475. Divine Evolution

Divine Evolution

Rom_1:22-23 : ’93Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to the birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.’94

This is a full-length portrait of an evolutionist who substitutes the bestial origin for the Divine origin. I showed you in another sermon that evolution was contradicted by the Bible, by science, by observation, and by common sense; that the Bible account of the creation of man and of brute and of the world, and the evolutionist’92s account collided with each other, as certainly as two express trains going in opposite directions at sixty miles the hour, their locomotives meeting on the same track. I showed that the evolution scientists were pronounced infidels; that evolution was a heathenism thousands of years old; that such men as Agassiz and Hugh Miller and Faraday and Dawson and Dana had for that doctrine of evolution unlimited contempt. I showed you that their favorite theory of the ’93survival of the fittest’94 was an absurdity and an untruth, and that natural evolution was always downward and never upward, and that there had never been any improvement for man or beast or world except through the direct or indirect influence of our glorious Christianity. And in the closing part of that sermon I told you I was not a pessimist, but an optimist, and that instead of it being eleven o’92clock at night it is half-past five in the morning.

Now, I go on to tell you, it seems to me that evolutionists are trying to impress the great masses of the people with the idea that there is an ancestral line leading from the primal germ on up through the serpent, and on up through the quadruped, and on up through the gorilla, to man. They admit that there is a ’93missing link,’94 as they call it, but there is not a missing link’97it is a whole chain gone. Between the physical construction of the highest animal, and the physical construction of the lowest man, there is a chasm as wide as the Atlantic Ocean. Evolutionists tell us that somewhere in Central Africa, or in Borneo, there is a creature half-way between the brute and the man, and that that creature is the highest step in the animal ascent and the lowest step in the human creation. But what are the facts? The brain of the largest gorilla that was ever found is thirty cubic inches, while the brain of the most ignorant man that was ever found is seventy. Vast difference between thirty and seventy. It needs a bridge of forty arches to span that gulf.

Besides that, there is a difference between the gorilla and the man’97a difference of blood globule, a difference of nerve, a difference of muscle, a difference of bone, a difference of sinew. The horse is more like man in intelligence, the bird is more like him in musical capacity, the mastiff is more like him in affection. That eulogized beast of which we hear so much, represented on the walls of cities thousands of years ago, is just as complete as it is now, showing that there has not been a particle of change. Besides that, if a pair of apes had a man for descendant, why would not all the apes have the same kind of descendants? Can it be that that one favored pair only was honored with human progeny? Besides that, evolution says that as one species rises to another species, the old type dies off. Then how is it that there are whole kingdoms of chimpanzee and gorilla and baboon?

The evolutionists have come together and have tried to explain a bird’92s wing. Their theory has always been that a faculty of an animal while being developed must always be useful and always beneficial, but the wing of a bird, in the thousands of years it was being developed, so far from being any help must have been a hindrance until it could be brought into practical use away on down in the ages. Must there not have been an intelligent will somewhere that formed that wonderful flying instrument, so that a bird five hundred times heavier than the air can mount it and put gravitation under claw and beak? That wonderful mechanical instrument, the wing, with between twenty and thirty different apparati curiously constructed, does it not imply a divine intelligence? Does it not imply a direct act of some outside being? All the evolutionists in the world cannot explain a bird’92s wing, or an insect’92s wing.

So they are confounded by the rattle of the rattlesnake. Ages before that reptile had any enemies, this warning weapon was created. Why was it created? When the reptile, far back in the ages had no enemies, why this warning weapon? There must have been a divine intelligence foreseeing and knowing that in ages to come that reptile would have enemies, and then this warning weapon would be brought into use. You see evolution at every step is a contradiction or a monstrosity. At every stage of animal life as well as at every stage of human life, there is evidence of direct action of divine will.

