Psalms 10

Psalms 10:4

THE ATHEISM OF PRIDE— Psalms 10:4THE custom of selecting severe texts with which to sting one’s intellectual opponents is hardly praiseworthy, if even it be pardonable. I should treat this text with more pleasure if it did not open with the words “the wicked”, since I am not at all disposed to bring any moral railing against the men whose “new” religion is so plain a departure from the old paths. But, not believing in the right of the individual to either make Scripture to suit himself or even change it into acceptable terms, I must take the text as I find it and treat it in the light of our theme—“The Atheism of Pride—Evolution”. The reasons for its selection will appear as we progress with this discussion. Beyond doubt, the intelligent traveler takes note, not alone of the character of the path his feet may be treading, but inquires deliberately, “Whither?”I was lost once in the deep woods of Northern Minnesota. I spent weary hours in a footsore journey; groped my way through the blackest night I have ever known, and faced all the while the fury of storm and rain, and it all came about in consequence of taking a path that looked attractive but led me astray. This experience is a parable, and raises the question, Whither does this evolutionary path tend?Turning back to the text and ignoring its opening indictment, I call attention to the points of parallelism between the remaining portions and that now popular theory known as Evolution. There are three: Pride of Intellect, Practical Irreligion, and Potential Atheism. PRIDE OF “The wicked through the pride of his countenance”. The word “countenance” here refers not so much to the pride some people have in beholding themselves in a mirror, as it suggests and symbolizes self-esteem. Joseph Parker says, “It refers literally to the heightening of the nostril, the lifting of the head”.In the study of this suggestion, therefore, three important points at which the pride of intellect now expresses itself.This century is seeing a revival of the original temptation. When Satan tempted our first mother to disobedience, he did it by the subtle promise of “wisdom”. “Then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was * * a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat”. Beyond all doubt, there is a progress in the temptation recorded in Genesis.

The first appeal was to the lust of the flesh, “good for food”; the second to the lust of the eye, “pleasant to the eyes”; the third to the pride of life, “a tree to be desired to make one wise”, and it was at this third point that Satan reached the acme of his machinations! Great as is the temptation in the lust of the flesh, subtle as is the entreaty of pleasure for the eye, more powerful still is the appeal in the prospect of wisdom!Each century in turn adopts a shibboleth and yields willing obedience to the ideal thereby expressed.

The Twentieth Century has chosen “Scholarship” and that word has become both its religion and its god. In Germany they may name it “Kultur”; in England they may call it “Science”; in America they may phrase it “Scholarship”, but in each country it represents the same claim, namely, “Wisdom is with us”!This conceit is described by one writer as a result of the invention of “certain mechanical contrivances for abolishing time and space” and “expresses an inordinate but unjustifiable vanity.” Practically every book now written by a modernist is big with such phrases as “The sure results of science”, “The scholarship of the century”, “The intellectual attainments of the times”, “the fine products of university education”, “the wondrous wisdom of the day”, etc. It is a contagious claim and intellectually anemic men are particularly subject to the infection. One sound reason for the most thorough education exists at this point. Men of mediocre endowment or only partial training are particularly tempted at this point! This accounts for the false claims of classical learning where little or none of the same exists, the frenzied endeavor to secure literary degrees where no merit warrants the granting of the same, the keen candidacy for college and university professorships without peculiar fitness, and the impetuous rush to the printing press with every immature or amateur expression of thought!

Satan has again triumphed and has taken us with ease by the hint, “Be wise”!Science is now the subtle word of Satanic employment. It is a word that expresses the idea “I know” and so sums up in a single term the conceit of the age.

To immature minds, “Science”, as now employed, seems to be synonymous with Omniscience. To call a thing “scientific” is, in the judgment of such deceived ones, to establish it forever. That may account for the fact that we no longer have books on Biology, on History, on Philosophy, on Religion, but we are taught “the Science of Biology”, “the Science of History”, “the Science of Philosophy”, “the Science of Religion”, and we have so far converted this word into a mere mental commodity that a designing woman employs it for purely commercial purposes by calling her mental vaporings “Christian Science”, and multitudes are deceived thereby.We have had books written recently on “The Descent of Man”. We are sadly in need of a volume on “The Degradation of Words”, and central in that discussion would be the strange and unjustifiable uses to which this word “Science” is now being subjected. O! great and good word! but so bandied about by designing men as to be, like its Master, marred past recognition! What crimes against intelligence are committed in thy name oh Science!

This also is Satan’s work!The prospect of becoming gods is still a potent appeal. “Ye shall be as gods”. No wonder our first mother went down before it!

