l it remains a fact that Darwinism is chained to miracle. If
Strauss had remembered this he need not have said, Darwin deserves to be
praised as one of the benefactors of the race because of having learned us
how to get rid of miracles. If there is any value in evolution against the
Bible it lies in the use that men make of it to destroy the idea that God
created man out of the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life. Where does Darwinism take you to to study the origin
of man? To the dust of the earth? _Not exactly!_ It takes you to the
_slime_ of the sea, or the _mud_ of the Nile, just one step behind the
pulpy mass of protoplasm, or the moneron. God is there working a miracle;
such is Darwinism. According to Moses, He was doing just as well yonder in
Eden working a miracle with the dust of the earth. Now, in all candor,
tell us which statement is most worthy of God, the one that finds the
origin of man in the Eden earth with a miracle wrought upon the _dust_ of
the ground, or the one that finds his origin in a miracle wrought upon the
_mud of the Nile or the slime of the sea_? The one that stands him up
erect, a man, with Godlike attributes, or the one that lays him down in
the slimy mass to pass through ages upon ages in order to get out of his
low, slimy paternity and beastly traits of mere instinct, with groveling
habits of life? Darwin, conscious of the axiomatic truth that no more can
be evolved than there is involved, teaches the doctrine that variation or
change of species is brought about by causes which already existed in the
common progenitor. Such being true, we ask: In what link below man, in the
great evolutionary chain, is intellect and moral nature to be found?
Sensible men are turning, however, away from the old, threadbare, worn-out
guess-work. The time is not far distant when it will retire once more from
scientific thought. It is very old. Pliny, eighteen centuries ago, said:
"The various kinds of apes offer an almost perfect resemblance to man in
their physical nature." This is just equal to Huxley's statement made in
our own nineteenth century, that, "So far as structure is concerned, man
differs to no greater extent from the animals which are immediately below
him, than these do from other members of the same order." Hence his
conclusion: "Man has proceeded from a modification or an improvement of
some lower animal, some simpler stock." This idea was fully expressed in
t