Evolutionism in the Pulpit 93 naturalistic, necessitates the giving up of the account in Genesis, and generally carries with it a belief that the Bible is but a history of the evolution of the religious idea, and not what it everywhere claims to be, a Divine and supernatural revelation. Moreover, it is that part of the system which they accept (the origin of the species) which has quietly but firmly been labeled and shelved as merely one of the past phases of philosophic thought. To hold to it still is to subject them selves to doubts in the minds of their hearers as those ex pressed in regard to the holders of the naturalistic view. . We are not contending that there is not a sphere in which the law of evolution as propounded by Mr. Spencer is oper ative. On the contrary, we believe there is ; but as said by Philip Mauro, it is “entirely confined to the sphere of the activities of fallen man.” It is a most significant fact that it is from this sphere alone that Mr. Spencer draws all his illustrations, and for the simple reason that outside of it in all God’s great universe, so far as known, there is not a scintilla of evidence that the law of evolution is, or ever has been, in operation. This fact has been the stumbling stone of the evo lutionists from the first. All Mr. Spencer’s pompous phrase ology about a primitive homogeneous mass passing in endless cycles from the “imperceptible to the perceptible, and back again from the perceptible to the imperceptible,” and from “indeterminate uniformity to determinate multiformity,” has no more foundation in actual fact than an air castle or Gulli ver’s travels. The limits of this article forbid further reference to the interesting fact—evidence of which is superabundant and convincing—that the law of evolution is strictly confined to the sphere of human activities, save to note that it is not, as so many suppose, a “natural law,” but is, to borrow a term from Dr. H. Bushnell, one of “unnature.” It is the law of human progress apart from God, and under the leadership of the prince of this world system who originated it.
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