No wonder our first father fell for it! Nor is it any wonder their children (born not only in this sin, but of it) should surrender at the same point.I was present a few days since in an evangelical ministers’ meeting, and heard a man decry the old philosophy that we are “sinners” as an idea wholly out of date, and as most unworthy our matchless, manly dignity. To his brethren he said, “We are gods! Let us not forget the great Apostle’s teaching, “Ye also are His offspring”, forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to talk continuously in the terms of’ humility, but rather in those of self-appreciation and praise!”The speaker evidently forgot two things: 1st, that Paul was quoting from heathen poets when he made that declaration, and second, that when certain men at Lystra, seeing a miracle wrought at his hands upon an impotent one, brought oxen and garlands and would have done sacrifice to Barnabas as Jupiter and Paul as Mercury, they rent their clothes and ran in among the people, crying out, “Why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein” (Acts 14:11-15).A few years since, when Reginald Campbell attained the zenith of public attention by the explosion of his own faith, we paid much heed to what he had to say; now that he has fallen back to the nadir of obscurity we are like to forget his pretentious claims, “My God is my deeper self”!Nietzsche, who in the judgment of Prof. Williams of Oxford, was the greatest exponent of evolution known to the age, said, “Egoism is the prime characteristic of the noble soul!”If the Pharisee of the New Testament who went into the Temple to pray, were alive now, he would receive the commendation of all evolutionists and be an accepted leader among the “New .Theologians”.

The superman, prophesied by so-called modern science, is nothing more nor less than a repetition of Satan’s garden triumph, and again the sons of Adam are delighting themselves in the taste of forbidden fruit, tempted to it by the lie, “Ye shall be as gods”.Passing from the first sentence of the text to the second, we go from cause to effect. It may be properly phrasedP “He will not seek God”! The whole tendency of evolution takes one away from faith in God and in the end, even denies the fact of God.The theory proposes to explain all things apart from God. Henry Van Dyke, in “The Gospel for an Age of Doubt”, institutes a comparison between the genealogy of man as recorded in Luke’s Gospel, and that created by evolution. He admits having reduced Lyman Abbott’s description of the descent, but says, “I have retained its every essential,” and then recites: “Monera begat Amoebae, Amoebae begat Synamoebae; Synamoebae begat Ciliated Larve; Ciliated Larva begat Primeval Stomach Animals; Primeval Stomach Animals begat Gliding Worms; Gliding Worms begat soft Worms; Soft Worms begat Sack Worms; Sack Worms begat Skull-less Animals; Skull-less Animals begat Single-Nostrilled Animals; Single Nostrilled Animals begat Primeval Fish; Primeval Fish begat Mud Fish; Mud Fish begat Gilled Amphibians; Gilled Amphibians begat Tailed Amphibians; Tailed Amphibians begat Primeval Amniota; Primeval Amniota begat Primary Mammals; Primary Mammals begat Pouched Animals; Pouched Animals begat Semi-Apes; Semi-Apes begat Tailed Apes; Tailed Apes begat Man-like Apes; Man-like Apes begat Ape-like Men; Ape-like Men begat Men”. And now the Dean of a Divinty School completes the chain by “the inclusion of Jesus”!I do not wonder that you smile, nor yet that you hold such a suggestion in ridicule and contempt, but I ask you to pause before it long enough to compare it with the origin of man as recorded in the Blessed Book.“And Jesus Himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, “Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph, “Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge, “Which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda, “Which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri, “Which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er, “Which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Elieser, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, “Which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of Eliakim, “Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Matthatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David, “Which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Boas, which was the son of Salmon, which was the son of Naasson, “Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda, “Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor, “Which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala, “Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sent, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Larnech, “Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan, “Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke 3:23-38), The first of these trees makes man the product of a blind force, named “spontaneous generation”, and gives him an animal ancestry; the second makes him the creature and child of The Most High.Without now attempting to settle which is the saner expression or which holds the more certain truth, I cite them to prove the absolute correctness of the text, namely, The evolutionist will not acknowledge God!The appeal of evolution is to worship creation vs. the creator. Kant, whose philosophy conformed with the Darwin theory, acknowledged no allegiance to a personal Creator, but confessed that he felt “a reverence approaching worship” for “the starry heavens above” and “the inner consciousness of man”, or in other words, for the creation and creature, but none whatever for the Creator. In fact the existence of a Creator is practically denied. “Science is everywhere using impersonal ideas in explaining the universe.” * * “The idea of creation has been merged in the vaguer conceptions of evolution”, says Gerald Birney Smith, the evolutionist professor of Chicago University.Once more the “modernist” has returned to the old pagan pantheism, and speaks of God as “a spirit working within the cosmos”. Prof. McGiffert and other evolutionists, tell us that “the Divine is no more separate and aloof. It is within and organic with the human”, and further remark, “God is considered as the soul of the world; the spirit animating nature; the universal force which takes the myriad forms of heat, light, gravity, electricity and the like”.

