CONCLUSIONS.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Phelips, Vivian
These, then, are the difficulties created by the doctrine of Evolution. They are difficulties which appear completely to impugn the very nature of God, the veracity of the Bible, and the dogmas of sin and its atonement. We have already seen, by our study of Bible criticism and comparative mythology, how grave are the grounds for distrusting the Faith, and Evolution seems to be just the finishing stroke that was required for confirming our suspicions. We must now see whether there are any other arguments for belief of sufficient weight to warrant us in over-stepping the boundaries of reason by an act of faith.
Source notes
1 Quoted from Darwin’s Descent of Man.
2 “The preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations I call natural selection” (Darwin, Origin of Species, ed. 1860, iv.).
3 Darwin, Varieties of Animals and Plants, xx., 178.
4 Concluding remarks in Darwin’s Descent of Man.
5Ibid.
6 See his book containing the aforesaid lectures, and called God’s Image in Man and its Defacement in the Light of Modern Denials. (Hodder and Stoughton; 1905.)
7 Lent by Mr. Reginald Blunt to the Chelsea Public Library.
8 See Professor Huxley’s essays, “The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature” and “Mr. Gladstone and Genesis,” appearing in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1885, and February, 1886, respectively, and also in the collection of Huxley’s essays entitled Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions.
9 Dr. Torrey informed a huge audience in the Albert Hall recently that he had given up the theory of Evolution for scientific reasons. “People speak of the missing link; why, they are all missing!” cried Dr. Torrey. Now, this is nothing more nor less than an untruth, and Dr. Torrey must know that it is, if he has studied Evolution, as he assures us that he has. Here is an example of the way Christians are misinformed by their spiritual teachers on the subject of Evolution. But what can you expect of an evangelist who thinks that he is serving God’s cause by slandering the dead, as he did in the case of Colonel Ingersoll and Thomas Paine?
10 See Mr. W. H. Mallock’s Religion as a Credible Doctrine, p. 177.
11Origin of Species, p. 65.
12 From The Story of Creation, by Edward Clodd. Chapter on “The Origin of Species,” p. 95 of the cheap edition.
13The Nineteenth Century, February, 1888, pp. 162, 163.
14 Pp. 519–20.
15Theism, by the Rev. Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of Moral Philosophy, Divinity, etc., being the Baird Lectures for 1877.
16 On p. 39 of his own work, Anti-Nunquam.
17The Light of Asia, Book the First.
18 Quoted from Huxley’s Lectures on Evolution.
19 Quoted from Huxley’s Lectures on Evolution.
20Controverted Questions, pp. 100, 102, 103, 104.
21 In Lectures on Evolution.
22 Quoted from “The Interpreters of Genesis,” in the essays on Controverted Questions, p. 91.
23 “Mr. Gladstone and Genesis,” pp. 112–3 of Controverted Questions.
24The Descent of Man, p. 10.
25The Nature of Man, by Metchnikoff, p. 41.
26The Descent of Man, p. 10.
27The Nature of Man, p. 42.
28Man’s Place in Nature, p. 126.
29Ibid, p. 127.
30The Nature of Man, p. 42.
31Man’s Place in Nature, p. 111.
32Ibid, p. 139.
33Ibid, p. 102, note.
34 Pp. 49–54. At the late International Congress on Tuberculosis, Professor Behring paid the highest tribute to Metchnikoff’s labours on phagocytosis. Strange indeed are the instruments chosen by God for conferring His benefits on mankind; for the author of The Nature of Man denies His existence!
35 Described in the Lancet, January 18th, 1902.
36The Nature of Man, pp. 45–48.
37The Descent of Man, vol. i., p. 14. According to the latest authorities, however, the human ovum (when mature) differs in many respects from other (especially non-mammal) ova.
38 See the “Family Tree” of Life in the Appendix.
39 “It is,” says Professor Huxley (in Man’s Place in Nature, 1863, p. 67, and quoted by Darwin in his Descent of Man, p. 14), “quite in the later steps of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape, while the latter departs as much from the dog in its developments as the man does. Startling as this last assertion may appear to be, it is demonstrably true.”