By

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYANII

Chicago

THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORTAGE ASS'N

826 North La Salle Street

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THIRD EDITIONPrice 25 cents

An Address delivered at theMoody Bible Institute of Chicago

The Bible and ItsEnemies

Copyright, 1921, by

THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORTAGEASSOCIATION OF CHlCACD

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The Bible and Its Enemies

INTRODUCTORY

I ESTEEM it a privilege, as it is a pleas­ure, to appear before an audience assem­bled under the auspices of the Moody

Bible Institute. Mr. Moody was one of thegreatest preachers whom it has been myprivilege to hear. I heard him when I wasa young man in college and I heard himafterwards. I never lost an opportunity tohear him. I have often referred to him asan illustration of how God can infuse intoman spiritual power. I have had him inmind as I have pointed out that it is onlywhen you have the measure of a man's spir­itual power that you have the measure 0'.

the man.Measure a man in units of horsepower and

he is not as strong as some of the animals;measure him in units of intellectual powerand you will soon reach his limitations; butmeasure a man in units of spiritual powerand there is no way of telling what a humanbeing can do. Mr. Moody gave us one of

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the greatest exemplifications of what a mancan do when he loves God with all his heartand with all his soul and with all his mindand with all his strength, and loves his neigh­bor as himself.

The very fact that Mr. Moody's name isattached to this institution is in itself aninspiration, for it turns our thoughts to him.In him we find what one man can do, and weknow that it was not a personal thing withhim, but that God worked through him. Hecan work through anyone who will yieldhimself up and be willing to be used.. I have taken the spring as the best illus­tration of the Christian life. The stagnantpool receives contributions from all the slop­ing ground. around and gives forth nothingin return. The pool not only becomes thecenter of disease and death, but it is the mostrepulsive thing in the world, except a lifethat is built upon that plan.

A spring, on the other hand, is the mostinspiring thing in the world, except a lifethat is like a spring. A spring just poursforth that which is refreshing and invigo­rating.

There is a very simple difference betweena spring and a pool. A spring is a springbecause it is connected with a source that ishigher than itselfJ and the measure of the

power that forces the water out is the heightof the reservoir above the spring. The quan­tity that may come from a spring is measuredby the quantity in the reservoir above, andthe size of the op~ning.

I have described Christ's mission-not itspurpose, but one of its results-by sayingthat Christ takes human beings and bringsthem into such vital, living contact with theheavenly Father that the individual be­comes the means through which the good­ness of God pours out to the world. He cantake the frailest of human beings and makethem infinite in their usefulness, conduitsthrough which He bestows blessings uponmankind. I regard Mr. Moody as a conduitthrough which the love of God poured outto a world in inexhaustible quantities. Therewas no selfishness in him to retard the flowof God's love through him.

This morning I shali talk to you on "TheBible and Its Enemies," first expressingmy gratitude to Doctor Gray for giving methis opportunity. I am so much interestedin this work that I do not need any thanks.On "the contrary, I thank people if they arepatient enough to listen to me while I callattention to what I regard as a real menace,not only to the church, but to civilizationas well.

5IntroductoryThe Bible and Its Enemies4

OUR BIBLE

Of course, we get all we know of Christout of this Bible, and therefore I take as mysubject this morning "The Bible and ItsEnemies." In this Institute I need not dwelllong upon the Bible, and yet I venture to giveyou an argument in favor of this Bible that

I make a great many speeches on manydifferent subjects, but there is a samenessabout them all. I try to use different illus­trations, and possibly if one has not analyzedthem he might think they were quite unlike.I have used this illustration: Every part ofthe rim of a wheel is supported by a spokethat leads down to the hub; the wheel wouldbe nothing but for the hub. So with myspeeches: though they have touched the cir.;.

. cumference of the wheel at many points,there has always been a spoke Yeading downto the· hub, and that hub is the creed ofChrist. Whether I speak on politics, onsocial questions, or ort religion I find thefoundation of my speech in the philosophyof Him whq spake as never man spake­a philosophy that fits into every human needand furnishes the solution for every problemthat can vex a human heart or perplex theworld.

7Our Bible

occurred to me on the train one day. Open­ing my Bible I read a very familiar passage,and it suggested an argument that had_notoccurred to me before. It was the passagewhich describes Elijah's prayer test. Youremember that he challenged the prophetsof Baal to call down fire from their god, andhe was willing to risk all on that-the Godwho answered with fire would be worshippedas the true God.

It suggested to me that we who believein the Bible might well put to the test thosewho reject it. The Bible is either the Wordof God or it is the work of man. Nobodycan reject it except on the theory that it isthe work of man. Let us ask those whobelieve that the Bible is the work of man topu~ their theory to the test. If it is the workof man} then man can make today as gooda book as the Bible} unless man has degener­ated. I will make it stronger than that. Ifthis book is the work of man, man ought tobe able to make a better book today thanthe Bible; for if this is so, it is the workof a few men and. fhey were of a single race:they lived in a little district, not larger thana county, on the hills of Palestine. Theyhadno great libraries to consult, no universitiesto attend, no swift ships to carry them todistant centers of civilization, no telegraph

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The Bible and Its Enemies6

wires to bring the news from every cornerof the earth. Very limited means of infor­mation they had when they made this Bible(if it is a man-made book), and yet theydealt with every problem that confrontsmankind, from the creation of a world to lifebeyond the grave. They gave us a diagramof life and set up warning signs at every dan­gerous point.

This Bible has come down to_ us through­out the centuries, and what do we :find? Wefind that along every line except the one ofwhich the Bible treats there has been mar­velous progress. Take the mastery of thehuman mind over the forces of nature. Willyou suggest a ratio that will describe theadvance of t~e present day over the dayswhen the Bible was written? It has beena long while since the flapping sail whis­pered its secret of strength to man; sincethat time man has been using this same idea-the value of the wind as a motive power.We use it to turn the wheel at the well, andnow we have taken possession of the air­our ships vie with the birds.

