Creation and Its Records

CHAPTER I.

_IN­TRO­DUC­TO­RY_

Among the rec­ol­lec­tions that are life­long, I have one as vivid as ev­er af­ter more than twen­ty-​five years have elapsed; it is of an evening lec­ture--the first of a se­ries--giv­en at South Kens­ing­ton to work­ing men. The lec­tur­er was Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley; his sub­ject, the Com­mon Lob­ster. All the ap­pa­ra­tus used was a good-​sized spec­imen of the crea­ture it­self, a penknife, and a black-​board and chalk. With such ma­te­ri­als the pro­fes­sor gave us not on­ly an ex­po­si­tion, match­less in its lu­cid­ity, of the struc­ture of the crus­tacea, but such an in­sight in­to the pur­pos­es and meth­ods of bi­olog­ical study as few could in those days have an­tic­ipat­ed. For there were as yet no Sci­ence Primers, no In­ter­na­tion­al Se­ries; and the “new bi­ol­ogy” came up­on us like the rev­ela­tion of an­oth­er world. I think that lec­ture gave me, what I might oth­er­wise nev­er have got (and what some peo­ple nev­er get), a pro­found con­vic­tion of the re­al­ity and mean­ing of facts in na­ture. That im­pres­sion I have brought to the at­tempt which this lit­tle book em­bod­ies. The facts of na­ture are God's rev­ela­tion, of the same weight, though not the same in kind, as His writ­ten Word.

At the same time, the fur­ther con­vic­tion is strong in my mind, not mere­ly of the ob­vi­ous truth that the Facts and the Writ­ing (if both gen­uine) can­not re­al­ly dif­fer, but fur­ther, that there must be, af­ter all, a true way of ex­plain­ing the Writ­ing, if on­ly it is looked for care­ful­ly--a way that will sur­mount not on­ly the dif­fi­cul­ty of the sub­ject, but al­so the im­pa­tience with which some will re­gard the at­tempt. Like so many oth­er ques­tions con­nect­ed with re­li­gion, the ques­tion of rec­on­cil­ia­tion pro­duces its dou­ble ef­fect. Peo­ple will ridicule at­tempts to solve it, but all the same they will re­turn again and again to the task of its ac­tu­al so­lu­tion.

That the lat­ter part of the propo­si­tion is true, has re­cent­ly re­ceived il­lus­tra­tion in the fact that a re­view like the _Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry_, which has so lit­tle space to spare, has found room in four suc­ces­sive num­bers[1] for ar­ti­cles by Glad­stone, Hux­ley, and H. Drum­mond, on the sub­ject of “Cre­ation and its Records.” May I make one re­mark on this in­ter­est­ing sci­ence tour­na­ment? I can un­der­stand the sci­en­tif­ic con­clu­sions Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley has giv­en us. I can al­so un­der­stand Mr. Glad­stone, be­cause he val­ues the Writ­ing as the pro­fes­sor val­ues the Facts. But one thing I can _not_ un­der­stand. Why is Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley so an­gry or so con­temp­tu­ous with peo­ple who val­ue the Bible, whole and as it stands, and want to see its ac­cu­ra­cy vin­di­cat­ed? Why are they fa­nat­ics, Sisy­phus-​labour­ers, and what not? That they are a very large group nu­mer­ical­ly, and hard­ly con­temptible in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly, is, I think, ob­vi­ous; that a fur­ther large group (who would not iden­ti­fy them­selves whol­ly with the out-​and-​out Bible de­fend­ers) feel a cer­tain amount of sym­pa­thy, is proved by the in­ter­est tak­en in the con­tro­ver­sy. Yet all “rec­on­cil­ers” are ridiculed or de­nounced--at any rate are con­temp­tu­ous­ly dis­missed. Can it be that the pro­fes­sor has for the mo­ment over­looked one very sim­ple fact?

[Foot­note 1: Novem­ber, De­cem­ber, 1885; and Jan­uary, Febru­ary, 1886.]