Besides that, it is very evident from another fact that we are an entirely different creation, and that there is no kinship. The animal in a few hours or months comes to full strength and can take care of itself. The human race for the first one, two, three, five, ten years is in complete helplessness. The chick just come out of its shell begins to pick up its own food. The dog, the wolf, the lion, soon earn their own livelihood and act for their own defense. The human race does not come to development until twenty or thirty years of age, and by that time the animals that were born the same year the man was born’97the vast majority of them have died of old age. This shows there is no kinship, there is no similarity. If we had been born of the beast, we would have had the beast’92s strength at the start, or it would have had cur weakness. Not only different but opposite.

Darwin admitted that the dovecote pigeon has not changed in thousands of years. It is demonstrated over and over again that the lizard on the lowest formation of rocks was just as complete as the lizard now. It is shown that the ganoid, the first fish, was just as complete as the sturgeon, another name for the same fish now. Darwin’92s entire system is a guess, and Huxley, and John Stuart Mill, and Tyndall, and especially Professor Haeckel, come to help him in the guess, and guess about the brute, and guess about man, and guess about worlds, but as to having one solid foot of ground to stand on, they never have had it and never will have it. I put in opposition to these evolutionist theories the inward consciousness that we have no consanguinity with the dog that fawns at our feet, or the spider that crawls on the wall, or the fish that flops in the frying pan, or the crow that swoops on the field carcass, or the swine that wallows in the mire. Everybody sees the outrage it would be to put aside the Bible record that Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah, for the record that the microscopic animalcule begat the tadpole, and the tadpole begat the pollywog, and the pollywog begat the serpent, and the serpent begat the quadruped, and the quadruped begat the baboon, and the baboon begat man.

The evolutionists tell us that the apes were originally fond of climbing the trees, but after a while they lost their prehensile power, and, therefore, could not climb with any facility, and hence they surrendered monkeydom and set up in business as men. Failures as apes, success as men. According to the evolutionists a man is a bankrupt monkey.

I pity the person who in every nerve and muscle and bone and mental faculty and spiritual experience does not realize that he is higher in origin and has had a grander ancestry than the beasts which perish. However degraded men and women may be, and though they may have foundered on the rocks of crime and sin, and though we shudder as we pass them, nevertheless, there is something within us that tells us they belong to the same great brotherhood and sisterhood of our race, and our sympathies are aroused in regard to them. But gazing upon the swiftest gazelle, or upon the tropical bird of most flamboyant wing, or upon the curve of grandest courser’92s neck, we feel there is no consanguinity. It is not that we are stronger than they, for the lion with one stroke of his paw could put us into the dust. It is not that we have better eyesight, for the eagle can descry a mole a mile away. It is not that we are fleeter of foot, for a roebuck in a flash is out of sight, just seeming to touch the earth as he goes. Many of the animal creation surpassing us in fleetness of foot and in keenness of nostril and in strength of limb; but notwithstanding all that, there is something within us that tells us we are of celestial pedigree. Not of the mollusk, not of the rizipod, not of the primal germ, but of the living and omnipotent God. Lineage of the skies. Genealogy of heaven.

I tell you plainly that if your father was a muskrat and your mother an opossum, and your great aunt a kangaroo, and the toads and the snapping turtles were your illustrious predecessors, my father was God. I know it. I feel it. It thrills through me with an emphasis and an ecstasy which all your arguments drawn from anthropology and biology and zoology and morology and paleontology and all the other ologies can never shake.

Evolution is one great mystery. It hatches out fifty mysteries and the fifty hatch out a thousand, and the thousand hatch out a million. Why, my brother, not admit the one great mystery of God and have that settle all the other mysteries? I can more easily appreciate the fact that God by one stroke of his omnipotence could make man than I could realize how out of five million of ages he could have evolved one, putting on a little here and a little there. It would have been just as great a miracle for God to have turned an orangoutang into a man as to make a man out and out’97the one job just as big as the other.