Throughout the ages water came tum­bling down the mountainside, useless in itsfall to man, but we finally found that itsfretting and foaming was just its way of try­ing to tell us how anxious it was to serve

mankind. Then we found a machine thatwould turn the weight of falling water intoan energizing force. Now when we see awaterfall we measure it in units of horse­power.

The lightning flashed through the skies,, an object of terror until some one was boldenough to reach up and bring it down: nowwe imprison it in a tiny wire and use it tolight our homes and draw our traffic acrossthe land. Man has taken possession of thehidden forces of nature and made them to dohis will.

But the line of which the Bible treats isthe one line along which we have made noprogress. That is the Science of How toLive. We go back to the Old Testament forthe foundation of our statute laws, and wefind in the Sermon on the Mount the rulesthat govern our spiritual development.

We believe that this Bible was by inspira­tion given. Let those who say this Bookis not of divine origin put their theory tothe test. Let them gather their best, not

. from a single race or section, but from everyrace and clime. Let them take tnese selectedfew and give them the advantage of all thelibraries and all the colleges, and then letthem give the world a book to take the placeof this Bible of ours. If they cannot do it,

9Our BibleThe Bible and Its Enemies8

they must admit either that our Book comesfrom a source higher-than man, or that nine­teen centuries of civilization have so draggedus down that man cannot be expected to dotoday what man could do then.

Will they accept this challenge? No; theywill take the Bible and look through it tofind some words or phrases or sentences thatthey can construe as contradicting somewords or phrases or sentences somewhereelse.

We give this Bible to all as a bo'ok goodalways and everywhere-a light to our feetwhen we are young-a guide to our pathduring mature years, and when we come todie, it is the only book one cares to havebeside him. No matter what books haveinterested us in the full flush of life-fiction,poetry, history, science, no matter what­when the darkness comes and the cloudsgather, then if our own eyes have grown toodim to read, we pray that there may be someloved one near to bring to us consolationsfrom the Book of Books.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:He leadeth me beside the still waters. Herestoreth my soul: He leadeth me in thepaths of righteousness for His name's sake.Yea, though I walk through the valley of

THE AGNOSTIC

11The Agnostic

the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: forthou art with me; thy rod and thy staff theycomfort me." This comes to us from'theOld Testament, and from the New Testa­ment: "I go to prepare a place for you, thatwhere I am, there ye may be also."

This is the Bible that the Christian worldbelieves in. This is the Bible that for nine­teen hundred years has been increasinglythe basis of thought and of progress. I mustnow speak to you of the enemies of thisBible.

In the first place, there is the Agnostic­the one who says that he does not knowwhether there is a God or not. It is hard tobe patient with a full grown man who cannot form an opinion on this subject. It ishard to believe that a man who can formopinions on such small evidence on every­thing else cannot reach a conclusion on thissubject with evidence so overwhelming. Andyet there are some who say that they do notknow. If they find a broken bowl in anIndian mound they will estimate the civiliza­tion of the tribe that made it, but they areblind to the evidences of design written on­all the handiwork of the Creator.

The Bible and Its Enemies10

If it is hard for anyone to believe in aGod, it is still harder to explain the universe,nature and man with God left out.

When a young man, I wrote to" ColonelIngersoll and asked him for his views onGod and immortality. He was the leadinginfidel of his time, and traveled over thiscountry shaking the faith of Christians asfar as he could. I received a letter from hissecretary saying that Colonel Ingersoll wasnot at home, but enclosing an extract froma speech of Ingersoll's that gave his views.This is what I read: "I do not say that thereis no God: I simply say, I do not know. Ido not say that there is no life beyond; Isimply say, I do not know." And from thatday to this I have asked myself the question-and have never been able to answer it tomy own satisfaction-how could anyonefind pleasure in taking from a human hearta living faith and putting in its place thecold and cheerless doctrine "I do not know" !

Such a man cannot tell you much. A manmust have knowledge before he can impartit, and he must believe before he can adviseyou what to believe.

Some who call themselves agnostics arereally atheists; it is easier to pIe-ad ignorancethan to defend atheism.

Next, the Atheist. I have met only twoin all my life, and I have been meeting peoplefor a long while: two atheists constitute thewhole number that I have met. I had a let­ter from one. He said, "I am an atheist,but I think that to be happy one must be­lieve in God." Do you call that a laughablething? If you want to know how serious itis, read the words of George Romanes, whowent to college a believer in the Bible andin· God and in Christ and who was led so faraway from his belief by Evolution that hewrote a book in which he combated the ideathat there is a God. Let me read you whathe wrote in that book: it is most pathetic.

When he had reasoned himself into anatheistic position he stated his disbelief inGod, and then says: "I am not ashamed toconfess that with this virtual negation ofGod the universe to .me has lost its soul ofloveliness, and that from henceforth thewarning to 'work while it is day' will gainan intensified force from the terribly intensi­fied meaning of the words that the 'nightcomes when no man can work.' Yet whenI think-as at times I must-of the appallingcontrast between the hallowed glory of thecreed that once was mine and the lonely

13The 4theist·

THE ATHEIST

The Bible and Its Enemies12

mystery of existence as I now find it, I feelit impossible to avoid the sharpest pang ofwhich my nature is susceptible I"

He went out into a starless night. Whilehe felt that he must, in obedience to his exag­gerated confidence in his reason, deny theexistence of God, he was not ashamed to con­fess the appalling contrast between the gloryof the creed that once was his and the lonelymystery of existence as he found it.

