In view of the fact that not only Henry Ward Beecher and Dr. McCosh but almost all of the acknowledged scientific teachers, not only in the United States, but in Europe, are avowed evolutionists, it may be of interest, and perhaps of value, for us to notice briefly what evolution really is, and what is its manifest tendency. Some time ago the Independent presented the following list of evolutionists:—ARSH March 11, 1884, page 162.1

“Of all the younger brood of working naturalists whom Agassiz educated, every one—Morse, Shader, Verrill, Niles, Hyatt, Scudder, Putnam, even his own son—has accepted evolution. Every one of the Harvard professors whose departments have to do with biology—Gray, Whitney, A. Agassiz, Hagen, Goodale, Shaler, James, Farlow, and Faxon—is an evolutionist, and man’s physical structure they regard as no real conception to the law. They are all theists, we believe; all conservative men. They do not all believe that Darwinism—that is, natural selection—is a sufficient theory of evolution; they may incline to Wallace’s view, but they accept evolution. It is not much taught; it is rather taken for granted. At Johns Hopkins University, which aims to be the most advanced in the country, nothing but evolution is held or taught [italics mine]. In the excellent University of Pennsylvania all the biological professors are evolutionists,—Profs. Leidy and Allen in Comparative Anatomy, Prof. Rathrock in Botany, and Prof. Lesley in Geology. We might mention Michigan University, Cornell, Dartmouth, or Bowdoin; but what is the use of going farther? It would only be the same story. There can scarcely an exception be found. Wherever there is a working naturalist, he is sure to be an evolutionist. We made an inquiry of two ex-presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. One wrote us, in reply: ‘My impression is that there is no biologist of repute nowadays who does not accept, in some form or other, the doctrine of derivation in time, whatever be the precise form in which they suppose the evolution to have occurred.’ His successor replied, ‘Almost without exception, the working naturalists in this country believe in evolution.... In England and Germany the belief in evolution is almost universal among the active workers in biology. In France the belief is less general, but is rapidly gaining ground.... I should regard a teacher of science who denied the truth of evolution, as being as incompetent as one who doubted the Copernican theory.’ We challenge the Observer to find three working naturalists of repute in the United States, or two (it can find one in Canada), that are not evolutionists. And where a man believes in evolution, it goes without saying that the law holds as to man’s physical structure.”ARSH March 11, 1884, page 162.2

In this article, however, I do not propose a complete analysis of evolution, but only an examination of the leading phase of its tendency; and that is, as stated by Mr. James Sully, joint author with Prof. T. H. Huxley of the Article Evolution in “Encyclopedia Britannica,” ninth edition, this: “It is clear that the doctrine of evolution is directly antagonistic to that of creation. Just as the biological doctrine of the transmutation of species is opposed to that of special creations, so the idea of evolution, as applied to the formation of the world as a whole, is opposed to that of a direct creative volition.”ARSH March 11, 1884, page 162.3

Now, in view of this statement of the highest authority on the subject of evolution, is it not equally clear that these professors of Harvard, and Yale, and Brown, and Bowdoin, and Amherst, and Princeton, and Cornell, and Johns Hopkins, and Michigan, and Pennsylvania Universities, and the teachers of science in England, Germany, France, and the United States, and those who accept their teaching, are all in direct antagonism to the Bible? For whatever else the Bible might be held to teach, it assuredly does teach this one thing, that God created all things. And it is purposely that I have written the word “Bible” above instead of “Genesis” alone; for it is not alone the testimony of Genesis, but of the whole book, that God created all things.” “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.... And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth.” Genesis 1:1, 21. “So God created man.” Genesis 1:27. “And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created.” Genesis 6:7. “God created man upon the earth.” Deuteronomy 4:32. “Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens,” etc. Isaiah 42:5. “I have made the earth and created man upon it.” Isaiah 45:12. “Hath not one God created us?” Malachi 2:10. Now the words of Christ (Mark 13:19), “For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time.” Of man he says (Mark 10:6), “But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.” God “created all things by Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 3:9. “By him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible.” Colossians 1:16. “Thou hast created all things.” Revelation 4:11; also Revelation 10:6; 14:7. So just as surely as evolution is “directly antagonistic to the doctrine of creation,” so also are those who hold to evolution placed “directly antagonistic to the Bible. And this will plainly appear form their own words as we proceed.ARSH March 11, 1884, page 162.4

Because the disciples of Darwin have pressed his theories into service as facts, evolution has come to be considered (and not improperly) as almost, if not entirely, synonymous with Darwinism. Yet there is a distinction claimed, and it is stated as follows by the Independent of Jan. 8, 1880: “In the first place let it be clearly understood that evoloution, or development, is not synonymous with Darwinism. A man may be an evolutionist and not be a Darwinian. Let us explain.ARSH March 11, 1884, page 163.1

“The doctrine of evolution is this: that all the existing forms of animal and vegetable life have been produced through the process of succession, birth, and generation from original vital germs. This is all. The doctrine of evolution does not assert how the first germs came, whether by God’s special creation, or by the unaided action of law out of inanimate matter. Nor does the doctrine of evolution assert how or why, whether rapidly or gradually, under what laws or what providence, the evolution has proceeded as it has. These are theories of evolution, which are brought forward to account for its operation; but they are not the doctrine of evolution itself. The doctrine of evolution is opposed to the doctrine of creationism; and it teaches simply that living and extinct species of animals and plants were not directly created out of dead matter by the fiat of God, but were produced by birth out of plants and animals previously existing.ARSH March 11, 1884, page 163.2

