Evolution and Scripture

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 13, 1896

Evolution and Scripture.

The word of God accounts for man’s nature and condition. Science has endeavored to evolve him from protoplasm. But according to Professor Howison, as quoted in the Pacific of October 23, Mr. Huxley himself “came so clearly to see and proclaim, in conscience, at least, man has that which no cosmic process can possibly account for, but to which, rather, the cosmic process presents an aspect of real antagonism.” And Professor Howison says frankly:—

“It is time that we all understood how finally at variance with the core of Christian faith and hope is any doctrine of evolution that views the whole of human nature as the product of ‘continuous creation—as merely the last term in a process of transmissive causation. For the product of such a process could not be morally free, nor consequently morally responsible. It must needs be merely a mass of ‘inherited tendency;’ and howsoever fair its effect might appear, no life of genuine dutifulness, no life of goodness freely chosen, could enter into its being.”

And yet we have not a few professedly Christian teachers who are trying to make the Bible harmonize with evolution. Again Professor Howison says—and his words are a rebuke to many “divines”—

“Plain in the doctrinal firmament of every Christian, clear like the sun in the sky, should shine the truth. Unless there is a real man underived from nature, unless there is a rational or spiritual man independent of the natural man, and legislatively sovereign over entire nature, then the Eternal is not a person,—there is no God, and our faith is vain.”

That truth is found in the word of God. It needs no apology. It will endure by its own inherent strength.