The great bulk of those in­ter­est­ed in the ques­tion place their whole hope for their high­er moral and spir­itu­al life in this world and the next on one cen­tral Per­son--the LORD JE­SUS CHRIST. If He is wrong, then no one can be right--there is no such thing as right: that is what they feel. It will be con­ced­ed that it is hard­ly “fa­nat­ical” to feel this. But if so, sure­ly it is not fa­nat­ical, but agree­able to the sober­est rea­son, fur­ther to hold that this (to them sa­cred) PER­SON did (and His apos­tles with Him) treat the Book of Gen­esis as a whole (and not mere­ly parts of it) as a gen­uine rev­ela­tion--or, to use the pop­ular ex­pres­sion, as the _Word of_ GOD. That be­ing so, can it be mat­ter for sur­prise or con­temp­tu­ous pity, that they should be anx­ious to vin­di­cate the Book, to be sat­is­fied that the MAS­TER was not wrong? That is the ul­ti­mate and very re­al is­sue in­volved in the ques­tion of Gen­esis.

As long as peo­ple feel _that_, they must seek the rec­on­cil­ia­tion of the two op­pos­ing ideas. If the at­tempt is made in a fool­ish or bit­ter spir­it, or with­out a can­did ap­pre­ci­ation of the facts, then the at­tempt will no doubt ex­cite just dis­plea­sure. But need it al­ways be so made?

As to the first part of my propo­si­tion that at­tempts to rec­on­cile re­li­gion and sci­ence are re­ceived with a cer­tain dis­like, it is due part­ly to the un­wis­dom with which they are some­times made. Prof. H. Drum­mond speaks of the dis­like as gen­er­al.[1]

If this is so, I, as a “rec­on­cil­er,” can on­ly ask for in­dul­gence, hop­ing that grace may be ex­tend­ed to me on the ground of hav­ing some­thing to say on the sub­ject that has not yet been con­sid­ered.

Nor, as re­gards the im­pa­tience of the pub­lic, can I ad­mit that there is on­ly fault on one side. In the first place, it will not be de­nied that some writ­ers, de­light­ed with the vast, and ap­par­ent­ly bound­less, vi­sion that the dis­cov­ery (in its mod­ern form) of Evo­lu­tion opened out to them, did in­cau­tious­ly pro­ceed, while sur­vey­ing their new king­dom, to as­sert for it bounds that stretch be­yond its le­git­imate scope.

[Foot­note 1: In the In­tro­duc­tion to his well-​known book, “Nat­ural Law in the Spir­itu­al World.”]

Re­li­gion­ists, on the oth­er hand, imag­in­ing, how­ev­er wrong­ly, that the er­ro­neous ex­ten­sion was part of the true sci­en­tif­ic doc­trine, at­tacked the whole with­out dis­crim­ina­tion.

While such a mis­ap­pre­hen­sion ex­ist­ed, it was in­evitable that writ­ers anx­ious alike for the dig­ni­ty of sci­ence and the main­te­nance of re­li­gion, should step in to point out the er­ror, and ef­fect a rec­on­cil­ia­tion of claims which re­al­ly were nev­er in con­flict.

It is hard­ly the fault of “re­li­gion­ists” that it was at first sup­posed that one _could_ not hold the doc­trine of evo­lu­tion with­out deny­ing a “spe­cial” cre­ation and a de­sign­ing Prov­idence. It was on this very nat­ural sup­po­si­tion that the first lead­ing at­tack--at­tribut­ed to the Bish­op of Ox­ford--pro­ceed­ed. And the writ­er fell in­to the equal­ly nat­ural mis­take of tak­ing ad­van­tage of the un­com­plet­ed and un­proved state of the the­ory at the time, to at­tack the the­ory it­self, in­stead of keep­ing to the safer ground, name­ly, that what­ev­er might ul­ti­mate­ly be the con­clu­sion of evo­lu­tion­ists, it was quite cer­tain that no the­ory of evo­lu­tion that at all co­in­cid­ed with the known facts, of­fered any ground for ar­gu­ment against the ex­is­tence of an In­tel­li­gent Law­giv­er and First Cause of all; nor did it tend in the slight­est to show that no such thing as cre­ative de­sign and prov­idence ex­ist­ed in the course of na­ture.