I have met some who have been atheistsand have been brought back to God. Thebright spots of my life are the days in whichI learned that I had been a help in bringingmen back to God. I traveled from Wash­ington to Kansas City some years ago tospeak at a missionary conference. A fewweeks afterwards I received a letter from alawyer who said that he went to that con­ference an atheist, had been converted, andhad since his conversion brought seventyinto· the church.

In Florida a man and his wife were in ameeting; the wife called soon afterward totell my wife that her husband had been anatheist, that he became interested in what Isaid and in the night woke her up to say thathe had been converted, declaring that he hadbeen wrong all his life. There is more'hap­piness in bringing souls back to God than inpresidential nominations.

15The "Higher Criticn

THE "HIGHER CRITIC"

I am not worried, however, about the manwho declares that he is an atheist. He is likeone who blows out the light. I know what hehas done and I can light it again and expressmy opinion of the person who blew it out.But suppose he comes up and says, "I begyour pardon: I am afraid that light is sonear you that it will hurt your eyes." Hethen moves it back, and back, until finallyI do not see the light at all. That is the manI am afraid of.

The Higher Critic moves the light away,a little at a time, and finally takes it out ofsight. There are some honest friends ofthe Bible who count themselves HigherCritics. These are trying to make the Biblesuit the men who are criticizing it. But ahead is worth little except to find reasonsfor doing what the heart wants to do. "Outof the heart are the issues of life." The mindcan find an excuse for doing anything that awicked heart wants to do. The Higher Criticswho are trying to please such men are at­tempting the impossible task of suiting theBible to a skeptical brain. The brain that iscontrolled by a heart that has love and faithin it does not need to be converted to theBible-and no other kind can be converted to

The Bible and Its Enemies14

it. If I understand the average Higher Critic,he is an egotist who thinks himself above theBible and looks down upon it. He puts theBible upon an operating table and cuts outwhat he regards as the diseased parts. Whenhe gets through, the Bible is no longer theBook of Books; it is just a "scrap of paper."

The Higher Critic does not think of thesurvival of the Bible-it is a successful sur­gical operation if it takes out everythingthat he does not believe in. He does not actlike a physician who is trying to understandanatomy in order to apply healing remedies;he is rather like the assassin who examinesthe body to find the place where a blow willbe fatal.

You know of cases where this HigherCriticism has kept men out of the ministry,and it also leaves in the ministry men whoought to get out. The men who are tinc­tured with Higher Criticism. ought to get

. into contact with nature and nature's God;they might come back after a while and dosome good. Paul Kanamori, "the JapaneseBilly Sunday," was so misled by HigherCriticism that he gave up preaching fortwenty years. In the five years since herepudiated Higher Criticism he has brought48,000 souls to Christ. In southern Ohiowithin three months one of these men told

his Sunday-school class that Christ was abastard. He is not preaching in that churchany more. He had to go to some other placewhere he can believe that, but he will prob­ably be discreet enough there not to tellanybody.

But while few men are brazen enough tocall Christ a bastard, that is exactly thebelief of most of the Higher Critics, manyof whom teach in our colleges. I read abook recently written by a· professor in aMethodist college; when he came to mir­acles, his position was that our belief in amiracle should depend upon whether (in ourjudgment) there was reason sufficient tojustify the performance of a miracle. As theresurrection was needed to establish Christ'sauthority, he thought it was worth whileto perform that miracle, but he did not thinkthere was a sufficient reason for the virginbirth, and so he rejected it. Think of suchteaching in a Christian college! Most ofthem say they do not believe in the virginbirth, and yet the virgin birth is no more _mysterious than our own-it is simply differ­ent. A God who could create by one methodcould create by the other also. They gothrough the Bible and reject everything theydo not think reasonable. If we have to havea. bible that seems reasonable to every man

16 The Bible and Its Enemies The UHigher Critic}} 17

who reads it, we must have a good manydifferent kinds of bibles to fit the differentreasonings of different people-and of thesame people at different times. It must atlast be brought down to the mind that canleast comprehend the Infinite.

The Higher Critic usually feels little inter­est in revivals-he calls them "religiousspasms." He recognizes that a man canhave a spasm of anger and become a mur­derer, a spasm of passion and ruin a life, aspasm of dishonesty and rob a bank, or aspasm of appetite and die of deliriumtremens, but cannot understand how oneoverwhelmed by a conviction of sin and theneed of a Saviour can be born again. Theprodigal son went. away deliberately, but aspasm of repentance brought him back tohis father's house.

One does not have to understand God tobelieve that there is a God. It is not neces­sary to understand the sun or the lightningin order to believe that there is a sun, andthat there is such a thing as lightning. Wemust deal with the facts of nature. The factthat a man cannot understand the mysteriesof nature is no proof that those things arenot true. The miracles of the Bible are nomore difficult to understand than the mys­teries of nature-the fact that there is a Godexplains both.

The Higher Critic is a close ally of­another enemy of the Bible, which is theworst one of all. The greatest enemy ofthe Bible is the numerous enemy, and the lnumerous enemy today is the believer in theDarwinian hypothesis that man is a linealdescendant of the lower animals. Atheists,Agnostics and Higher Critics begin withEvolution: they build on that.

I must spend a little time on the Darwinianhypothesis. I believe this is the greatestmenace to the church today: the doctrinethat man was not created by God by aseparate act and placed here for a specialtask assigned to him, but is blood kin to thebrutes below him.

If the Bible deals with one thing only,"the Science of How to Live," and declaresthat man is God's supreme handiwork, wouldit not seem likely that the Bible would saysomething to support this hypothesis, if it is L/

true ? You cannot find a single sentence inthe Bible--not a word or a phrase or asyllable-that in the most remote way sug­gests support of the Darwinian hypothesis..

First Corinthians 15 :39 would seem todirectly contradict Darwin's. hypothesis:"All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is

18 The Bible and Its Enemies- -- The Evolutionist

THE EVOLUTIONIST

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one kind of flesh of men, another flesh ofbeasts, another of fish~s, and another ofbirds."

