As we have seen already, this is denied in toto of by evolutionists. Man has not fallen, they say,
but risen; sin (as we call it), they affirm, is only a going back to the crudities of a former existence. But
man's history proclaims the fall. Instead of man ascending, he is degenerating. If sin is a reality we should expect this. Take cases patent before our very eyes, for instance, that of a drunkard. Do his children rise, or is the tendency to degeneration? Assuredly to the latter. Remember that the savage is not the condition of primitive man, but the savage is the degeneration of primitive man. We have this argued out in Rom. 1 The garbled accounts which are found in all ancient countries of the creation, the fall, the flood—all speak of the knowledge of these things, as presented to us in the Bible, being general, but the truth and light has been given up, and man has descended in the scale of civilization, save where Christianity has come in and uplifted him. We read:- " When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts, and creeping things " (Rom. 1:21, 22).
Take religion, which is the highest expression of man's spirit. We give a few brief extracts, bold type and capitals are ours. In Max Mueller's "Lecture on the Vedas " (the ancient hymns of India), he says:- " Religions in THEIR MOST ANCIENT FORM, or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from many Of THE BLEMISHES THAT ATTACH TO THEM IN LATER TIMES."
Le Page Renouf writes in " Religion of ancient Egypt ":—" The sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient; and THE LAST STAGE of the Egyptian religion. was BY FAR THE GROSSEST AND MOST CORRUPT " (p. 95).
Professor Th. Graebner writes:—" In the Vedas we find statements and prayers which are clear proof of an early Monotheism [i.e., belief in ONE God]... And yet this faith in ONE God, in the course of time, DEGENERATED into a. worship of 33,000 divinities—until Gautama, the Buddha, evolved a system that denied the very existence of God " (Evolution: an Investigation and a Criticism, pp, f o6, 107).
Carl Boettcher writes:—" The beginning of Polytheism [i.e., belief in many gods].. represents the SECOND phase of Greek religion, WHICH WAS PRECEDED BY A MONOTHEISM... Every student of Greek literature knows that this original belief, at an early age gave place to a worship of the gods on Olympus, a worship which in turn gave way to OPENLY AVOWED ATHEISM. The Greeks were aware of this decay."
We could give much more evidence on this line, but space forbids. We can confidently affirm that man and man's religion have degenerated, and the only recovery has been where the light of Scripture has been received. Under our very eyes we can see this today for ourselves. Look at the prosperity of countries where the light of the Bible is allowed as compared with countries where it is withheld. Look at Protestant countries with their unforbidden Bible as compared with Roman Catholic lands, where it is denied to the common people.
Compare Protestant England with Roman Catholic Ireland; let decadent Spain and immoral, infidel South America point the tale. It is said that observant travelers can tell which of the cantons of Switzerland are Protestant and which are Roman Catholic by the evidence of prosperity and cleanliness, or the reverse. These are facts which cannot be gainsaid, and prove the power of God's revelation to man—the Bible.
The Greatest Example Of All
And above all, take the greatest example of religion on record—even the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. He stands alone, absolutely incomparable. If evolution were true He would have been the product of evolution, and we should find not one character like His, but multitudes. But He stands absolutely alone among men, even as the Bible stands alone among books.
There is an affinity between Christ and the Bible, so that the influence of Christ is the influence of the Bible, and the influence of the Bible is the influence of Christ. Destroy the authority of the Bible and you destroy the authority of Christ. Destroy the authority of Christ and you destroy the authority of the Bible.
You may say, what has Genesis 1 and 2 to do with Christ? We answer, everything. If Gen. 1 and 2 are untrue, then there is no fall of man, as recorded in the Scriptures, and if no fall of man the whole testimony of Scripture is false, for its testimony is at least twofold: (1) Adam's sin and its consequences; (2) Christ's atoning death on the cross to meet Adam's sin and its consequences.
What of evolution? We find that General von Bernhardt claimed its doctrines as supporting Germany in the initiation and conduct of the great war. " The survival of the fittest," was practically Germany's war slogan. We can in contrast point to definite tangible efforts made by Christians for the happiness and blessing of the human race; evolution is condemned because of the lack of anything definite and tangible produced for the happiness of mankind.
Instead, it blots a God of love and grace and tenderness and pity out of the human sky, it strikes a fatal blow against Christ and the Bible, and the faith once delivered to the saints, and the saints who have believed it from Paul's day to ours. Were the theory of evolution received absolutely, on every hand Christianity would be completely wiped out and savagery would set in without redress.