What the dis­cov­ery of evo­lu­tion re­al­ly did, was to ne­ces­si­tate a re­vi­sion of the hith­er­to pop­ular­ly ac­cept­ed and gen­er­al­ly as­sumed and un­ques­tioned no­tion of what _cre­ation_ was. And it has long ap­peared to me, that while now the most thor­ough­go­ing ad­vo­cates of evo­lu­tion gen­er­al­ly ad­mit that their just­ly cher­ished doc­trine has noth­ing to say to the ex­is­tence of a Cre­ator, or to the pos­si­bil­ity of de­sign--which may be ac­cept­ed or de­nied on oth­er grounds--the writ­ers on the side of Chris­tian­ity have not suf­fi­cient­ly rec­og­nized the change which their views ought to un­der­go.

As long as this is the case, there will con­tin­ue to be a cer­tain “con­flict,” not in­deed be­tween sci­ence and re­li­gion, but of the kind which has been vivid­ly de­pict­ed by the late Dr. Drap­er.

It can scarce­ly have es­caped the no­tice of the most or­di­nary read­er that, in the course of that in­ter­est­ing work, the au­thor has very lit­tle to say about re­li­gion--at any rate about re­li­gion in any prop­er sense of the term. The con­flict was be­tween a Church which had a zeal for God with­out knowl­edge, and the progress of sci­en­tif­ic thought; it was al­so a con­flict be­tween dis­cov­ered facts, and facts which ex­ist­ed, not in the Bible, but in a par­tic­ular in­ter­pre­ta­tion, how­ev­er gen­er­al­ly re­ceived, of it.

The present work is there­fore ad­dressed pri­mar­ily to Chris­tian be­liev­ers who still re­main per­plexed as to what they ought to be­lieve; and its aim is to pre­vent, if may be, an un­rea­son­able alarm at, and a use­less op­po­si­tion to, the con­clu­sions of mod­ern sci­ence; while, at the same time, it tells them in sim­ple lan­guage how far those con­clu­sions re­al­ly go, and how very ground­less is the fear that they will ev­er sub­vert a true faith that, an­tecedent to the most won­der­ful chain of cau­sa­tion and me­thod­ical work­ing which sci­ence can es­tab­lish, there is still a Di­vine De­sign­er--One who up­holds all things “by the word of His pow­er.”

The doc­trine of evo­lu­tion is still the _ig­no­tum_ to a great many, and it is there­fore, ac­cord­ing to the time-​hon­oured proverb, tak­en _pro mag­nifi­co_, as some­thing ter­ri­bly ad­verse to the faith. Nor can it be fair­ly de­nied, as I be­fore re­marked, that some of the stu­dents of the the­ory have be­come so en­am­oured of it, so car­ried away by the in­tox­ica­tion of the gi­gan­tic spec­ula­tion it opens out to the imag­ina­tion, that they have suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion to car­ry spec­ula­tion be­yond what the proof war­rants, and thus lend some aid to the de­plorable con­fu­sion, which would blend in one, what is le­git­imate in­fer­ence and what is un­proved hy­poth­esis or mere sup­po­si­tion.

It on­ly re­mains to say that the ba­sis of this lit­tle book is a short course of lec­tures in which I en­deav­oured to dis­arm the prej­udices of an ed­ucat­ed but not sci­en­tif­ical­ly crit­ical au­di­ence, by sim­ply stat­ing how far the the­ory of cos­mi­cal evo­lu­tion had been re­al­ly proved--proved, that is, to the ex­tent of that rea­son­able cer­tain­ty which sat­is­fies the or­di­nary “pru­dent man” in af­fairs of weight and im­por­tance. I have tried to show that evo­lu­tion, apart from fan­ci­ful and spec­ula­tive ex­ten­sions of it, al­lows, if it does not di­rect­ly es­tab­lish, that the op­er­ation of na­ture is not a chance or un­con­trolled pro­ce­dure, but one that sug­gests a dis­tinct set of lines, and an or­der­ly obe­di­ence to pre-​con­ceived law, in­tel­li­gent­ly and benef­icent­ly (in the end) de­signed.