It seems to me we had better let God have a little place in our world somewhere. It seems to me if we cannot have him make all creatures we had better have him make two or three. There ought to be some place where he could stay without interfering with the evolutionists. ’93No,’94 says Darwin, and so for years he is trying to raise fan-tailed pigeons and to turn these fan-tail pigeons into some other kind of pigeon, or to have them go into something that is not a pigeon’97turning them into quail, or barnyard fowl or brown thresher. But pigeon it is. And others have tried with the ox and the dog and the horse, but they stayed in their species. If they attempt to cross over it is a hybrid, and a hybrid is always sterile and goes into extinction. There has been only one successful attempt to pass over from speechless animal to the articulation of man, and that was the attempt which Balaam witnessed in the beast that he rode; but an angel of the Lord, with drawn sword, soon stopped that long-eared evolutionist.

’93But,’94 says some one, ’93if we cannot have God make a man let us have him make a horse.’94 ’93Oh, no!’94 says Huxley, in his great lectures in New York years ago. No; he does not want any God around the premises. God did not make the horse. The horse came of the pliohippus, and the pliohippus came from the protohippus, and the protohippus came from the miohippus, and the miohippus came from the meshohippus, and the meshohippus came from the orohippus, and so away back, all the living creatures, we trace it in a line until we get to the moneron, and no evidence of divine intermeddling with the creation until you get to the moneron, and that, Huxley says, is of so low a form of life that the probability is it just made itself or was the result of spontaneous generation. What a narrow escape from the necessity of having a God.

As near as I can tell, these evolutionists seem to think that God at the start had not made up his mind as to exactly what he would make, and having made up his mind partially, he has been changing it all through the ages. I believe that God made the world as he wanted to have it, and that the happiness of all the species will depend upon their staying in the species where they were created.

Once upon a time, there was in a natural amphitheatre of the forest a convention of animals, and a gorilla from Western Africa came in with his club and pounded ’93Order!’94 Then he sat down in a chair of twisted forest root. The delegation of birds came in and took their position in the galleries of the hills and the tree tops. And a delegation of reptiles came in, and they took their position in the pit of the valley. And the tiers of rocks were occupied by the delegation of intermediate animals, and there was a great aquarium and a canal leading into it through which came the monsters of the deep to join the great convention. And on one table of rock there were four or five primal germs under a glass case, and in a cup on another table of rock there was a quantity of protoplasm. Then this gorilla of the African forest with his club pounded again: ’93Order! order!’94 and then he cried out: ’93Oh, you great throng of beasts and birds and reptiles and insects, I have called you together to propose that we move up into the human race and be beasts no longer; too long already have we been hunted and caged and harnessed; we shall stand it no longer.’94 At that speech the whole convention broke out into roars of enthusiasm like as though there were many menageries being fed by their keepers, and it did seem as if the whole convention would march right up and take possession of the earth and the human race. But an old lion arose, his mane white with many years, and he uttered his voice, and when that old lion uttered his voice all the other beasts of the forest were still, and he said: ’93Peace, brothers and sisters of the forest. I think we have been placed in the spheres for which we were intended; I think our Creator knew the place that was good for us.’94 He could proceed no further, for the whole convention broke out in an uproar like the House of Commons when the Irish question comes up, or the American Congress the night of adjournment, and the reptiles hissed with indignation at the leonine Gambetta, and the frogs croaked their dissent, and the bears growled their contempt, and the panthers snarled their disgust, and the insects buzzed and buzzed with excitement, and though the gorilla of the African forest with his club pounded, ’93Order, order,’94 there was no order; and there was a thrusting out of adderine sting, and a swinging of elephantine tusk, and a stroke of beak and a swing of claw until it seemed as if the convention would be massacred.

