WG-17-18. NO EVOLUTION OUTSIDE HUMAN AFFAIRS

18. NO EVOLUTION OUTSIDE HUMAN AFFAIRS THE matter under consideration is of sufficient importance to justify a closer examination of it. Of the lack of any trace of the operation of evolution outside of human affairs, but little need be said. It has been frequently pointed out that, if evolution were a law of nature it would be in operation in our day, and the earth would be full of the evidences of its working. But so far from the existence of a single scrap of evidence for such a law (outside of human affairs), the effort to cross the line of species by artificial means has totally failed. Even so stout an advocate of evolution as Prof. Huxley was forced, before his death, to admit that “The present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living.” And Tyndall said: “Every attempt made in our day to generate life independent of antecedent life has utterly broken down.”

Furthermore, if created things had come into their present forms by a process of evolution from primal nebula and primordial protoplasm, the crust of the earth would be full of, and the surface of the earth would be strewn with, innumerable intermediate forms filling the gaps between the species, and showing historically the progress from one species to another. Instead of this there has not been found, in all these years of search, so much as a single specimen of an intermediate form. In Rev. J. Urquhart’s The Bible, and How to read it, Vol. II., chap. 3:, entitled “Darwinism and Genesis,”, there is given a very luminous description of the four fundamental assumptions of the Darwinian theory, each one of which is essential to its support. The author further shows very con­clusively, and largely by reference to the published conclusions of skeptical men of science, that each one of these assumptions has utterly failed for lack of support. Finally he presents unanswerable facts and considerations which oppose the Darwinian theory. We quote the concluding paragraphs:

“Much more might be added; but the over­throw of the foundations on which Darwinism is confessedly built makes it impossible for this theory to maintain its hold upon science. If any further proof of its erroneousness were required, it would be found in the story told by the fossils. If animals had been evolved, we should have found the strata occupied at first by animal remains of one form only. Then by-and-by we should have seen these diverge from each other by small variations. The differences would then become more marked, until perfectly distinct forms were reached. We certainly would not expect to en­counter at the very outset numerous forms which were entirely different, which were fully de­veloped, and which did not afterwards vary, but continued in every respect the same, age after age. We should not, I repeat, expect to discover this; for such radical distinction of the forms and the absence of change in them afterwards would alike be fatal to the theory. But this is what we do find. There are wide differences in the forms from the very first, and some of the earliest continue to the present hour unchanged. When new forms enter, their entrance has not been preceded by variations of earlier life which lead us to look for the coming of these. ‘The new forms, ’ says the late Duke of Argyll, ¹ ‘always appear suddenly’— from no known source—and generally if of a new type, exhibiting that type in great strength as to numbers and in great perfection as regards organ­ization. The usual way of evading this great difficulty in the facts of Geology is to plead what is called the imperfection of the Record. But this plea will not avail us here. There are some tracks of time regarding which our records are as com­plete as we could desire. In the Jurassic rocks we

¹Organic Evolution Cross-Examined, pp. 145-147. have a continuous and undisturbed series of long and tranquil deposits—containing a complete record of all the new forms of life which were introduced during these ages of oceanic life. And those ages were, as a fact, long enough to see not only a thick (1300 feet) mass of deposit, but the first appearance of hundreds of new species. These are all as definite and distinct from each other as existing species. No less than 1850 new species have been counted—all of them suddenly born— all of them lasting only for a time, and all of them in their turn superseded by still newer forms. There is no sign of mixture, or of confusion, or of infinitesimal or of indeterminate variations. These “Medals of Creation” are all, each of them, struck by a new die, which never failed to impress itself on the plastic materials of this truly creative work. There is nothing more instructive than to place a series of these new species, such as the Ammonites, side by side. The perfect regularity and beauty of each new pattern of shell, and the fixity of it so long as it lasted at all, are features as striking as they are obvious.’

“In the face of such facts, it is astonishing that Darwinism could ever have found acceptance. But, after all, it is not more astonishing than many another belief that has been the fashion or the idol of an hour. Man’s word changes and disappears. ‘The Word of the Lord endureth for ever.’”