No wonder one writer says the choice is between Christ and chaos. Here without doubt is the alternative. For our part we have no hesitancy as to our choice. We welcome the bright light of Christ, and we refuse the fearful darkness of evolution. Our ancestry is not to be found behind the bars of a cage in a zoological garden, but through Adam by the creative act of God.
We look not back to a bestial ancestry, but onwards and upwards to a glorious future, gained for us by Him, who became Man, though " God over all, blessed forever," who died on the cross to perform the mighty work of salvation, and who is soon coming for all who put their trust in Him, and when He comes " we [believers] shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is " (1 John 3:2)
Reader, is this prospect yours? Do not rest satisfied till it is.
Charles Robin (Dictionaire encyclopedique des sciences medicates), who, as an infidel, could not be accused of having any theological bias in the matter says:- "Darwinism is a fiction, a poetical accumulation of probabilities without proof, and of attractive explanations without demonstration."
The same can be said with equal appropriateness of the whole field of evolution. Why then does it hold the ground to the extent it does? The answer is two-fold:- 1. Because it flatters the pride of man in denying the fall, and refuses consequently man's accountability to God. 2. Because if evolution is not true, then creation holds the field, which means that man is accountable to God, and being fallen needs a Savior.
So we find scientific men attempting to bolster up a discredited theory, and unconverted theologians, wishing to be considered abreast of the times, preaching it from their pulpits and in their Sunday schools, whilst too many professors in the universities carry on the evil work of undermining the authority of Scripture in the minds of the students. Well might the Apostle Paul write in his day, by inspiration of God, of "oppositions of science falsely so called " (1 Tim. 6:20).
We cannot do better than close this pamphlet with the following very, very striking quotation from the pen of an unknown author, a brilliant example of well-deserved sarcasm, showing the wicked blasphemy of the evolutionary theory and its utter hopelessness:- " If materialism be true, cursed be this eternal matter and its laws, this unconscious idiot which created us without intending it, or knowing why; the helpless block which has implanted these ideas of right and truth, deity and guilt to fret us and delude us! And accursed be that process of evolution which is ever multiplying the agonies of the world! I seem dimly to remember when I was a purple alga, a Delesseria sanguinea, firmly cemented to a rock where the pellucid eddying tide rocked me gently twice a day, and bathed me in suffusions of stimulating ozone and iodine, whilst I was cheered by the beams of the sun, alternately near and distant, as the tide ebbed or lapped over me. When I was a gorilla I was happier still, feared by other animals and fearful of none, I roved heedlessly with my mate and young through the virgin forest-depths, stocked with abundance of food—far stronger and healthier than I am now as a man. Day after day I sit tethered to a desk or immured in a factory. When I was a gorilla I was not concerned about ' making ends meet,' or with social problems ' or with competition,' or with nervous collapse.' And the next stage of evolution will inevitably introduce me to new phases of pain. With a yet finer and more delicate organism, equipped with senses of still keener susceptibility, what may I not expect to endure from external influences, exposed as my more intricate bodily mechanism will be to new forms of complication.
" But others tell me that whilst the race will probably experience such evolution, the individual will be insensible to it, because decomposed before then into his chemical constituents. And is all my thought, pain and effort only a chemical combination? Then my whole soul boils with rage and exasperation against this purposeless universe, these vacant flourishes scrawled by blank matter on the wall in order to beguile the tedium of its apathetic eternity; and with loathing against myself, the decipherable plaything of unintelligent, inscrutable forces. I am not to be entrapped by virtuous phrases about the dignity of science, or by exhortations to sacrifice myself for the welfare of my fellows. For what? The gratitude of posterity? And what care I for that, or for a paltry bust, or statue, if I am meanwhile resolved into gases, or into a weed that grows by the roadside, or crawling about as a constituent of an earth-worm? I should be a fool to stint myself of the slightest indulgence, or to trouble for a single hour about religion, humanity, or topics of moral obligation. Give me intoxicants, or an opiate; let me at least forget my wretchedness! There remains one resource, however, the revolver or morphia-flask, when I am sick of my misery; and when I may flit about at my ease in space, I trust, in the form of oxygen or nitrogen. But shall I be quiet even then, what with these restless atoms, these tyrannical forces of nature? Is there no rest in the universe anywhere?
"How different are the joys of the Christian, the one, who can call God his Heavenly Father, the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior, and Heaven his eternal home! And this is open to all in the mercy of God" ("Modern Science and Christianity," Professor F. Bettex, pp. 334, 335).
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