If, therefore, these men are correct, the ancient heathen who worshipped the sun, moon and stars really bowed before the only god, and for that matter, the modern heathen who worships wood, stones and even serpents is still worshipping some expression of the only god there is. To say that such a god is not the God of the Christian, and that he is thoroughly unknown to Biblical conceptions, is to state a spiritual axiom.The evolution-propaganda promotes both these procedures. To the evolutionist, Christianity is little more sacred than any ancient Greek cult. Matthew Arnold, while professing to find in Christ “the Light of the World”, was a modernist with all its implications, and in one of his poems he writes: “Forgive me, masters of the mind, At whose behest I long ago So much unlearned, so much resigned; I come not here to be your foe; I seek these anchorites, not in truth, To curse and to deny your truth;

“Not as their friend, or child, I speak, But as on some far northern strand, Thinking of his own gods, a Greek, In pity and mournful awe might stand Before a fallen Runic stone, For both were faiths, and both are gone”. What then is the conclusion of the whole matter, other than that which is expressed in the last sentence of our text— ATHEISM? “God is not in all their thoughts”. The greater exponents of evolution have been unbelievers. If we thought anyone would attempt to debate this we would call the roll, quote from their writings and prove the statement. I am not saying these men have no god; I am saying that few of them recognize the God of the Bible, or regard the teachings of that Book as final and authoritative.They might resent being called “atheists” but under the most favorable conditions could not claim to be Christian believers. One wonders if that is not a prime reason why their so-called sciences remain mere speculations, hypotheses, theories, and no more. One cannot escape the conviction that no man can come into any light who does not walk in His light and in the light of the Word. Has it ever occurred to you that all the fixed sciences, about which men no longer debate, were discovered and proven and exploited by believers?

The Copernican theory of the Universe is no longer a controversy; but Copernicus while a Papist, was an ardent believer in both God and His Book, and the very breath of his childhood was that of the bishop’s house. Kepler, in his early days, was a theological student whose scientific tendencies and attainments triumphed over his Gospel ministry, but were exercised in the same unfaltering faith and Kepler found in science the thoughts of God.

Galileo, the father of physics, while suffering from the church, remained faithful, as he believed, to the God of the Bible and the Bible of God. Sir Isaac Newton, whose theories were long since changed into certainties, was the step-son of a preacher, a patron and preacher of the faith once for all delivered. Henry Van Dyke says, “We observe in those departments of science where the knowledge of the magnitude and splendid order of the physical universe is most clear and exact, the most illustrious men have not been skeptics but sincere and steadfast believers,” and then he gives a list of the most brilliant mathematicians ever assembled and says they were believers, every one.I am inclined to think that their Science was accurate because they were believers. The light is with Him. How strange that not only were established sciences discovered every one by believers, but even the opinions of such later believers, working in the scientific realm, as Sir. James and Alexander Simpson, George Stokes, Lord Kelvin, Pasteur, and their like, when contrasted with the pure suppositions and speculations of a skeptical Darwin, a doubting La Marcke, an unbelieving Spencer, an agnostic Huxley, a monist Haeckel, and a Rationalist Weismann, are comparative certainties.At this moment Mendelism gives every promise of proving its contentions and forcing science to accept the creative theory of Genesis—to each seed it is given to bring forth after its kind, and Gregor Mendel was a godly monk.Converts to the theory of evolution are almost without exception destructive critics.

Those ministers who have received this Darwinian supposition and dared to believe it a science, make up today a school of men who, not only disturb the churches of God, papist and evangelical alike, but are the very men who are denying the veracity of the Book, disputing the Virgin Birth and Deity of Jesus, demanding that God be no longer an autocrat, but accept His position in a democracy—in fact, practically attempting His dethronement. When they become professors in universities and theological seminaries, their influence is a bitter fruit.

O. B. Server, in “The Bible Champion” cites many instances in proof of this position. In one theological seminary a certain young student had invited ten of his fellows to come to his room for a prayer-meeting. Not one of them accepted, and the last one exclaimed, “Pray! I haven’t anyone to pray to”! Those who have quit these seminaries and at the same time disclaimed their call to preach and deliberately accepted other callings of professions, are a legion and in every instance it was due to what they received from instructors, who were Darwin devotees.My former associate in the ministry, was in a class of sixteen. He sat at the feet of Prof.

