah is thought of as another God than the Elohim of chap. 1――the writer uses both names――the Elohim who is also Jehovah to his rational creature man and especially to all his obedient trustful people.

(2.) That Gen. 2: 7 relates to the creation of the same first man as Gen. 1: 26–28, and not of another man ages later, seems to me to admit of no rational doubt. The inducements to make out two distinct creations, _i. e._ of two different first men, come from the supposed proof of the existence of man on the earth ages before the Adam of antediluvian history. I propose to treat below this question of _the antiquity of man_. Let it suffice here to say that we must not mutilate the record or disregard the laws of philology for the sake of making the sacred narrative conform to theories which are yet rather assumptions than scientifically proven facts.――――As to the correspondences and variations in the two narratives of the creation of man, the first makes prominent his being created in the image of God: the second assumes this in the fact that God gave him law in Eden; in the knowledge of the lower animals which his naming them assumes; in the superior dignity which the Lord’s bringing them before him for names implies; and in the fact that among them all no helpmeet for him could be found. His nature ranked far above theirs.――――The earlier narrative says briefly that God “created them male and female.” The later one expands this fact much more fully and makes it the foundation for the law of marriage. The later record treats with the utmost brevity the main part of the six days’ work and must have been written with the previous record before the mind, to be a supplementary and continuative history, designed to bring out prominently the creation of woman and the scenes of the garden, its moral trial and ultimately its results.――――The supposition of a different Adam from that of the former record could never have occurred to the Hebrew mind, and therefore can not be accepted as the sense of the passage.

10. _Invariability of “kind”_ in the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

The record in Genesis sets forth that God created grass, herb, and then fruit tree; “each after his kind;” also reptiles, fish, fowl and land-animals, each “after his kind;” and finally man “in the image of God.” Over against this the modern theory which bears the name of Darwin holds that all the animals of our globe “have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number;”[9] and moreover, that man has in this respect no pre-eminence above the beasts, but has descended in the same line with them from some one of the four or five progenitors of the great animal kingdom. More still he says in the same connection――“Analogy would lead me one step further, viz. to the belief that _all animals and plants_ have descended from some one prototype.”――――These four or five progenitors of the whole animal kingdom correspond substantially with what Webster calls the five sub-kingdoms, viz. Vertebrates, Articulates, Mollusks, Radiates, and Protozoans. The technical classification under these sub-kingdoms into Classes, Orders, Families, Genera, and Species becomes of little or no account in any discussion of Darwin’s system, for his theory of “descent with modifications” is reckless of all these lines of demarkation, traveling over and through them all without finding the least obstruction.――――Let it be distinctly understood therefore that though Mr. Darwin makes frequent use of the word “species,” and entitles one of his volumes――“_The Origin of Species_,” yet his theory takes a far wider range than the question whether “species are variable.” In his view not only are species variable, intermixing at will and passing from one into another, but genera also and families and orders and classes――not to say also each of the great sub-kingdoms of the animal world;[10] even the distinction between animals and vegetables fades away under his analogical argument. Hence the issue between Darwin and Moses is relieved of whatever uncertainty hangs over the dividing line between species and varieties, and may fitly be limited to these two points; the invariability of “_kind_” in the sense of Moses in Genesis; and the distinct origination of man.

Under Mr. Darwin’s system “community of descent” and not “some unknown plan of creation” is “the hidden bond” which unites together all living existences of our globe. “Looking to some unknown plan of creation” (in his own words) has prevented the truly scientific classification and history of the forms of life in our world. The Bible has stood in the way of the growth of science.――――Under his system the changes by natural descent from any given parent to its offspring, taken individually, have been exceedingly small. Hence the theory requires an indefinitely long time from the point of the original creation of the four or five primordial forms to the present status of living things, vegetable and animal, in our world.――――The above remarks will suffice for a very general introduction to Mr. Darwin’s system.