That may not embarrass the believer inDarwinism. He says he proves Evolution bynature, and so I meet him on his own ground,and assert that there is not one faCt in naturethat supports the Darwinian hypothesis. Allthe facts of nature are against it.

Let me give you some of the facts that areagainst it (and may I suggest to you thatyou read the book called "The Other Side ofEvolution," by Alexander Patterson. Youcan obtaIn it from the Bible Institute Colpor­tage Association). You will find that thosewho accept Darwinism do not usually presentan argument. They simply express surprise:"What! don't you believe in it? I am sur­prised !"

You say, "What do you know about it?"They answer, HI don't know very much

about it, but everybody believes in it."That argument comes from a mother

whose daughter had just returned fromWellesley.

Let me give you some facts; then you canquestion some of these people who tell youthat Darwinism is an accepted fact. In thebook referred to you will find a state­ment to the effect that we have now found

nearly one hundred species of vertebrate lifein the early rocks, and more than half ofthem live today. In not a single case is thereany material change from the time they wereburied in the rocks until today. Now, if thisis true, is it not an argument against thehypothesis that everything we see is the re­sult of change?

AilOther fact: They have yet to find a sin­gle species that has changed from anotherspecies. If it is true that all these things havecome through change, would you not thinkit possible to find at least one illustration onwhich to base the argument? But they can­not do it. There is not an illustration in allGod's universe, so far, of one single speciescoming from another, and yet the wholehypothesis rests upon the assertion that in .,the beginning there were just a few invisiblegerms of life and that everything came fromthem. If that were true, we should find evi­dences of transition everywhere, but there

. is not a single example to be found-not asingle one in process of transition-all per­fect.

All nature confirms God's law, as recordedby Moses, that every living thing shall bringforth after its kind; Darwin's hypothesis ofvariation is confirmed nowhere.

Is it not strange that an hypothesis can last

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20 The Bible and Its Enemies The Evolutionist 21

the better. It is far better to have them therethan to have them poisoning the minds ofstudents in this country. If they wouldspend half as much time trying to link them­selves to God as they do trying to dragmankind down to a monkey ancestry, theywould be making better use of their time.If we have found the missing link why huntfor it? If not, why not wait for it beforebelieving in it?

But all the links are missing. I do notobject to an absurd hypothesis when it doesnot hurt anyone. But these imaginings arenot only groundless and absurd but harm­ful. You do not know what trouble you havetaken on when you try to explain every­thing according to Evolution ! You will notlive long enough, even if. you do nothingelse. There is too much important work tobe done to justify our wasting a whole life­time in trying to explain changes that havenot occurred.

If you ask me how man was made, I an­swer, Moses tells us. Can God really dothat? The God who can make a whole worldcan do anything He wants to. How did theeye come ?When God made man, He madethe eyes and carved out caverns in the skullin which to hang them. I t is easy for us tobelieve in a God who can do all things.

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23The Evolutionist22 The Bible and Its Enemies

for fifty years without a fact to support it?If the followers of Darwin would call it"guess" instead of "hypothesis" itwoul~ ~ot

last a year. H. G. Wells has been wntmgsome articles lately suggesting a new bible.This is quite a natural suggestion if one fol­lows Darwinism to its logical conclusion.One evolutionist suggests that instead ofteaching the Bible in the common schools,we should teach science in the Sunday­schools.

Weills' latest book begins with picturesof sQ-called missing links. If you seethese in museums, you may be misled. Butdo they look like the '''links'' as they werewhen they were found? They find a pieceof a skull, two 'teeth, and a bone of a leg:they don't know whether the teeth came outof the skull or whether the leg bone belongsto the teeth, but some man fixes the partsup according to his imagination and calls ~t

a missing link. A man who can do thIScould take a keyhole and build a housearound it. If anyone tells you that they havefound the missing link, tell him that thereis a group of scientists in Africa now. Theywent from New York just a few months ago;they are to stay five years, using money sup­plied by some rich men. They are hunting forthe missing link-and the longer they stay

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But if you try to find out how the eyecame and leave God out~ you have to guess.There was a time (according to Evolution­ists) when animals had no eyes, and as theynow have them there must have been a timewhen they came. Since God is not allowedto make an eye, it just happened! When youhave nothing else to do just look it up-nottaking valuable time, but just the time youhave to throwaway. But perhaps I had bet­ter tell you.

These people will not let God work; theyshut Him out of His own universe; and theytry to explain how things happened. This isone guess. (If you find any others, let meknow, because any other will be better thanthis.) The guess is that there was a timewhen the little animal did not have any eyesand, as it was time for it to get an eye, therejust happened-no design about it, it justhappened-that a little piece of pigment(some call ita freckle) came on the skin.That converged the rays of the sun, and whenthe little animal felt the heat on that spotit turned it toward the sun to get more heat.The sun's heat irritated it, and a nerve camethere, and out of the nerve came the eye ICan you beat it?

This only aCGounts for one eye, and there'had to be another freckle pretty soon, and

that had to come in just the right place.Suppose it had come on the back of its neck.Not only might it have made us less hand­some, but, what is worse, suppose the littleanimal had stopped trying to perfect the oneeye before it started on the other. It mighthave lost the one without getting the other!

And then there was a time when the littleanimal had no legs, and the leg had to come.Since they will not let God work, what is theguess ? Well, as this little animal was wig­gling along a wart came on its belly-justhappened. It found that it could use thiswart to work itself along, and finally it de­veloped into a leg. Only one leg, of course,and the other had to come in just the rightplace. Isn't it strange that they can teachthis tommy-rot to students and look seriousabout it!

