The Church, the Schools and Evolution Part 9

But the theory of evolution fosters a doctrine of the "immanence of G.o.d"

which is nothing but a modern form of pantheism. For example, Prof. Josiah Royce, of Harvard, has said:

G.o.d is the spirit animating nature, the universal force which takes the myriad forms, heat, light, gravitation, electricity, and the like.

And Prof. George B. Foster said:

G.o.d is a symbol to designate the universe in its ideal achieving capacity.

This is pantheism, pure and simple, for G.o.d and His created universe are not distinguished from each other. And this blots out the distinction between the natural and the spiritual realms.

Realizing, therefore, that no matter how perfect a course of reasoning may be or how inevitable the conclusions resulting it all falls like a house of cards if the premise is false, it becomes necessary to determine whether pantheism is false or true, in order that we may know whether we started with a valid premise.

Is pantheism true?

One thing we know is true. The Bible clearly and sharply distinguishes between G.o.d and His creation. No one who reads the Bible can dissent from that statement. And pantheism absolutely denies that Bible distinction.

It therefore immediately resolves itself into a question as to whether the Bible is true.

This brings us straight back to Christ's formula--"If any man wills to do, he shall know." He who accepts the challenge of this formula will come to know, beyond all possibility of disproof, that neither pantheism, evolution, nor any other doctrine that denies or casts doubt on the infallibility of the Bible is true. He will know it because it is supernaturally verified to him in answer to his faith.

This formula is the divine challenge to every form of unbelief in an inerrant Bible. There never has been an hour since Pentecost when the aggressive hurling of this challenge at defiant and destructive unbelief was more needed. And the whole Christian Church, backed by the Word of G.o.d, is hurling this challenge back into the teeth of the whole evolutionary camp today.

Either be fair enough, be scientific enough, be honest enough, challenges the Church, to act upon Christ's formula and gain for yourselves that supernaturally verified knowledge which will make further faith in the evolutionary theory impossible, or else do not a.s.sume to p.r.o.nounce any further on those truths of which you know nothing because you have been unwilling to take the means to find out what they are. Go and join the ranks of the other unbelievers and Bible-rejectors, taking your doubt-born theories with you as a reinforcement to their warfare against the Bible, and then the Church can fight you in the open and drive you to defeat with the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of G.o.d. If you are determined to destroy faith in the inerrancy of the Bible, at least be fair enough to come out from under the cover of "Christian education," and stop a.s.suming to interpret in the light of evolution--a light that is darkness--those sublime doctrines which are at once the foundation and the message of the Church. Get out of the Christian schools, which were founded to strengthen, not to destroy, the faith of young people from Christian homes, and give place to those who believe the Book. Increasing hosts of Christian parents are too heart-broken over the invasion of their own homes by this destroying wolf in sheep's clothing to tolerate this situation much longer.

They are asking, in the words of a Chicago newspaper editorial concerning the destructive teachings of Prof. George B. Foster, in the Chicago University Divinity School:

Is there no place to a.s.sail Christianity but a divinity school? Is there no one to write infidel books except the professors of Christian theology? Is a theological seminary an appropriate place for a general ma.s.sacre of Christian doctrine?

And then the sentiment that follows in the next sentence is shared increasingly by mult.i.tudes in the Church in proportion as these destroyers become increasingly aggressive in their work of destruction. The editor continues:

Mr. Mangasarian delivers infidel lectures every Sunday in Orchestra Hall and no one is shocked, but when the professed defenders of Christianity jump on it and a.s.sa.s.sinate it, the public--even the agnostic public, cannot but despise them.

Either be scientific enough, cry believers to the evolutionists, to accept the challenge of Christ's formula with all its implications, or be honest enough to cease destroying the faith in an inerrant Bible you have sworn to defend but refuse to accept!

The Church is also hurling the challenge of Christ's formula at every other form of aggressive unbelief. No unbeliever, from destructive Higher Critic to agnostic and infidel, has the shadow of a right to make contrary p.r.o.nouncement on the inerrancy and infallible authority of the Bible, for he has refused to put Christ's word to the test,--his unbelief proves it,--and he is therefore utterly incapacitated for pa.s.sing any judgment whatever on that Book which unfolds its meaning to faith alone.

And as to the controversy between the Church and the Schools, the evolutionists must quit either evolution or the Christian schools, or the controversy can in no way be cured. For how can faith in an inerrant Bible and unbelief in its inerrancy abide in harmony in the same house? In the very nature of things, two groups who hold such absolutely antagonistic positions must either part company or continue the controversy born of the antagonism. The true Church always has believed, and always will believe, in an inerrant Word of G.o.d, and she cannot harbor within her ranks any group of people, no matter by what name they go, who do not take their stand without equivocation on that same ground.

If reason for this intolerance is asked, it will appear in the light of some questions asked by Dr. Joseph Parker. These questions are:

If the Bible is wrong in history, what guarantee is there that it is right in morals?

If the Bible is not a reliable guide in facts, how do we know that it is a trustworthy guide in doctrine?

However he may have arrived at his conclusions, it is extremely significant, in the light of these questions, that Dr. E. D. Burton, being willing to admit that the Bible is

not infallible in history or in matters of science,

has also concluded that it is

not wholly consistent and therefore not ultimately and as a whole inerrant in the field of morals and religion.

What reason more can the Church want to justify her for intolerance of a theory that will do this to a man's faith? Is it not correct reasoning to conclude that if one man suffers such a collapse of faith after accepting evolution, others are likely to suffer the same thing? And when the Church observes this collapse taking place in every quarter, and then discovers that back of it lies the theory of evolution, is she not justified for being intolerant of that thing which is gnawing at the vitals of her faith?

What can she say else than that the teachers of evolution, at least in the Christian schools, must either give up evolution and come back to faith in an infallible Bible, or part company with the Church?

It may be that one reason why the evolutionists are so loth to get out of company they do not belong in is because they fear that thereby they may lose their coveted reputation for scholars.h.i.+p. Prof. Howard W. Kellogg, formerly of Occidental College, hints as much when he says:

Science has again and again set aside as untrustworthy the so-called discoveries of evolution, has compelled the great German evolutionist, Haeckel, to confess that his drawings of missing links were from imagination rather than from objects found, has driven him from his university chair, and has compelled him to admit that "Most modern investigators of science have come to the conclusion that the doctrine of evolution, and particularly of Darwinism, is in error and cannot be maintained,"--and yet in spite of such admissions from men recognized as authorities in their respective lines, the doctrine of evolution appears to rule as absolutely in the educational world as if it were not a moribund hypothesis, already discarded by many, and to be discarded by others when scientific evidence rather than reputation for scholars.h.i.+p is allowed the deciding voice.

But whatever the actuating motive may be that has kept the evolutionists from giving up their unscholarly and unscientific theory, true believers in the Word long to see them do what Henry Drummond, that brilliant scientist, did before he died. On his deathbed he said to Sir William Dawson, as reported in this country in the writer's hearing by Dr. John Robertson directly from the lips of Dawson:

I am going away back to the Book to believe it and receive it as I did at the first. I can live no longer on uncertainties.

I am going back to the faith of the Word of G.o.d.

When both the Church and the Schools consistently and sincerely take this att.i.tude toward the Bible, the controversy will be ended in the one way in which the Church longs to see it end.