“Now, Darwinism—properly so called—is not evolution, but a theory or hypothesis of evolution. It has become confused in the unscholarly popular mind with evolution, because it was the way in which Charles Darwin first explained evolution. Darwinism is the theory that evolution is explained by the law of Natural Selection; i.e., a law of variation by which the young of any animal vary slightly from their parents. Those of the young whose variations help them in the struggle for existence are more likely to live and propagate their kind.... Thus, by slow gradations, and by the retention of favorable minute changes, all present life was evolved. This is one theory of evolution, and is called by Darwin’s name, ‘Natural Selection,’ or by Spencer’s name, ‘Survival of the Fittest.’ This Darwinism is not necessarily atheistic. Darwin himself allowed that life may have been started by a few created germs. But, once started on Darwin’s theory, there is no further need of God. Law produces everything, from the diatom to the oak, from the amba to the man. According to him, even mind, heart, conscience, are just as much the product of physical evolution as is the physical structure itself. Given two or three germs at the beginning, perhaps,—or perhaps not,—and given the laws which we find, then there is no more use for God, and all thigns have come out as we find them with none of his supervision. There may have been a God once, but law and not God is the great Creator.”ARSH March 11, 1884, page 163.3

Apparently, there is a great deal said here, but in reality there is very little said. Let us analyze this statement, and see wherein lies the actual difference, if any, between these two statements of evolution and Darwinism. 1. Evolution says all forms of life come in successive births and generation from original germs. Darwinism says the same. 2. Evolution does not say how the first germs came. Neither does Darwinism. 3. Evolution says that living and extinct species of animals and plants were not directly created out of dead matter by the fiat of God. Darwinism says exactly the same. 4. Evolution says these were produced by birth, out of plants and animals previously existing. Darwinism is identical with it here also. 5. Darwinism holds that this birth and generation of plants and animals in succession, is according to established law. Evolution being “directly antagonistic” to creationism, how else can successive birth and generation proceed but in accord with the law universal of birth and generation. So in this also they are identical.ARSH March 11, 1884, page 163.4

6. Darwinism says that the process of evolution has been very slow. The above statement of evolution says that it does not assert whether the process has been rapid or gradual, but we have abundance of evidence to show that this is not correct. And we need go no farther than the editorial columns of the Independent to prove its incorrectness. In an editorial entitled “Deliver us from our Friends,” in Dec. (I think), 1879, appears a quotation from Wallace’s “Natural Selection,” as follows: “‘We can with tolerable certainty affirm that man must have inhabited the earth a thousand centuries ago, but we cannot assert.... that there is any good evidence that he positively did not exist for a period of ten thousand centuries.’” And the whole tenor of the article, which is a defense of evolution, is that the evolution of man is a process of ages upon ages; and it says that the evidence that man was pre-glacial, i.e., that he existed scores or hundreds of thousands of years ago, and that he was fashioned out of apes, “is so strong that it is very unsafe to deny” it. (Italics his.)ARSH March 11, 1884, page 163.5

Again, what room has evolution to show its successions of “birth and generation” if the earth be only six thousand years old? The very language in which evolution is defined and explained, asserts that the process has been gradual. And further, if evidence were produced that the process had been rapid, it would immediately turn the scale in favor of creationism, and evolution would be destroyed. Admitting, however, that evolution makes no assertion either way, does it not make very loud demands for “hundreds,” or “thousands,” or even “tens of thousands of centuries”? If not to say nothing of Darwin, why do Wallace and Le Conte, and A. S. Packard, and I. Quatrefages, Hughes, Evans, and all the rest speak and wrote of it in no other language than such as the above? And these demands are nothing short of an assertion of the absolute poverty of evolution with less than “thousands and tens of thousands of centuries,” and therein asserts its “gradual” process, and fully agrees with Darwinism where it says: “The high antiquity of man... is the indispensable basis for understanding his origin.”—Descent of Man, 1, p. 3.ARSH March 11, 1884, page 163.6

7. The process “once started, on Darwin’s theory there is no further need of God.” Evolution says the same, as the following from Prof. Huxley shows: “If all living beings have been evolved from pre-existing forms of life, it is enough that a single particle of living protoplasm should once have appeared on the globe as the result of no-matter-what agency. In the eyes of a consistent evolutionist any further independent formation of protoplasm would be sheer waste.” Again: “But living matter once originated, there is no necessity for another origination, since the hypothesis postulates the unlimited... modifiability of such matter.”—Article “Biology.” So again we see that consistent evolution and Darwinism are identical.ARSH March 11, 1884, page 163.7

It is unnecessary to pursue this line further, as everything that might be brought to bear upon the subject would simply confirm the points already made, that consistent evolution and Darwinism are essentially synonymous. The simple fact is, and is plainly shown by Mr. Sully, that to Darwin, first of all, belongs the honor of first reducing the theory of evolution to “a substantial basis of fact.” And whether in England, Germany, or the United States, evolution without Darwin is, as the phrase goes, the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out.ARSH March 11, 1884, page 163.8

(To be continued.)

February 4, 1884

March 18, 1884