Lest the hearer may think the above ex­planations of the eye and leg too absurd tobe seriously advanced by evolutionists, Iquote the following confirmation from a bookrecently published by a very prominent East­ern ,clergyman.

"The force of this fact is more clearly seenwhen one considers that man has grown upin . this universe, gradually developing hispowers and functions as responses to hisenvironment. If he has eyes~ so biologists as-

24 The Bible and Its Enemiu

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The Evolutionist 25

men came to have brains superior to thewomen. Do you know how we came to havethese superior brains? Darwin tells aboutit.

He says that when our ancestors werebrutes, the males fought for the females, andthey fought so hard that this struggle in­creased the brain power in the males, andthis increased brain power descended to themales-just to the males. Even if we can­not prove that we have these superior brains,it is nice to know how we came to have them.

But don't think that Darwin devoted allhis time to -us men. He showed how thefemales did their part. (That was beforethey were women.) The getting of thissuperior brain power is not so important asgetting rid of the hair. There was a timewhen all the animals had hair, and the ques- .tion that bothered Darwin most was how ahairy animal was transformed into a hairlessman. He could not explain it by naturalselection, because the less hair a man hadthe less able he was to protect himself againstthe weather. He attributed it to the selec­tion of the males by the females. He saidthe hair was bred off by the females pre­ferring the males with the least hair. Ofcourse. it required ages, but that is one ad­vantage the Evolutionist has. If you say

26 The Bible and Its Enemies

sure us} it is because light waves played uponthe skin and eyes came out in answer; if he hasears} it is because air waves were there firstand ears came out to hear. Man never yet,according to the evolutionist} has developedany power save as a reality called it intobeing. There would be no fins if there were?o water} no wings if there were no air} no legstf there were no land. Always the developingorganism has been tryin~ to 'catch up withits environment.'"

How I'ong did the "light waves" play uponthe skin before the eyes "came out in an­swer"-? How did each new generation retainthe irritation caused by the "light waves"playing on the skin of preceding generationsfor millions of years-or was it all done inone generation? Why do not the "lightwaves" continue to "play" and call out eyesall over the body? And why do we not seee~es .and ears and legs and fins and wingsshll III process of development? Evolutions~ems to open the mind to the most impos­SIble guesses advanced in the- name of sci­ence, while it closes the heart to the plainestspiritual truths.

But there is something more interestingto me than that. Of course I am interestedin all this, but Darwin takes up a matterthat touches me deeply. He tells us how we

The Evolutionist 27

that a certain thing could not be done in athousand years, he says, "Take a millionyears-a billion: take all the time you want."He hurls eons at you and dissolves opposi­tion in the mist of ages.. But why did he not think that maybe all

the females would not agree in such a pref­erence? If no two women can agree as to ahat, how could the female brutes all agree inso impractical a thing as breeding the hairoff? And if that was so universal a tasteback there as to account for the breeding offof the hair, would you not suppose that thattaste would "persist," as Evolutionists say,and that we would notice it in women today-so that bald-headed men would have agreater advantage than they have?

And has it not occurred to you that itmight be difficult, if not impossible, for usmen to get these brains we-have by the malesselecting the females, if at the same time thefemales were breeding the hair off selectingthe males? Could they both select at once,or did they alternate and make brains forthree years and then decrease hair duringleap year?

I am telling you what Darwin says. Hesays that this argument about breeding offthe hair was criticized more severely thaanything else he said, which proves that

there were people in those days, as well astoday, with common sense. Yet this is whatwe find in a doctrine that "everybody be­lieves."

I want to show you the extremes to whichEvolution will lead those who believe in it.I cut this out of a newspaper. I was passingthrough Philadelphia last November nextday after a professor from a college inPennsylvania spoke there. He was an ex­tension professor and had extended to Phila- .delphia. He was enlightening an audience,and this is what the paper says he said. He

.covered two very important questions, one ofwhich is of special interest to mothers. "Ababy can wiggle its big toe," he said, "with­out wiggling its other toes; this is an indica­tion that it once used its big toe in climbingtrees." This must have been a puzzlingquestion to mothers throughout the years.But their ancestors once did this (we aretold) and the children can't get out of thehabit.

Here is the other serious question. "Weoften dream of falling," he says. "Thosewho fell out of the trees some fifty thousandyears ago and were killed, of course, had nodescendants." (Now this is a fact which Iwill admit. It is highly probable that thiswas true.) "So those who fell and were not .

28 The Bible and Its Enemies

I.

The Evolutionist 29

hurt ~of course, lived." (Which would be a"natural presumption.) "So we are never

hurt in our dreams of falling," because weare descended from those who fell and werenot hurt. If I were a betting man, I wouldbet sixteen to one that that professor doesnot believe that Daniel or Joseph couldinterpret dreams, but he thinks he can. Arethere not more important things for our pro­fessors to do than to spend their time in suchspeculation?

I recently read an article in the SundaySchool Times about a professor in one ofour' Illinois institutions. He tells of thegreat day in the world's history. It looks asif we have made a mistake in the days wecelebrate, such as Christmas, Fourth of July,Washington's Birthday, and the rest. Thereally great day, the professor says, was aday, not yet definitely fixed, when a waterpuppy crawled up onto the land and decidedto live there, and became man's first progen-

.itor IAn "eminent scientist," so a dispatch from

Paris says, reports that he recently talked tothe soul of a dog and learned that the dogwas happy. Must we believe this, too?

This doctrine of Evolution leads you intothe wildest of speculations. "The ArabianNights" have nothing to compare with the

guesses of scientists. Science can do any-- thing when it builds on facts. It gives us

rules for the use of electricity and steam andgas. It tells us about the fertility of the soiland the rotation of crops, but it is dealingwith facts. When a scientist goes to guess­ing he is no better than any other guesser.If we must have fiction it would be betterto hire a crippled girl who cannot work toread "Grimm's Fairy Tales" to students thanto have them taught the fiction of Evolution.