Wishing to bring this discussion within the narrowest possible limits and yet do justice to Darwin, to Genesis, and to the truth, I propose to state briefly his main arguments; then comprehensively my rejoinder to them severally in their order, and then subjoin some general considerations bearing upon his entire theory.

1. Darwin holds that by natural law the offspring vary, though slightly, from the parent, and hence, that, given an indefinitely long time, he has any desired amount of variation.

2. When animals multiply beyond the means of subsistence, there ensues a struggle for life in which the strongest and most favored in circumstances are the victors and survive. This law which he calls “Natural Selection” (or “the survival of the fittest”) works a gradual improvement in the race. A twin argument with this comes from “sexual selection,” the amount of which is that in the case of some at least of the animal races, there arises a struggle among the males for the possession of the females, in which struggle the most attractive in beauty or in song, or the champions in fight, being the victors, perpetuate the race and thus improve it. This law of the animal races (“sexual selection”) works precisely in the same line with the law called “natural selection.” It may serve therefore to provide a little more of the same thing, but no new or different product whatever. Hence it does not seem to call for a distinct refutation.

3. Homologous anatomical structure is found to obtain very extensively among widely diverse races, _e. g._ in the arm of man, the fore-leg of the monkey and indeed of all quadrupeds, in the wing of the bird and the fin of the fish. This indicates a common parentage.

4. Some animals which, fully grown, differ from each other widely, are scarcely distinguishable in the embryo. Hence he infers their common origin.

5. The fact of rudimentary organs is assumed to be _historic_, proving that some ancient progenitor used them, and that they have gradually passed out of use. This is held to prove that great changes of structure come of genealogical descent.

BRIEF REPLIES.

1. To Darwin’s first law, viz. that the offspring always vary though slightly from the parent, and therefore, given indefinite time, he has any desired amount of variation, I reply that this law of variation becomes practically worthless for his theory, because these variations from parent to offspring run in all conceivable directions and not in the one definite direction required for his purpose, _i. e._ toward a higher grade of perfection, or [which his argument requires] toward a new form of animal life. For example, there is always some change in the human countenance from parent to child. Yet who does not know that those changes run in every possible direction and not in one uniform line of progress or advance, as from monkey toward man and from man toward angel? For another example we may take the shape of the skull and of the brain――evermore differing slightly from parent to offspring yet not by any means on one given line. The skulls of Egyptian mummies entombed three thousand years ago do not differ appreciably from those of the Copts (their lineal descendants) of to-day, _i. e._ are no more pithecoid――ape-like. On Darwin’s theory three thousand years backward ought surely to approximate toward the ape; otherwise these variations are fruitless. This law of successive genealogical changes amounts to nothing for his argument unless the changes consent to _come into line_ so that their results shall actually _accumulate_ with the lapse of ages. The fatal lack in the argument is――no husbandry of these infinitesimal changes――not the least perceivable accumulation.

A second branch of my reply suggests that Mr. Darwin _misinterprets this law of nature_, viz. perpetual variation from parent to offspring. It is doubtless a law, but Darwin has quite missed its divinely ordained purpose――which is to indicate the relationship between parent and child on the one hand, and yet maintain individual identity on the other. The resemblances answer the former purpose; the differences, the latter. Beings constituted to bear personal responsibilities so momentous as those of man must be so organized that every one can identify his own individuality, lest one man be hung for some other man’s crime.

2. His second argument comes from the law of “natural selection”――“the survival of the fittest”――with which it is convenient to couple the precisely similar law of “sexual selection”――the ascendency of the smartest over their inferiors, to perpetuate the race. Here a specific case will suffice both to illustrate and to refute. The principle of “natural selection” has a fair chance for itself in the spawn of the shad. It is no doubt true that none but the smartest out of the many thousand spawned at once survive so as to become parents in their turn. Yet who believes that these smartest shad are becoming sturgeon or sharks or whales by this law of progress? Are they actually found to be any thing but shad after never so many hundred generations? It may seem superfluous to push the still more pertinent question――Are these smartest and most ambitious shad really found to be working up out of their watery element, I _i. e._ working up into ducks or geese, or into blackbirds and crows? For just this is Mr. Darwin’s theory――the line of ascent running up from fish to fowl; from fowl to mammal and so on up to man. The questions here suggested are therefore only the fair and scientific test and touchstone of his argument. A law which has not made its results even perceptible since the birth of the first shad known to human history must be regarded as scientifically worthless.