Douglas Macintosh, now famed as a Yale theological professor, and widely known as a “new” theologian and evolutionist. Eight of the sixteen accepted his evolutionary hypothesis and went with him the length of all its conclusions. The entire eight left the ministry. The other eight of the class repudiated it, and that half now represent an effective preaching force.It is reported (on one of our mission fields) a Union Christian College (so-called) sent out twenty-six graduates. One of them went into the ministry and twenty-five relapsed into the dark unfaith of heathenism.A young woman teacher in the public schools and a valued church worker, went to Chicago University to study to fit herself for her vocation. That was the end of her church usefulness, and Mr.

Server says, “She seemed to have attended a slaughter house of faith and a morgue of piety”.I could, out of personal observation, cite scores of instances, met in my travels across the continent, of young men and women who have pitifully reported to me the waning of their faith and the wreck of their ministry through the acceptance of the evolutionary theory. Is it any wonder when their theological professors, following this philosophy, have affirmed in their presence, “In the light of our comparative historical study, any claim to exclusiveness and incomparableness on the part of Christianity, as a positive religion, must be entirely abandoned”.Some of these instructors have sought to quiet the fears and assuage the griefs of parents, bereft by the unbelief of their children, saying, “We teach here theistic evolution”!

It is a poor sop “which,” as Prof. George McCready Price justly says, “is in its essential nature as thoroughly pagan or heathen as anything that ever grew up in Greece or India”.Then let us come to the conclusion of the whole matter.The entire tendency of this theory is to atheism. Multitudes of its followers will not admit so much. They maintain they have a god. Possibly the god of a Huxley, unknown and unknowable; possibly the god of Haeckel, an insentient force, unconsciously framing and finishing; possibly the god of a Coe, a Rauschenbusch, a Frank Crane, who has played the aristocrat long enough and must now descend to his proper place “in a democracy”; but to this whole company, the God of the Bible is unknown. “He is not in all their thoughts”, and their attempt to rule Him out is no longer even disguised.On their own confession, the authority of our faith has perished, and the sacred convictions of past centuries have been swept forever away. They no longer believe in our God; they no longer believe in an infallible Bible; they no longer believe in the Virgin Birth of Christ or any other essential feature of His Deity; they hold to ridicule the personality and power of the Holy Ghost; they define regeneration as “adolescence”; they reduce evangelization to “social uplift”; they think of mission work in terms of “international commerce” and “educational opportunity”; they look upon the church as a mere medium of financing their evolutionary program!

The sacred codes of Scripture are to them only social conceptions strengthened by some centuries of practice; marriage is a domestic convenience, but holds no moral obligations; the Sabbath is little less than a social nuisance, and sobriety, imposed by law, violates every principle of that progressive theory, “The survival of the fittest”.What will be the final result? You say, “No man can forecast it”.

Any intelligent man can rehearse it! There is nothing new under the sun. One hundred fifty years ago France disposed of the true church, massacring Protestants in multitudes; 150 years ago France repudiated the Bible; 150 years ago France dethroned God and impersonating Human Reason, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, in a street strumpet, rid itself of all the restraints with which the Bible had ever sought to bind it. Then what? Then, as one has said, “Her flourishing manufacturing cities fell into decay; her fertile districts returned to native wildness; a period of moral and intellectual decadence ensued and the whole nation plunged by a swift descent to the bloody abyss of the revolution by the way of anarchy, ruin and the Reign of Terror” .Think you it will be different this time? I tell you, Nay!

The doctrine of Charles Darwin, in proportion as it dominates the future, the biological theory of evolution to the extent of its final acceptance, will make the recent baptism of blood, brought on by Nietzsche and Treitschke under the domination of that biological theory, as compared with the baptism yet to come, as a local shower to the flood that will prevail over every mountain.“The survival of the fittest” is a soft sounding phrase, but when it is interpreted in the light of “the struggle for existence”, it becomes a startling menace. Fill a nation with the German conceit that “We are the superior race”, and all the women of weaker nations are our natural prey, and the men of such nations our legitimate servants”, and you turn the world into a slaughter house, and as one has said, “There is no logic to show why such a code of international ruffianism is wrong or at all blameworthy if the evolution theory be true”.

Its premises granted, an Armageddon is the result. I am no alarmist, but I am not blind! The triumph of Darwinism will introduce the day of the Great Tribulation!