I have given you some illustrations of thisfiction; what is the natural effect? It leadspeople away from God. They will say thatit does not lessen their reverence for God tobelieve that millions of years ago He gave

. to a germ power to develop. It is true thatHe could do this, but that is not the question.Will you feel the same towards Darwin'sfar-away God as you feel toward the Godof Moses? Darwin does not give God achance after the first germ of life came uponthe planet two hundred million years ago(according to his estimate). Some have putit farther away and some less. Exactnesswould seem immaterial when one scientistsays twenty-four million and another threehundred and six million years. Suppose thatfor twenty-four millions of years God hasnever touched life on this planet; that means

30 The Bible and Its Enemies ----.. --- The Evolutionist 31

that He has never inspired a manor laid Hishand upon the destiny of a nation or a race.It recalls Elijah and the prophets of BaaLHe told them to pray again, suggesting thattheir god was asleep. Darwin tells us thatour God has been asleep for two hundredmillions of years, and those who believe inhis doctrine do not emphasize the fact thatour God has ever been awake.

Some go back to the nebular hypothesis.This very year Canon Barnes, of Westmin­ster Abbey, has given his interpretation ofEvolution. He says the universe was filledwith "stuff" out of which came electrons;out of them, matter; out of matter, life; outof life, mind; and out of mind, soul. Therewas a time, he. declared, when there was nomatter, no life, no mind, no soul. Now theyare here, "a part of God's plan." But Godhas not been allowed to do anything for bil­lions of years. How long do you think ithas been if the nebular hypothesis is correct?

It requires measureless credulity to enable.one to believe that all that we see about uscame by chance-.by a series of happy-go­lucky accidents. Ifonly an infinite God couldhave formed hydrogen and oxygen and then.united them in just the right proportions toproduce water-the daily need of every liv­ing thing, £cattered among the flowers all

the colors of the rainbow and every varietyof perfume,· adjusted the mocking bird'sthroat to its musical scale, and fashioned asoul for man, why should we want to im­prison such a God in an impenetrable past?This is a living world; why not a living Godupon the throne?

When I was a boy in college the mate­rialists began with. matter separated intoparticles infinitely small and each particleseparated from every other particle by dis­tance infinitely great. But now they say thatit takes 1,740 electrons to make an atom ofinfinite fineness. God, they insist, has nothad anything to do with this universe since1,740 electrons formed a chorus and sang,"We'll be an atom by and by!"

I had a letter from one preacher who toldme I was lessening my influence with thethoughtful. Another said I could not enterthe freshman class of any theological semi­nary. I am not trying to enter the freshmanclass; I am lecturing to students. Somecriticize· me for dissenting from CanonBarnes, but I am trying to bring people backto believe that man was made in the imageof God.

What is the result of Darwin's doctrine?What would you suppose would be the re­sult? Here is a boy reared in a Christian

32 The Bible and Its Enemies -" .-:---- - The Evolutionist 33

home, learning the first child's prayer andthen the Lord's Prayer; he talks to· God,asks for daily bread, pleads for forgivenessof sins, and desires to be delivered fromevil. He reads the Bible and finds that hislife is precious in the sight of God, and thatthe heavenly Father is more willing to givegood gifts to His children than earthly par­ents are. Then he goes. off to college and aprofessor takes a book six hundred pagesthick and tries to convince him that his bodyis a brute's body. "See that point in the ear?That comes from the ape," etc. Darwin alsotries to' convince the child that there is noth­ing in his brain that is not found in miniaturein the brain of the brute.

Then he says that the morals of man area development from the brute. First, sec­ond, third, fourth, fifth, sixth-and no men­tion of God or of religion. No mention ofconscience. When the boy goes out fromschool, if he believes Darwin and believes histeacher, the Bible is to him a story book.Christ is reduced to the stature of a man withan ape for his ancestor, on his mother's sideat least, and, as many teachers believe, on hisfather's side also. I have pointed out thenatural, logical consequences of Darwinism-observation convinces me that they are theactual consequences.

Are you surprised when I tell you thatwithin a month I met a young man twenty­two years of age who said he had been madean atheist by two teachers in a Christiancollege? A mother in northern Minne­sota told me that her boy had become skep­tical in college and had been brought backby a religious speech. He is ~ow the leadin.gPresbyterian preacher in hIS town. ThIsyear I received an invitation to speak at ahigh-school commencement in this statefrom a boy in the senior class who told methat he had been made skeptical on religionduring his sophomore year, and that severalof the others were agnostic.

In Miami, Florida, a mother told me thather boy would not pray; she found that he ,believed in the Darwinian doctrine. Afather tells me of a daughter educated atWellesley who calmly informs him that noone believes in the Bible now; a teacher inColumbia University begins his lessons ingeology by asking students to lay aside allthat they have learned in Sunday-school; aprofessor of the University of Wisconsintells his class that the Bible is a. collectiotL ofmyths.

Last fall the president of one of thelargest of the state universities (and a P.oc­t r f ivinity, t ), in an addr ss n t'eltgton,

34 - The Bible and Its Enemies The Evolutionist 35

said to 3,100 students: "I go so far as tosaythat, if you can not reconcile religion with~hings taught in biology, in psychology, orIn other fields of study, in this university,then you should throw your religion away."