My second remark here is that Darwin errs not in finding these to be laws of nature――“natural selection,” “sexual selection”――but in interpreting them, I _i. e._ in detecting their divinely ordained design and their actual working and product. I suggest that these laws, apparently made for the improvement of races, may be requisite to enable them to hold their own against the ever present tendency to degeneracy. Life is a perpetual struggle against death. The life-principle finds an antagonist force in chemical law which is evermore hurrying organized matter back to its inorganic state. Still further, be it considered, races excessively prolific would rapidly lose vitality but for these laws of natural and sexual selection. We may therefore rationally assume that these laws are simply forms of the general principle of _self-preservation_, and not a purposed provision for lifting a lower race up to the plane of a higher.

3. As to homologous anatomical structure, _e. g._ of the arm, fore-leg, wing, fin, paddle――there are abundant reasons for its existence aside from the assumption of Darwin that it proves a common ancestry for man, monkey, calf, bull-dog, eagle, toad and whale. The ball and socket joint at man’s shoulder is the perfect thing for use. Equally so is the same kind of joint for the fore-leg of a horse, the wing of an eagle or the fin of a fish. God made the anatomy of man’s arm perfect. What forbids that he should make an equally perfect machinery for the motions and various uses of other animals? The reason of this uniformly perfect machinery is found in the wisdom and benevolence of the Great Maker, and proves nothing in favor of a common descent from some one parent, _i. e._ it proves nothing _unless_ you may assume that God could not have made two kinds of animals with homologous anatomical structures――two kinds, each with machinery perfect for its purposes.

4. As to the similar appearance of the embryo in very dissimilar races, there may be differences in the embryo which no microscope and no human test have yet discovered. The force of this argument seems to me to come rather from ignorance than from knowledge.

5. As to rudimentary organs, their history is very obscure and their design also. I suggest that Mr. Darwin begin with the history and the reason for the rudimentary organs which appear on the bosom of the male in the species man. When he shall have mastered this problem――the history and the reason――we can afford to consider his argument therefrom in proof that man has a common ancestry with whatsoever other animal he may find having this male organ, not rudimentary but in full activity. Probably he will prove that man must have come down by descent from that class of animals which economically combine the two sexes in one and the same individual!

* * * * *

_Some objections of a more general bearing upon Darwin’s scheme._

1. His system requires indefinite, almost infinite, ages of time back of the Silurian strata, _i. e._ back of the oldest known remains of life, vegetable or animal, on our globe.[11] That is, he requires for the development of his system an almost infinite extension of time back beyond the earliest traces or proofs of life, vegetable or animal, on our globe. And this, he would have men believe, is the perfection of modern Science!――a science which pushes its sphere _in time_ back indefinitely beyond all known facts upon the bare evidence of theories and assumed analogies!――――But even this gives not the full force of the objection made by true Science to his system. It is not merely that he builds upon assumed facts where no known facts are――which is building upon nothing――but where no facts _can be_, which is building not merely upon negatives but upon impossibilities. There is no room for his assumed facts where he locates them. If Geology proves any thing it proves that vegetable and animal life commenced on our planet as soon as the planet was ready and _not sooner_, and that we have the remains of the earliest living organisms in the oldest fossil-bearing rocks. His scheme is therefore conditioned upon impossibilities and must be false.

