The Chain of Life in Geological Time: A Sketch of the Origin and Succession of Animals and PlantsDawson, John William, Sir
Science
The Chain of Life in Geological Time: A Sketch of the Origin and Succession of Animals and Plants
Dawson, John William, Sir
Paleobotany; Paleontology
Fourthly, these hypotheses are partial, inasmuch as they fail to account
for the vastly varied and correlated interdependencies of natural things
and forces, and for the unity of plan which pervades the whole. These
can be explained only by taking into the account another element from
without. Even when it professes to admit the existence of a God, the
evolutionist reasoning of our day limits itself practically to the
physical or visible universe, and leaves entirely out of sight the power
of the unseen and spiritual, as if this were something with which
science has nothing to do, but which belongs only to imagination or
sentiment. So much has this been the case that when recently a few
physicists and naturalists have turned to this aspect of the subject,
they have seemed to be teaching new and startling truths, though only
reviving some of the oldest and most permanent ideas of our race. From
the dawn of human thought it has been the conclusion alike of
philosophers, theologians, and the common sense of mankind, that the
seen can be explained only by reference to the unseen, and that any
merely physical theory of the world is necessarily partial. This, too,
is the position of our sacred Scriptures, and is broadly stated in their
opening verse; and indeed it lies alike at the basis of all true
religion and all sound philosophy, for it must necessarily be that “the
things that are seen are temporal, the things that are unseen, eternal.”
With reference to the primal aggregation of energy in the visible
universe, with reference to the introduction of life, with reference to
the soul of man, with reference to the heavenly gifts of genius and
prophecy, with reference to the introduction of the Saviour Himself into
the world, and with reference to the spiritual gifts and graces of God’s
people, all these spring not from sporadic acts of intervention, but
from the continuous action of God and the unseen world; and this, we
must never forget, is the true ideal of creation in Scripture and in
sound theology. Only in such exceptional and little influential
philosophies as that of Democritus, and in the speculations of a few men
carried off their balance by the brilliant physical discoveries of our
age, has this necessarily partial and imperfect view been adopted. Never
indeed was its imperfection more clear than in the light of modern
science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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