A professor of philosophy at Ann Arboroccupies a Sunday evening explaining to anaudience that Christianity is a state of mindand that there are only two books in theBible with any literary merit; another pro­fessor in the same institution informs stu­dents that he once taught a Sunday-school _class and was active in the Y. M. C. A., butthat no" thinking man can believe in Godor the Bible; a woman teacher in the publicschool in Indiana rebukes a boy for answer­ing that Adam was the first man, explainingto him and the class that the "tree manitwas tne first man; a professor in Yale hasthe reputation of making atheists of all whocome under his influence-this informationwas given by a boy whose brother has comeunder the influence of this teacher; a pro­fessor in Bryn Mawr combats Christianityfor a session and then puts to his class thequestion whether or not there is a God, andis happy to find that a majority of the classvote that there is no God; one professor de­clares that life is merely a by-product andwill ultimately be produced in the labora-

tory ; another says that the ingredientsnecessary to create life have "already beenbrought together and that life will be devel­oped from these ingredients, adding howeverthat it will require a million years to do it. r/They are robbing our boys and girls ofspiritual life. A professor cannot cramenough intelligence into a boy's brain tooffset the shrinkage of the heart when hetakes God out. I have reached two conclt,t­sions: First, that all teachers in Christiancolleges should be Christians with a spiritualview of life; and second, that where in publicinstitutions we are not allowed to defend theBible, they should not be allowed to attack itand rob our children of their faith and hope'.

Nietzsche took this hypothesis, broughtman down to a brute basis, taught that mightmakes right, and laid the foundation for thegreatest war that man ever knew. He gotit from Darwin. He says Darwin was oneof the three great men of his century. Hepraises Napoleon as the greatest because hemade war "respectable" again. I have herea quotation from an editor in Paris, writtenwhen there was a peace meeting there, sometwenty-one years ago: "The spirit of peacehas fled the earth because Evolution hastaken possession of it. The plea for peacein past years has been based upon the divine

36 The Bible -and Its Enemies The Evolutionist 37

nature and divine origin of man. Men werelooked upon as the children of one God andwar was, therefore, fratricide. But now thatmen are considered children of apes, whatmatters it if they slaughter one another?"This was fifteen years before the war began.

A prominent English writer, in a bookpublished by Putnam's Sons this year, says:"Darwinism not only justifies the Sensualist~t t~e trough and Fashion at her glass; itJushfies Prussianism at the cannon and,Bolshevism at the prison door. If Darwin­ism be true, if Mind is to be driven out ofthe universe and accident accepted as a suffi­cient cause for all the majesty and glory ofphysical nature, then there is no crime inviolence, however abominable in its circum­stances and however cruel in its executionwhich can not be justified by success, andno triviality, no absurdity of fashion whichdeserves a censure; more-there is no actof disinterested love and tenderness, no deedof self sacrifice and mercy, no aspiration afterbeauty and excellence, for which a singlereason can be adduced in logic. On thesegrounds alone Darwinism is condemned',but it is condemned also on scientificgrounds."

The reason this pernicious doctrine hasnot done more harm is that it has not reached

the mass of the people. Their "everybody"does not include all of society. Less thanone in ten of our boys and girls ever go toa high-school, and only one in fifty-lessthan two per cent-attend college or univer­sity. Only about one boy and girl in onehundred, on the average, graduates from acollege or university, but it is those who havethe most education who have been injuredmost by this doctrine. It has not yet misledthe masses; the people, as a rule, do not be­lieve in the ape theory.

Darwin gives us a family tree which be­gins in the water with "larvae" and thentraces the line of descent to European apes- v.

he does not even allow us the patriotic pleas­ure of descending from American apes. Overeight hundred times he uses the phrase, "Wemay well suppose." Compare this phrasewith the Bible's "Thus saith the Lord"! TheBible is built upon the rock and the otherupon hypothesis. When they tell you thattheir sciences are the most important, youcan answer that there is a science more im­portant than any they teach in the schools.It is the Science of How to Live. It is moreimportant that you trust the Rock of Ages \;than that you know the age of the rocks.When those who teach the physical scienceslook down upon those who preach the Gos-

38 The Bible and Its Enemies The Evolutionist 39

pel, tell them what Paul said, that the thingswhich are seen are temporal; the things thatare unseen, eternal.

I will now show you the actual effect ofDarwinism. There is a book by James H.Leuba, published five years ago (in 1916),by Sherman, French & Co., Boston (nowsold by the Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago).This man is a professor in Bryn Mawr Col­lege, in Pennsylvania. The book was writtento prove that belief in God and immortalityis passing away. Professor Leuba takes alist of scientists, biologists, sociologists andpsychologists-the most prominent in thecountry-and asks them to answer certainquestions. He then gives the figures toshow that more than half of these prominentmen do not believe in a personal God andpersonal immortality. He then takes ninerepresentative colleges and questions the stu­dents, boys and girls, and states as the resultof his investigation that the largest percent­age of believers (85 per cent) are in the fresh­man class; the percentage decreases untilthey come to the senior class. He declaresthat at graduation, from forty to forty-fiveper cent of the boys do not believe in a per­sonal God or in personal immortality. Thepercentage of believers is greater among thegirls than among the boys. He explains this

by saying that the men are stronger andmore independent: that the women are cling­ing, and rely more upon faith. Thank Godfor a faith that keeps one true!

This man argues that the more intelligentmen are the less they believe in· God and

. immortality. Are you willing to admit thatintelligence is antagonistic to Christianity,that as men become more intelligent theywill have less belief in God, the Bible, and inChrist? I will not admit it. The Christianchurch will not admit it: it is not true. Thereis an explanation; what is the reason?

I believe it is because of the acceptanceof this false philosophy that takes away fromman his belief in God and leads him to wor­ship his own mind instead. What we needis to have our boys and girls come from ourcolleges and universities with a spiritualvision back of their trained minds, so thatthey will take up the work of the Sunday­school, the church and society. A canvassof the graduates of one state universityshowed that only twenty-five per centof the boys and girls who went from Chris:'tian churches and Sunday-schools ever re­turned to take up their religious work again.Brains must be trained and then consecratedto the service of the Most High. We cannotafford to have the lives of our people robbed

40 The Bible and Its Enemies T he Evolutionist 41

of all spirituality and brought down to abrute basis.