2. His system requires a close succession of animal races, differing from parent to offspring by only the least possible amount, with no leaps, no gaps whatever. Thus from monkey up to man the system calls for at least a few scores not to say hundreds of intermediate links. Where are they? His suffering theory cries out for their support: there is no answer. The earth’s surface responds not to the call; even “the depths say――They are not in me!” From the original monad up to man all the way through at least the long line of the vertebrates――reptile, fish, bird, mammal――that is to say, through the serpent tribe; the fish kingdom; the swallow, blackbird and eagle, and especially through the quadruped family――the horse and camel and particularly the monkey household――through all this remarkable line of ancestry, Darwin’s system demands a very gradual upward march by the shortest possible stages of progress, so that the intermediate links must be barely less than infinite. It certainly ought to be very easy to trace a genealogical line so well represented. It is estimated that thirty thousand fossil species have been recognized. How many of these can be formed into this genealogical line from the aboriginal vertebrate――supposed to be aquatic and Ascidian――up to man? Has Mr. Darwin set himself to marshal this proof-line of witnesses to his system? No. Not only has he not _done_ this very appropriate thing, but he has _said_ little, quite too little on this most vital point, in the way of showing what could be done. He reiterates that the geological records are very imperfect. Doubtless they quite fail to come up to meet the demands of his system. It is the fatal weakness of his theory that just where it should find facts in animal history for its support, they are not there! He himself admits that if you believe in a tolerably full showing of animal history in the geological records of our globe, you must disbelieve his system.[12] He needs quite another geological record for his proofs.

3. His argument is essentially _materialistic_. In his reasonings and assumptions, all there is of mind in man or any animal is _of the_ brain and the nervous organism. All animals have wants and are moved by a sense of want to supply them. This begets self-originated activity, and this activity involves thought――yet only as a function of the material brain. Most of the animals are social by nature: hence another member in this family of wants and enjoyments, begetting another class of impulses and activities. But whether it be man or monkey, dog or kitten, these activities and these plans and thoughts underlying them, come of the nervous organism, of which the brain is the center. On his theory and in his words (Origin of Species, pp. 93, 94) “the moral sense is fundamentally identical with the social instinct.” Hence it becomes the burden of his argument that the brain in man and in monkey is homologous――almost perfectly the same in shape, in quality, and in its bony incasement. He seems to be quite unaware that there may be something in the human brain that a twelve-inch rule will not measure, nor the nicest made scales weigh, nor the sharpest chemical tests discern. It seems never to have occurred to him that even if the brain of man and of monkey weighed in the same notch, fitted into the same cast, responded alike to the same chemical tests (which, however, is a good way from being the case), yet there might be material qualities in the human brain too subtle and ethereal to be appreciable under any known physical test; and much more still might be a spirit inhabiting the human brain and working through it which the monkey has not. “That the breath of the Almighty hath given to man understanding” is a fact higher than the range of Darwin’s philosophy. The _prima facie_ probability thence arising that God would fit up a special material organism for the one only mind made in his own image seems to have entirely escaped Mr. Darwin’s notice. The record by Moses on this point――that God created man by a special act, entirely independent of all other forms of life, vegetable or animal, commends itself to the good sense of most men as more than probable, as indeed supremely rational and unquestionably true.

4. It is but a natural result of his materialistic system that he should have no adequate conception of the pre-eminent glory of _man’s intellectual and moral nature_. With great ingenuity he labors to make it appear that Tray feels shame and guilt and even the moral sense of oughtness――all the same in kind with those of man. He does not say in definite words that the best developed dog is capable of knowing his divine Creator and of rendering to Him the obedience, love, and homage of an adoring heart――is capable of becoming consciously a trustful child of God and a temple of the Holy Ghost. He does not quite say this; indeed he does not seem to appreciate these exalted functions of a soul made in God’s image, or to think them worthy of particular notice. It is a capital fault in his reasoning that he ignores almost entirely these highest, noblest activities of man’s nature. Thus ignoring these most vital points which lift man so high above all the lower animals, how can it be expected that his reasoning upon the material relations of man and beast should be otherwise than lame and fallacious?