There are ob­vi­ous­ly two main points which the Chris­tian read­er re­quires to have made clear. The first is that, the mod­ern the­ory of evo­lu­tion be­ing ad­mit­ted, the con­sti­tu­tion of mat­ter in the uni­verse and the prin­ci­ples of de­vel­op­ment in or­gan­ic life, which that the­ory es­tab­lish­es, not on­ly do not ex­clude, but pos­itive­ly de­mand, the con­cep­tion of a Di­vine ar­ti­fi­cer and di­rec­tor. The sec­ond point, which is per­haps of still greater weight with the be­liev­er, is that where rev­ela­tion (which is his ul­ti­mate stan­dard of ap­peal) has touched up­on the sub­ject of cre­ation, its state­ments are not mere­ly a lit­er­ary fan­cy, an imag­inary cos­mogony, false in its facts though en­shrin­ing Di­vine truth, but are as a whole per­fect­ly true.

What­ev­er nov­el­ty there may be, is to be found in the treat­ment of the sec­ond sub­ject. The first por­tion of the work is on­ly a brief and pop­ular state­ment of facts, quite un­nec­es­sary to the sci­en­tif­ic read­er but prob­ably very nec­es­sary to the large body of Church­men, who have not stud­ied sci­ence, but are quite able to ap­pre­ci­ate sci­en­tif­ic fact and its bear­ings when placed be­fore them in an un­tech­ni­cal form, and di­vest­ed of need­less de­tails and sub­or­di­nate ques­tions.

But it is around the sup­posed dec­la­ra­tions of Scrip­ture on the sub­ject of cre­ation that the re­al “con­flict” has cen­tred. Let us look the mat­ter quite fair­ly in the face. We ac­cept the con­clu­sion that (let us say) the horse was de­vel­oped and grad­ual­ly per­fect­ed or ad­vanced to his present form and char­ac­ter­is­tics, by a num­ber of stages, and that it took a very long time to ef­fect this re­sult. Now, if there is any­where a state­ment in Holy Writ that (_a_) a horse was _per saltum_ called in­to ex­is­tence in a dis­tinc­tive and com­plete form, by a spe­cial cre­ative _fi­at_, and that (_b_) this hap­pened not grad­ual­ly, but in a lim­it­ed and spec­ified mo­ment of time, then I will at once ad­mit that the record (as­sum­ing that its mean­ing is not to be mis­tak­en) is not prov­ably right, if it is not clear­ly wrong; and ac­cept the con­se­quences, mo­men­tous as they would be. If, in the same way, the Record as­serts that man, or at least man the di­rect pro­gen­itor of the Semitic race,[1] was a dis­tinct and spe­cial cre­ation, his bod­ily frame hav­ing some not com­plete­ly ex­plained de­vel­op­men­tal con­nec­tion with the an­imal cre­ation, but his high­er na­ture be­ing im­part­ed as a spe­cial and unique cre­ative en­dow­ment out of the line of phys­ical de­vel­op­ment al­to­geth­er, then I shall ac­cept the Record, be­cause the proved facts of sci­ence have noth­ing to say against it, what­ev­er Drs. Buch­ner, Vogt, Häck­el, and oth­ers may as­sert to the con­trary.

[Foot­note 1: With whose his­to­ry, as lead­ing up to the ad­vent of the Saviour in the line of David, the Bible is main­ly con­cerned.]

In the first of my two in­stances, the pop­ular idea has long been that the sa­cred record _does_ say some­thing about a di­rect and sep­arate cre­ative act; and this idea has been the ori­gin and ground of all the sup­posed con­flict be­tween sci­ence and “re­li­gion.” As long as this idea con­tin­ues, it can hard­ly be said that a book ad­dressed to the clear­ing up of the sub­ject is un­nec­es­sary or to be re­ject­ed _per se_.