Theodore Roosevelt, when President, talk­ing to the Harvard law students, told themthat there was scarcely a great conspiracyagainst the public welfare that did not haveHarvard brains behind it. This might havebeen said at any other university as wen.Many graduates go out with no sense of re­sponsibility to God or society: they are the

. bulwark of every unrighteous cause, thedefenders of every vicious system. This isnot true of all college graduates; many donot accept Darwinism, and many evolution­ists do not follow the doctrine to its logicalconclusion. When reform starts in thiscountry, it starts with the masses. Re:...forms do not come out of the brains ofscholars. Some of these young men aftergraduating from our colleges go intobusiness and become profiteers. They donot commit petit larceny; people are pun­ished for that. Sometimes they commitgrand larceny; sometimes they go into glori­fied larceny, and use lawyers who come outof our colleges to keep them put jof thepenitentiary. We have to enact child laborlaws to keep college graduates from dwarf­ing the bodies and souls of little children.Anti-trust laws are necessary to keep themfrom ruining small competitors.

I believe the brute in man is brought outlargely by the theory that makes man be­lieve he is blood relative to the brute.. Manmust be brought back to God, to a belief inthe Bible as the Word of God, and to a loveof Christ as the Son of God. No mentalprocesses can stop the mad race for money.Man must be born again. "What shall itprofit a man, if he shall gain the whole world,and lose his own soul?" must become a livingforce in his life.

I come to present to you the Bible as theWord of God, and to protest against theenemies, open and secret, who would liftman from his knees, take from him his faithin God and withdraw from his life the re­straining influence of a odief in immortality.I believe that the Darwinian doctrine leads

\;people into· agnosticism and pantheism,plunged the world into the worst of wars,and is dividing society into classes that fighteach other on a brute basis. It is time thatthe Christian church should understand whatis going on and array itself against theseenemies of the church, Christianity, .andcivilization.

42 The Bible and Its Enemies The Evolutionist 43

several of the officers for quoting the Bible asan unanswerable authority on some point ofmorality." In the same connection he thusdescribes his change and his final attitude:"When thus reflecting I feel compelled to lookfor a First Cause, having an intelligent mindin some degree analogous to that of man; andI deserve to be called a Theist. This conciu­sion was strong in my mind about the time, asfar as I can remember, when I wrote the'Origin of Species'; and it is since that timethat it has very gradually, with many fluctua­tions, become weaker. But then arises thedoubt: Can the mind of man, which has, asI fully believe, been developed from a mind aslow as that possessed by the lowest animals, betrusted when it draws such grand conclusions?

"I cannot pretend to throw the least lighton such abstruse problems. The mystery of

. the beginning of all things is insoluble by us;and I for one must be content to remain anAgnostic."

A careful reading of the above discloses thegradual transition wrought in Darwin him­self by the unsupported hypothesis which helaunched upon the world, or which he endorsedwith such earnestness and industry as to im­press his name upon it. He was regarded. as"orthodox" when he was young; he was evenlaughed at for quoting. the Bible "as an un­answerable authority on some point of moral­ity." In the beginning he regarded himself asa Theist, and felt compelled "to look to a FirstCause, having an intelligent mind in some de-

(Addendum)

THE EFFECT OF THE EVOLUTIONTHEORY ON DARWIN HIMSELF

I HAVE spoken of what would seem tobe the natural and logical effect of the Dar­win hypothesis on the minds of the young.

This view is confirmed by its actual effect onDarwin himself. In his "Li.fe and Letters"he says: "I am much engaged, an old man, andout of health, and I cannot spare time to an­swer your questions fully-nor indeed canthey be answered. Science has nothing to dowith Christ, except in so far as the habit ofscientific research makes a man cautious inadmitting evidence. For myself, I do not be­lieve that there ever has been any revelation.As for a future life, every man must judge forhimself between conflicting vague probabili­ties."

It will be seen that science, according to\ Darwin, has nothing to do with Christ, except

to discredit revelation which makes Christ'smission known to men. Darwin himself doesnot believe that there has ever been anyrevelation, which, of course, excludel5 Christ.It will be seen, also, that he has no definiteviews on the future life-"every man," he say~,

"must judge for himself between conflictingvague probabilities."

It is fair to conclude that it was his owndoctrine that led him astray, for in the sameconnection (in "Life and Letters") he saysthat when aboard the Beagle he was called"orthodox," and was heartily laughed at by

-44

Darwin's Confession 45

gree analogous to that of man." This con­clusion, he says, was strong in his mind whenhe wrote "The Origin of Species," but he ob­serves that since that time this conclusion hasvery gr~dually become weaker, and then heunconsciously brings a telling indictmentagainst his own hypothesis. He says, ((Can theu1ind of man (which, according to his belief,has been possessed by the lowest animals) betrusted in such mysteries ?" He first links manwith the animals, and then, because of this sup­posed connection, estimates man's mind bybrute standards.

Who will say, after reading these words,that it is immaterial what man thinks about hisorigin? Who will deny that the acceptance ofthe Darwinian hypothesis shuts out the higherreasonings and the larger conceptions of man?

On the very brink of the grave, after he hadextracted from his hypothesis all the goodthere was in it and all the benefit it could con­fer, he is helplessly in the dark, and "cannotpretend to throw the least light on such ab­struse problems." \iVhen he believed in God,in the Bible, in Christ, and in a future life,there were no mysteries that disturbed him;but a guess) with nothing in the universe tosupport it, swept him away from his mooringsand left him in his old age in the midst of mys­teries that he thought insoluble, He must con­tent himself with Agnosticism. What can Dar­winism ever do to compensate anyone for thedestruction of faith in God, in His Word, inHis Son, and of his hope of immortality?

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The Bible and Its Enemies46