WHILE evolution is a term used very generally in science, it cannot be said that all who use it mean exactly the same thing by the word. It may be intended to embody the idea of certain principles and processes, both in nature and in human work, or it may be intended to designate a scheme of self-formation in nature, and the denial of the work of God the Creator. This paper will deal briefly with the extreme of unbelief which is to be found in the evolutionary idea in its denial of Creation. Subsequently we shall deal with the denial of the Incarnation and Resurrection.
According to the wisdom of certain philosophers of our century, which captivates its many thousands, the whole universe was once a mass of atoms. These atoms were influenced by force. Thereby, after the lapse of myriads of years, solid worlds came to be, and living creatures arose. Such is the notion of the beginning which we are asked to accept. It will be obvious that this notion in no way takes us to a veritable beginning, but is a consequence of a beginning, for how the law of force came to be, and how the atoms came to exist―not to speak of the relation of the law to the atoms―are left to the imagination. The question at once arises, Can a man think back behind a beginning without coming to a First Cause? A law governing inanimate atoms implies that which is greater than itself. Force must be mysteriously wise, and possess strange powers of design, if it established order and beauty in the vast universe, by acting on the atoms which are supposed to have filled the space where suns and stars move in their courses. At the threshold of the unbelief in the Creator, which this evolution theory expresses, the philosopher produces a power to enable him to move and shape his atoms, the reason for which may be that the philosopher is a creature of a beginning, and therefore cannot conceive otherwise. By the light of revelation we know that the First Cause is God.
Very little is said in the Scriptures about the beginning. But we are told that there was a Person before the beginning. “In the beginning was the Word.” Further, we are told that by this. Person “all things were made; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.” This is understandable. There were laws, there was force, but at the back of these there was a Person setting all in motion, and in perfect wisdom.
When the beginning began we are not told. It may have been in the distance of an inconceivable past. Leaving the witness of the past inhabitants of this earth―whose fossils are in it―counting as nothing the vast ages that are written in the rocks―indeed, leaving this earth altogether, we look up into the heavens. We see in the motions of the heavenly bodies, and in the paths described by them at unrealizable distances from this earth, such evidence of age, that we are simply lost in the contemplation of the myriads of years required to accomplish their circles or goings. These bodies, moreover, are rushing on at a pace which no words can describe; they are the servants of a force no human mind can realize; and whither they are going no man can imagine! Space is around us. Is it limitless? Is there no boundary to the universe? If so, what does limitless space mean?
Our beautiful earth lies in the field of a myriad stars; it is but as a glittering pin’s point in the universe.
We are dwellers upon a globe, we travel around it, but only to arrive at the spot we left when we started for our journey. Our thoughts as to the wonders of the age of the universe, like our feet wandering round the earth, come back to the point whence we started. We have exhausted our resources. We might ask, what is the meaning of time? Did it evolve itself? Yet we measure the distances of the heavenly bodies from this earth by time. Only let us not do so by our poor little foot-rule of three score years and ten, as if the vast universe of God could be understood merely by human capacity.
The science of our day allows that the worlds around us may be inhabited. God tells of angels and beings different from ourselves, and how that these beings watched the formation of this earth! To them, therefore, thousands of years are but a span. Man is not the only intelligent creature in God’s universe.
But while Scripture does not tell us when the beginning began, it is precise in describing the entry of man upon this earth. The Bible, be it remembered, is not a book about fossils and rocks, but a book about man and his God.
The philosopher of our nineteenth century, in his doctrine of evolution as applied to man’s origin, offers for our acceptance that which is base and despicably low. Man, according to him, arose from the atom. Leaving the philosopher to perfect his chain from the atom to the man―in other words, leaving him to fill up the huge gaps that occur in his scheme of evolution, leaving him to supply facts where he now presents us with fancies―we will allow him to suppose this earth, as peopled by creatures similar to those now upon it. According to his theory from some ancestry common to insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, and beasts, man came into existence. Hence there is in him still not a little of the monkey, the pig, the wolf, and snake, as well as the dove. We do not dwell upon man’s structural resemblance to those creatures, but to his moral resemblance. Human beings, monkeys, birds, and snakes are all one vast brotherhood! Indeed, various moral qualities, bad and good, in man, are attributed seriously and earnestly by these philosophers to this brotherhood, in learned books, penned by some of the greatest minds of the day. Did we not know how the tutored Babylonians and Egyptians degraded humanity by their wisdom, or how the magnificent minds of the ancient Greeks and Romans debased man and God, by their conceptions, we might be astonished at the depths of shame respecting man, into which these lovers of wisdom of our century have fallen. And did we not know why and how it is these mighty minds have evolved such folly out of their wisdom, we might be perplexed; but “it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”
“And even as they did not like to retain God in knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind” ―a mind void of judgment.
If God at the beginning did make laws and atoms which formed worlds―though, as “God is not the author of confusion,” He certainly did not leave things to chance themselves into form―He wrought in His work of creating man on a different principle altogether. God created and made man out of existing atoms―out of the dust of the earth! Man came into the earth long, long ages after the beginning, and subsequently to that mysterious era in the earth’s history when “the earth was without form, and void.” Man had a grand and noble origin. He was God-made. He was not a link in a long chain of creatures which peopled the former earth, but the head of all creatures upon earth which God caused to live, when He formed and fashioned this favored spot in His vast universe into its present fitness. Man was made in God’s image, destined to be the highest of God’s creatures―God’s representative upon this earth. He was made in God’s likeness, having a moral being like to that of his Creator. His fall, his redemption, his resurrection, were all in view by God from the first. And man’s destiny was that he should be not only God’s representative on this earth, but in the future above the angels and, to us, at present invisible beings. “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” And do we forget that in heaven the redeemed shall surround the throne of God and the Lamb as the inner circle, while the angels shall stand around them, and “that in the dispensation of the fulness of times,” when all things are gathered together in one in Christ, “both which are in heaven, and which are on earth,” the Church will reign with Christ?
It is true that the stamp of sin is now upon man, but the believer is exhorted while on earth to “put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness,” not in innocence, as was originally the case, but a state far higher, one which, while fully aware of the evil, is that of righteousness and “holiness of truth.” The purpose of God in the creation of man reaches beyond man’s lifetime on earth. The redeemed were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that they should be holy and without blame before their God and Father in love. Thus the foundation of the world comes in as the secondary idea, and the creation of man, as by no means the ultimate of the divine purpose regarding man’s existence.
It is true God does not tell us very much respecting the future that lies before the redeemed. But He does tell us of thrones, and principalities, and powers outside this world, and of the enthronement of the Son of Man above them all, and of the association of the Church with His Son in that coming glory, and these things afford glimpses of His purpose in the creation of man, which are exalted and glorious beyond all human science and imagination.
And what has the evolutionist philosopher to say respecting the future? Simply this, “I do not know!” He does not know whether there be a future―whether he will exist in the future. He lives within walls of learned ignorance. Nevertheless, many rejoice in being agnostics, and boast in not knowing, as if such ignorance were supreme wisdom. Of course no man can know what will be a thousand years hence unless God tell him, but God tells us of glory and honor awaiting His people in union with His Son in heaven. The destiny of the man who believes God is nothing short of glory with Christ, the Son of God. And as we meditate upon the great end for which man was made, we look back to his beginning, and better understand why he was formed by God in His image and likeness. And we are assured that the Christian, who knows whom he has believed, can but pity the folly of the wise men of our day who “do not know.” Their ideas may be covered up in elegant words and expressed in great wisdom, but the ideas are low and base, and, like all the outcome of infidelity, tend to degrade man.