Evolution and the Bible

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 17, 1908

Evolution and the Bible

The recently imported pastor of the Fifth Avenue Baptist church of New York, Dr. C. F. Aked, has made a declaration from the pulpit of that church, which, if true, would put the writings of Darwin and Spencer in the place of the Bible in every church in the world, and relegate the Book of God to oblivion. He said:—

There was a time when church people held up their hands in holy horror at the thought of believing any of the teachings of evolution. But this evolutionary philosophy has been a tremendous benefit to Christians. It is time that we gave up the things that our fathers believed.

That in which “our fathers believed” most implicitly was the Bible; and it marks a very important era in the history of the church when an ordained minister of the gospel can stand in the sacred desk, and tell Christians they ought to forsake the inspired Word, and rally around the writings of agnostics and evolutionists. The strangest and saddest part of the situation is that these large bodies of professed Christians will listen to such preaching in place of the gospel. All that evolution has done for Christianity is what open and avowed infidelity has been doing in the past; that is, it has undermined the faith of some in the atoning work of Christ, and so has left such without a Saviour and without a hope of salvation. The infidel and the evolutionist D. D. are accomplishing the same work, and Christians owe nothing to either, and have nothing to hope for from such sources.