The foregoing is only one instance of the many that could be cited
where science has schemed projects for universal progress without due
thought, and has come to the conclusion that they could be easily
carried out. There are as many examples of this jumping at conclusions
as would fill many books, which of course it is not our purpose to
do; but there is one that it is necessary to have brought forward for
examination, because of its having, through a most incomprehensible
want of thought, a tendency to establish Natural Religion on the very
bases upon which the Christian Religion is established.
The one referred to is that by which some of the most eminent
scientists of the present century, following up what was done in former
times, have been able by deep study and experiment, unfortunately
coupled with unaccountable blindness or preconceived erroneous ideas,
to formulate processes by which the whole universe may have elaborated
itself from protyle and protoplasm, or some such substances which,
without any foundation to build upon, they suppose to have existed
from all eternity. This advance in science has been called the Theory
of Evolution, and has been very generally considered to be new, or of
comparatively very recent conception; but it is only a piece of the
evidence of a very general propensity in those who come to acquire a
little more knowledge, to flatter themselves that they have power to
seize hold of the Unknown.
The theory may be _new_, but evolution most assuredly is not, as any
one may convince himself who will take the trouble to read the first
chapter of the Book of Genesis _and to think_. There he will find it
stated that the earth and all things in it and on it were created and
made in six days, or periods of time, showing him distinctly, if he
does not shut his eyes wilfully, that two operations were employed in
the process, one of creation and the other of making, which last can
mean nothing but _evolution_. It does not matter a straw whether the
latter operation was carried on personally by the Creator and Maker,
or under the power of laws ordained by Him for the purpose; it was
evolution all the same, and just the kind of evolution the scientists
above alluded to would have us believe to be new, not far from 3500
years after the account of the creation and making of the world was
written by Moses.
It will do no harm to take special notice of the work that was done
in each of the six periods, as it will help to fix attention on the
subject during examination and judgment; and may even tend to open the
eyes of any one who had made up his mind to keep them shut.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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