A THEORY THAT DETHRUNES GUL!
By H. F. De Ath, London Correspondent
#813 8 OT long ago W. J. Brown, General
Secretary of the British Civil Servants
Clerical Association, gave a very remark-
able and significant broadcast to B.B.C.
Home Service listeners, on the origin and
development of Nazism and like move-
ments in Europe.
These sinister modern movements, he
told us boldly, grew out of the idea of a
“mechanistic universe’ —a universe gov-
erned by what men call natural law, which
is a blind force based on the survival of
the fittest.
Of course, this idea, as Mr. Brown
pointed out, is by no means new. On the
contrary, it is as old as the hills, and 1s es-
sentially pagan. But Charles Darwin, by
the publication of his book, “The Origin
of Species by Means of Natural Selection,”
in 1859, not only revived this ancient
theory of the universe, but also laid the
foundation of the modern and so-called
scientific theory of evolution, so uni-
versally held today.
To the ordinary mind, the reasoning of
Darwin and his contemporary exponent of
the hypothesis of natural selection, Alfred
Russell Wallace, is so tortuous and in-
volved as to leave one in a perfect maze
of scientific jargon and human speculation.
So the British Encyclopaedia has tried to
put the theory more simply, as it relates
to man and his ancestry. But even this
attempt leaves something to be desired;
so we have summarized the matter as
follows:
The fact that man has a backbone, a
brain and nervous system, a heart and
blood vessels, digestive and other systems
of organs almost identical with those of
animals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, shows
that man, with all these, sprang from the
same common ancestors, who were proba-
bly half fish and half animal.
That, in a nutshell, is the theory. Such
a conclusion from such a premise is totally
unwarranted; the theory is fantastic, and
the reasoning on which it is based specious
and unsound. We positively reject the
conclusion that because man 1s physiologi-
cally and substantially similar to the lower
animals he and thev must have had the
same common ancestors.
That it does prove that both animals
and man had the same common Creator 1x
a far more logical and consistent con-
clusion, which we heartily endorse.
AY zz.
rrs ANY
¥ Bewildered, this Ukrainian woman stands
wn front of her home, which was sacrificed to the
god of war. Such are the tragic results when
men forget God and teach that religion is only
an opiate for the tgnorand.
Page SIX
After all, evolution 1s but a theory, and
neither Darwin nor Wallace claimed any
more for it. Succeeding generations, how-
ever, have presumptuously exalted it into
a ‘proven fact,” which it certainly is not.
Let us glance briefly at the Victorian
age in which this astounding theory took
root. It was essentially a religious age.
The Christian religion was far more firmly
believed then than it 1s today. That re-
ligion, in common with Judaism, has al-
ways stood solidly for a universe created
and upheld by an all-wise, all-powerful
Creator, who was at the same time operat-
ing with the universal Father of all man-
kind.
So when the theory of evolution was
launched upon them, in its new “scientific”
dress, many able Victorian stalwarts of the
Christian religion opposed it stoutly, both
here and in America. They were not slow
to see that it struck at the very root of the
Christian faith and teaching. Men like
W. E. Gladstone, the grand old man of
that age, were severely criticized for re-
fusing outright to accept the so-called
“findings of science.” Of him Lord Morley
declared, “He locked himself up in the
citadel of tradition.” If John Morley had
said that William Gladstone had locked
himself up in the citadel of truth, he would
have been nearer the mark.
Today there are scientists of the highest
repute who reject, lock, stock, and barrel,
the theory of man’s origin, as held by
evolutionists. They are for the most part
Christian men who are jealous for the
faith, as well as eminent scientists. These
are bravely carrying on the battle so nobly
waged by Gladstone in England, and
William Jennings Bryan, the able Ameri-
can, in the United States. All praise to
such men who see clearly the implications
of this impious theory.
The German people swallowed the 1dea
most greedily, and have since carried it to
its logical conclusion. Their doctrine that
“might is right” is the natural outcome of
the belief that man is but a transformed
ape who has fought his bloody way upward
by striking down weaker opponents that
lav across his path to power and dominion.
Mr. Brown courageously admitted in
his broadcast that this ignoble theory was
a root cause of the present degenerate
state of our war-torn world, and he urged
that we get back to the primitive faith in
God, in the righteousness of His law, and
in the gospel of Jesus, His Son, as found be-
tween the lids of the Bible.
One of the greatest tragedies of the age
has been the supine acquiescence of or-
ganized religion to the evolutionary theo-
ries of Darwin and Wallace. That this
fatal surrender to a pagan theory has
lamentably weakened the churches goes
without saying. It was, in the very nature
of things, bound to do so. If man has
fought his own way up from the primeval
slime, through reptile, fish, animal, and
ape, to his present status, what becomes
of the fall of man from primeval perfection
in the beginning? If there was no fall, but
only a steady evolutionary process of de-
velopment, based on the survival of the
fittest, what need is there of the gospel of
regeneration as taught by Christ and His
apostles? If there is no law but that of the
jungle, what becomes of the Ten Com-
mandments as the standard of human
(Continued on page 18)
The WATCHMAN MAGAZINE