Just at that moment, at the door of this natural amphitheatre of the forest, the curtain of the leaves lifted, and the bolts and bars of the tree branches were shoved back, and there appeared Agassiz, and Audubon, and Silliman, and Moses. And Agassiz cried out, ’93Oh, you beasts of the forests, I have studied your ancestral records and found you always have been beasts, you always will be beasts; be contented to be beasts.’94 And Audubon aimed his gun at a bald-headed eagle, which dropped from the gallery, and as it dropped struck a serpent that was winding around one of the pillars to get up higher. And Silliman threw a rock of the tertiary formation at the mammals, and Moses thundered, ’93Every beast after its kind, every bird after its kind, every fish after its kind.’94 And lo! the parliament of wild beasts was prorogued and went home to their constituents and the bat flew out into the night, and the lizard slunk under the rock, and the gorilla went back to the jungle, and a hungry wolf passing by ate up the primal germs, and a clumsy buffalo upset the protoplasm, and the lion went to his lair, and the eagle went to his eyrie, and the whale went to his palace of crystal and coral, and there was peace’97peace in the air, peace in the waters, peace in the fields. Man in his place; the beasts of the earth in their places.

But, my friends, evolution is not only infidel and atheistic and absurd; it is brutalizing in its tendencies. If there is anything in the world that will make a man bestial in his habits it is the idea that he was descended from the beast. Why, according to the idea of these evolutionists, we are only a superior kind of cattle, a sort of Alderney among other herds. To be sure, we browse on better pasture, and we have better stalls and better accommodations, but then we are only Southdowns among the great flocks of sheep. Born of a beast, to die like a beast; for the evolutionists have no idea of a future world. They say the mind is only a superior part of the body. They say our thoughts are only molecular formation. They say when the body dies, the whole nature dies. The slab of the sepulchre is not a milestone on the journey upward, but a wall shutting us into eternal nothingness. We all die alike’97the cow, the horse, the sheep, the man, the reptile. Annihilation is the heaven of the evolutionist. From such a stenchful and abhorrent doctrine turn away. Compare that idea of your origin’97an idea filled with the chatter of apes and the hiss of serpents and the croak of frogs’97to an idea in one or two stanzas which I quote from an old book of more than Demosthenic, or Homeric, or Dantesque power: ’93What is man, that thou are mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hand; thou hast put all things under his feet. All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.’94

How do you like that origin? The lion the monarch of the field, the eagle the monarch of the air, behemoth the monarch of the deep, but man monarch of all. Ah! my friends, I have to say to you that I am not so anxious to know what was my origin as to know what will be my destiny. I do not care so much where I came from as where I am going to. I am not so interested in who was my ancestor ten million years ago as I am to know where I will be ten million years from now. I am not so much interested in the preface to my cradle as I am interested in the appendix to my grave. I do not care so much about protoplasm as I do about eternasm. The ’93was’94 is overwhelmed with the ’93to be.’94 And here comes in the evolution I believe in; not natural evolution, but gracious and divine and heavenly evolution’97evolution out of sin into holiness, out of grief into gladness, out of mortality, into immortality, out of earth into heaven. That is the evolution I believe in.

Evolution from evolvere, unrolling! Unrolling of attributes, unrolling of rewards, unrolling of experience, unrolling of angelic companionship, unrolling of divine glory, unrolling of providential obscurities, unrolling of doxologies, unrolling of rainbow to canopy the throne, unrolling of a new heaven and a new earth in which will dwell righteousness. Oh, the thought overwhelms me! I have not the physical endurance to consider it.

Monarchs on earth of all lower orders of creation, and then lifted to be hierarchs in heaven. Masterpiece of God’92s wisdom and goodness, our humanity; masterpiece of divine grace, our enthronement. I put one foot on Darwin’92s ’93Origin of the Species,’94 and I put the other foot on Spencer’92s ’93Biology,’94 and then holding in one hand the book of Moses I see our Genesis, and holding in the other hand the hook Revelation, I see our celestial arrival. For all wars I prescribe the Bethlehem chant of the angels. For all sepulchres I prescribe the archangel’92s trumpet. For all the earthly griefs I prescribe the hand that wipes away all tears from all eyes. Not an evolution from beast to man, but an evolution from contestant to conqueror, and from the struggle with wild beasts in the arena of the amphitheatre to a soft, high, blissful seat in the King’92s galleries.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage