p. 324 | WATCH YOUR SCIENCE by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 21, 1881

WATCH YOUR SCIENCE.

By Editor

THE Christian Advocate of San Francisco copies an account of an incident, from Harper's Magazine, in which it is said that “a humming-bird has shown more cunning than its little brain would seem capable of manufacturing.”

We advise neighbor Advocate to be cautious how it gives “aid and comfort” to infidels and atheists by publishing to the world that the brain of a hummingbird manufactures cunning! Look at Webster and you will learn that cunning is knowledge, art; that it is a faculty in the use of stratagem to accomplish a purpose. And this indicates intelligence and thought. Hazard not your reputation as a student of “science and the Bible” (science always put first) by intimating to your readers that the brain of a bird generates thought, and is capable of manifesting art and skill. No, no. It was its precious little immortal humming-bird soul that showed such cunning and skill. The brain was only the mortal instrument which the soul used in accomplishing its purpose.

Do not evade the issue by denying that humming-birds have immortal souls. We shall defend the bird. To use the language of your own paper, we shall insist that “the indications of some inner immaterial nature are as clear and well-defined as the evidence that he possesses an external, material body.” If cunning, craft, and skill do not indicate immaterial, immortal existence, pray what does? It will never do to admit that material brains can produce all this. Materialists might take advantage of it, and urge that Solomon and other Bible writers meant just what they said!