5. Scientifically it is a sufficient condemnation of this system that it is compelled to fritter away the fundamental law of species which God fixed, not upon its surface but deep in its nature, viz. that hybrids shall be infertile――incapable of propagation. The crossing and consequent interblending of distinct species, genera, families, and orders, if by their nature possible, would long ages ago have thrown the animal world into inextricable confusion, effacing every line of distinction. Such a result must have been simply fatal to all scientific classification. If Mr. Darwin’s theories had been taken as the divine plan, the world would have had more grades and orders of animal life than there have been days since the first monad came into being.

6. The scheme is in many points revolting to the common sense and sober convictions of men. Some of its assumptions lie close upon the border of the ridiculous. Think of the stride upward from vegetable life to animal――the plant pulling its roots out from the soil and beginning to use them for legs! And of the very analogous aspirations and endeavors of the fish to live out of water――to push out his fins into wings; convert his superabundant fat into muscle; expand his lung and soar off in mid-heaven――the very eagle himself! The effort to tone down these absurdities within the limits of sober sense by simply taking it little by little, spreading the change over a few thousands or millions of years and subdividing the work among a vast number of generations may help to confuse some minds and blunt the edge of its absurdity; but soberly considered, the absurdity is still there. Hence we may note the fact that most writers seem to find themselves quite unable to discuss this theory to any extent without sliding, perhaps unconsciously, from sober argument into ridicule and irony.

I am well aware that, to abate if not nullify the force of this apparent absurdity, it will be said that along the actual line between plant life and animal life, the vegetable and animal kingdoms are actually brought closely side by side; that plant life shades off by almost imperceptible stages till it comes so near to the lowest forms of animal life that the dividing line is scarcely if at all perceptible. This fact no scientist disputes. The real question turns upon its purposed object or ultimate reason. Is it, as Mr. Darwin’s theory assumes, to bridge over this dividing line and facilitate the march of “genealogical descent with variations” across what else would be a bad if not an impassable gulf?

This being the claim set up by Mr. Darwin, I answer――

(a.) The proper test of this theory is simple: Is there any “_march_” here at all――_i. e._ any _progressive movement_ from one form of vegetable life to another, from lower forms to higher, or as this case seems to demand, from higher forms to lower, for along this dividing line we have the lowest known forms of both vegetable life and animal? Is this army of the lowest vegetable species and of animal life-forms, down in this dark microscopic valley, really _on the march_, or is it absolutely moveless and fixed? Are the flora on the vegetable side of the line really, doffing their plant-life uniform and regalia, and emerging on the other side of the line into fauna to swell the hosts of animal-life forms? This it would seem must be the test for the proof or disproof of Darwin’s theory.

(b.) But again, I would reply in this as in other points; Mr. Darwin misses not so much the facts of nature as the ultimate reason of those facts. What is the ultimate reason for the remarkable fact that the plant kingdom crowds itself so closely upon the confines of the animal? Not, I answer, to facilitate the transit of generations from the one province to the other. Of such transit there is not the first shade of evidence. But the reason is that the Great Author of nature out of his infinite resources has _filled both kingdoms perfectly full of life-forms_ so that no territory between their respective domains lies unoccupied. It is simply a fecundity of life-forms or species, analogous to the fecundity of living representatives under most of these species――all alike traceable to the infinite resources of the Creator’s wisdom and power.

7. Finally, this theory is reckless of the authority of revelation. It makes no effort to reconcile its doctrines with the testimony of the Scriptures. Especially on the great points of the creation of man――as to his body, independent of all other animals; as to his spirit, made in the very image of God; and as to woman, formed from man――this system stands in absolute antagonism with God’s word.――――It should not surprise us, therefore, that the common sense of mankind (with rare exceptions) revolts from its absurdities. It should not surprise us that Science――the true Science which builds, not on unsupported assumptions but on ascertained and incontestable facts――should disown these theories and speculations. True Science, here as elsewhere, now and forever, is at one with Revelation; and these pillars of the great temple of Truth are in not the least danger of being shaken.