As to the method in which this sub­ject will be dealt with, I shall main­tain that the Scrip­ture does _not_ say any­thing about the horse, or the whale, or the ox, or any oth­er an­imal, be­ing sep­arate­ly or di­rect­ly cre­at­ed. And the view thus tak­en of the Record I have not met with be­fore. This it is nec­es­sary to state, not be­cause the fact would lend any val­ue to the in­ter­pre­ta­tion--rather the con­trary; but be­cause it jus­ti­fies me in sub­mit­ting what, if new, may be in­trin­si­cal­ly im­por­tant, to the judg­ment of the Church; and it al­so pro­tects me from the of­fence of pla­gia­rism, how­ev­er un­wit­ting. If oth­ers have thought out the same ren­der­ing of the Gen­esis his­to­ry, so much the bet­ter for my case; but what is here set down oc­curred to me quite in­de­pen­dent­ly.

A study of the re­al mean­ing of the Record, in the light of what may be fair­ly re­gard­ed as proved facts, can­not be with­out its use to the Chris­tian. If it be true that a cer­tain amount of in­for­ma­tion on the sub­ject of cre­ation is con­tained in rev­ela­tion, it must have been so con­tained for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose--a pur­pose to be at­tained at some stage or oth­er of the his­to­ry of mankind. It is pos­si­ble al­so that the study will bring to light a prob­able, or at any rate a pos­si­ble, ex­pla­na­tion of some of those ap­par­ent (if they are not re­al) “dead-​locks” which oc­cur in pur­su­ing the course of life his­to­ry on the earth.

Such con­sid­er­ations will nat­ural­ly have more weight with the Chris­tian be­liev­er than with those who re­ject the faith. But at least the ad­van­tage of them re­mains with the be­liev­er, till the con­trary is shown. The ex­treme evo­lu­tion­ist may cling to the be­lief that at some fu­ture time he will be able to ac­count for the en­trance of LIFE in­to the world's his­to­ry, that he will be able to ex­plain the con­nec­tion of MIND with MAT­TER; or he may hope that the steril­ity of cer­tain hy­brid forms will one day be ex­plained away, and so on. But till these things _are_ got over, the be­liev­er can­not be re­proached as hold­ing an un­rea­son­able be­lief when his creed main­tains that Life is a gift and pre­rog­ative of a great Au­thor of Life; that Mind is the re­sult of a spir­itu­al en­vi­ron­ment which is a true, though phys­ical­ly in­tan­gi­ble, part of na­ture; and that the ab­sence of any proof that vari­ation and de­vel­op­ment cross cer­tain--per­haps not very clear­ly as­cer­tained, but in­du­bitably ex­ist­ing--lines, points to the de­signed fix­ing of cer­tain types, and the re­stric­tion of de­vel­op­men­tal cre­ation to run­ning in cer­tain lines of cau­sa­tion up to those types, and not oth­er­wise.

It can nev­er be un­rea­son­able to be­lieve any­thing that is in ex­act ac­cor­dance with facts as as­cer­tained at any giv­en mo­ment of time--un­less, in­deed, the fact is in­di­cat­ed by oth­er con­sid­er­ations as be­ing one like­ly to dis­ap­pear from the cat­ego­ry of fact al­to­geth­er.[1]

Enough has thus, I hope, ap­peared, to make the ap­pear­ance of this lit­tle work, at least ex­cus­able; what more may be nec­es­sary to es­tab­lish its claim to be read must de­pend on what it con­tains.

I have on­ly to add that I can make no pre­ten­sion to be a teach­er of sci­ence. I trust that there is no ma­te­ri­al er­ror of state­ment; if there is, I shall be the first to re­tract and cor­rect it. I am quite con­fi­dent that no cor­rec­tion that may be need­ed in de­tail will se­ri­ous­ly af­fect the gen­er­al ar­gu­ment.

[Foot­note 1: At present it is an as­cer­tained fact that cer­tain chem­ical sub­stances are el­ements in­ca­pable of fur­ther res­olu­tion. But there are not want­ing in­di­ca­tions which would make it a mat­ter of no sur­prise at all, if we were to learn to-​mor­row that the so-​called el­ement had been re­solved. Such a fact is an ex­am­ple of what is stat­ed in the text; and a be­lief based on the ab­so­lute and un­change­able sta­bil­ity of such a fact would not be unas­sail­able. But none of the above stat­ed in­stances of “dead-​lock” in evo­lu­tion are with­in “mea­sur­able dis­tance” of be­ing re­solved.]