IN the editorial section of one of our great dailies there is an article—and it is in very large type—based upon the startling affirmation that—
“This earth on which we live has existed for millions of years. Men do not guess about that. They know it. Those that deny it are childishly ignorant or pervert the truth.”
This very strong affirmation is drawn from the fact that in some little town in England a skull has been recently dug up that the editorial says was “half human being and half ape.” He further says that the teeth of the skull were human teeth, but they were imbedded in the jaws of an animal—a jaw like that of a chimpanzee. And then from this wonderful skull, the “scientist” would seek to ridicule us into the thought that we are “childishly ignorant,” or that we are seeking to pervert the truth, if we do not believe all of his learned nonsense in regard to what happened 400,000 years ago.
Why would it not be a good idea to say that since that skull and jaw-bone so closely resemble those of a chimpanzee, they are nothing more nor less than a chimpanzee’s skull and jaw-bone, as chimpanzees can be found still in quite numerous congregations in some parts of the world? All talk about that skull’s having existed, as affirmed, in a gravel bed for 400,000 years, is nonsense, and any person ought to be able to see that such dreaming is not science, but speculation.
To Discredit the Bible
His satanic majesty is doing everything in his power to discredit the Bible story that man has lived upon this earth only about 6,000 years. And if the virus of the devil’s hatred of the Bible were entirely taken out, there would be no difficulty in harmonizing all the facts and conditions seen in the physical world with the utterances of the Bible itself. It ought to be a great deal easier for a person to see that such a skull has degenerated from the primitive human being, whom God created in perfection and uprightness, than to think the more perfect man has come up from such a low order of beings.
The God of the Bible would never make any useless laws. He had some very strict laws in regard to the amalgamation of the human family with the brute creation, as every one knows who has ever read the five books of Moses. Such debased morals would drive man downward at an inconceivable pace. The latter part of the first chapter of Romans also tells, in very vivid and striking language, the degeneracy that was produced in the world as the result of sin. It is far more scientific and altogether in harmony with the facts to believe and understand that this low order of beings that so much resemble the human family have degenerated from the race of Adam. They are down toward the bottom of the ladder in the scale of degeneracy and degradation, in the place of being on the upward grade toward the higher order of beings.
Dr. Wallace and the Success of Evolution
Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, to whom has been given a place in the scientific world very close to that of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, and who has been as ardent a writer and teacher of the doctrines of evolution for the last forty or fifty years as was ever Darwin himself, has this to say in his latest book:
“Darwin proved, by a series of converging facts and convincing arguments, that the physical structure of man was in all its parts and organs so extremely similar to that of the anthropoid apes as to demonstrate the descent of both from some common ancestor.
“So close is this resemblance, that every bone and muscle in the human body has its counterpart in that of the apes, the only differences being slight modifications in their shape and position; yet these differences lead to external forms, attitudes, and modes of life so divergent that we can hardly recognize the close affinity that really exists. This affinity is so real and unmistakable that such a great and conservative zoologist as the late Sir Richard Owen declared that to discover and define any important differences between them was the anatomist’s difficulty.”
This illustration gives the artist's idea of a creature that he thinks existed 400,000 years ago, whose bones were recently discovered in a gravel pit in England. He also suggests the well-developed human head that has evolved during these long millenniums from that original character.
The Bible has claimed, all through the ages, that sin is degrading, and that its whole tendency is to degenerate and throw the human race lower and lower. Notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Wallace still holds to his theories of evolution, he is forced to admit, in another chapter in the same book from which the foregoing quotation is taken, that—
“Taking into account these various groups of undoubted facts, many of which are so gross, so terrible, that they can not be overstated, it is not too much to say that our whole system of society is rotten from top to bottom, and the social environment as a whole, in relation to our possibilities and our claims, is the worst that the world has ever seen.”
The doctor still thinks that evolution has a way out of the difficulty; but his foregoing admission, that society is rotten from top to bottom, and that we have the worst conditions existing to-day that the world has ever seen, confirms the teaching of the Word, that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” When we have an authoritative Book given to us by the great Creator Himself, why will we insist upon leaving the strong foundation of that Book, and, contrary to existing fact, undertake to make a god out of a science that is mere speculation from beginning to end?
Dr. Wallace has had a long life of laborious study and writing. He has sought to teach evolution as a mighty truth. He has made a careful study of conditions in society; and his scientific mind leads him to make deliberately these conclusions in regard to the rottenness of society and the general condition of the world. May it not be, after all, that the infinite Creator, who is seeking to save men from the errors and delusions of this time, has preserved the venerable doctor to make the acknowledgment that his doctrines, so far, are not working out in harmony with the theories presented?
The one thing that has kept the human family, through all the ages, from breaking to pieces under the sins they have been committing, has been the upward working of God’s infinite power of righteousness. His love would not let humanity go; and some individuals in each generation have always yielded to these divine influences, and exemplified the divine truth.
Hence not all of the human family has at any time been degenerated and degraded, otherwise there would be no superior beings at all in the race. We have Egyptian and Babylonian illustrations that reach back to the very beginning of the authentic history of the human race; but in these pictures that have been preserved for this time, the leading characteristics of the human family are as strikingly marked as they are at the present day. There has been no material change in them, except that we know there has been more or less degeneracy. It is only when men seek to go beyond what they know, and out into the realm of speculation about what they do not know, that such foolish conclusions are reached—that the chimpanzee skull dug out of a gravel bed in England must have been one of our ancestors of 400,000 years ago.
Created in the Image of God
The Bible story is that God created man in His own image, after His own likeness. He created him by the word of His power. There is something sublime, dignified, and reasonable in this Bible story. We submit that it is much easier to believe this true story of the divine Book than to follow off into such far-fetched speculations about the monkey’s skull and the British gravel pit. This scientist is asking us to believe too much when he would have us think that in the little span of his finite life he could dig back 400,000 years and tell us with such wonderful accuracy what happened then. If he wants to tell such things as fairy tales, it is his privilege. But in the name of every principle of sound sense and divine truth, don’t call such speculation science. However, he might put it under the head of what the apostle Paul has termed “profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.”
We are very rapidly approaching the time, as is abundantly shown by the accurate fulfilment of prophecy, when this world will be brought to stand face to face with the great10Creator; and in that time, how foolish and how absurd will appear all these visions of false science with which men have become intoxicated, and through which they have thrown away the plain teaching of the word of God—teaching which is not only in harmony with true science but should be the guide in the study of all the important truths of nature!
Exact Truth
When we come into the field of astronomy, we find exact truth, for there we are dealing with the great themes of God. When we come into the great field of mathematics, we find truth that can not be bent or twisted, because we are dealing with another one of the exact sciences of God. Chemistry teaches profound accuracy, and produces definite results. Geology gives us many reliable and useful facts. But when that which is true in geology becomes mixed with the speculations of evolution, the dreamy writer of “science” fiction is tempted to float far out into the mists where his chosen god dances before his mind in scientific draperies, until his intoxicated and deluded fancies cause him to cry out, “Behold, what a great truth!” How good it would be if he could be aroused from his hallucinations long enough to realize what a dastardly thing it is to set aside the word of the almighty Creator by introducing in its stead his idle dreamings of evolution!
When we go off into the field of speculation in regard to what occurred 400,000 years ago, we are following an extreme that is not only a useless waste of time, but can not help resulting in disaster to the individual who would thus mock at the word of the Infinite.
