p. 420 | Evolution Illustrated

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 20, 1883

Evolution Illustrated.

MR. BEECHER, while visiting relatives on this coast, has improved the opportunity to deliver a few lectures. Our curiosity to hear him was fully gratified some years ago, but we have read the published reports of some of his lectures given here. Were it not for his name at the head, the occasional assertion that he is a Christian, and the absence of oaths, we would think that we were reading one of Ingersoll’s lectures. He has evidently learned more of late from the noted infidel than he has from the Bible. We notice that the words “laughter” and “applause,” which frequently occur, are always at the close of some tirade against religion, or some emphatic denial of the inspiration of the Bible. From this we learn what class of persons are now his admirers. When, a few years ago, Mr. Beecher condescended to introduce Ingersoll to a New York audience, many of the adherents of the Plymouth pastor were considerably shocked at such familiar contact with infidelity; others deemed the act a bold stroke of policy, fraught with independent liberality. The scene was called “shaking hands across the ‘bloody chasm;” but the tone of Mr. B.’s recent lectures would indicate that there wasn’t much of a chasm there, or if there was, it has since become so nearly closed as to enable him to pass over to the other side.

“Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.” Jer. 6:16.

And this is “evolution,” in its practical working.