September 1925
TH E K I N G ’S B U S I N E S S
383
. The “Vestige” Myth In speaking of anim al “ vestiges” still left in the human body, Dr. Rice declares th a t they “m ark the la st feeble appearance of organs useful to some ancestral form living under different environm ental conditions, hu t now become useless and being gradually evolved out of existence.” Is tha't science? “Is it verified know ledge” ? Competent physicians tell us th a t the verm iform appendix, th e coccyx, the gall bladder, the p itu itary and other endocrine glands perform a useful function in the hum an organism and th a t no man is complete w ithout them. A t least, we know th a t no hum an baby is ever born w ithout them , and so it stands to reason th a t they belong to the in teg ral man, even though not all of them are absolutely essential th roughou t his whole life. A man can live w ith one eye gone, or w ith most of his teeth removed, bu t no one would hold th a t two eyes and a full set of teeth do not belong to the normal person. Our evolutionist inform s us th a t th ere are “a hundred and eighty unnecessary p arts” in th e hum an body, “ some of them seriously in terfering w ith th e running of the machine” "" Then, tu rn ing against the Biblical doctrine of special creation, he springs the question: “Would a divine mechanic of unlim ited power create a machine of. such palpable imperfection as th e hum an body” ? We th ink th is a p ertin en t question, and will give the reply. In asking it, Dr. Rice must have forgotten th a t he himself professes to believe th a t God evolved man from the" lower forms of life. Then God m ust be responsible for having evolved m an’s body w ith its “ palpable imperfection.” How, then, will evolution exonerate God? It would seem ra th e r to increase His shortsightedness and blundering, because He took so many m illions of years to bring fo rth so imperfect a result. So th a t argum ent is rendered futile. Who is Responsible fo r Bodily Defects?. • However, Christian theology, based on the teaching of the Bible, does not hold God directly responsible fo r the imperfections of man’s body and its liability to disease and death, nor for any of the other untow ard and evil facts in the world of n atu re or mankind. The Bible teaches plainly th a t all these things are the resu lt of sin. In the beginning ' G od, made; all things “good” and “very good” (Gen. 1). He said to th e moral being whom He had created good, “ In the day thou eatest thereof thou sh alt surely die,” con noting th a t he had not by th is original creation the seeds of death in his body and .soul. The serpent, the cattle and the soil came under a b light on account of m an’s sin, for man was created to be th e head of the n atu ra l realm (Gen. 3). P a u l's a y s plainly th a t death .came by sin (Rom. 5:22; 1 Cor. 1 5 :21 ). He also teaches th a t “ the whole creation groaneth and trav aileth in pain tog eth er un til now” (Rom. 8 :2 2 ). But th ere is also th e promise in th e same context th a t the tim e will come when the creation shall be restored —^ ‘delivered from th e bondage of corruption into the glor ious liberty of th e children of God.” Thus the Bible gives the best philosophy of all th e phenomena of the world. “A fter Its K ind ” Rejecting the Biblical statem en t (Gen. 1) th a t each spe cies was created to reproduce “afte r its kind,” our au tho r bolds th a t the varieties of races in the hum an fam ily negate th a t .doctrine. “Clearly th is common paren tage,” -he says, referring to the Biblical account of the creation of Adam and Eve, “ cannot have been identical a t once w ith the H o tten to t and the American Indian, w ith the Chinese and the Anglo-Saxon. The special creationist is absolutely driven to the evolutionary explanation of the modern human races.”
No; we do not th ink it as bad as th at. All th e modern human races belong to the hum an species or genus. They can interbreed w ithout producing a progeny th a t is sterile. The changes th a t have been produced in the hum an family are something very different from th e evolution of non-life into life, of vegetable life into anim al life, of animal life into hum an life. Therefore, when the Bible teaches th a t each type was made to procreate “afte r its k ind ,” th a t means, not th a t each individual will be an exact duplicate of all others, bu t th a t th e distinct type itself shall be stabilized. The Origin oif th e Races The conservative in terp reters of th e Bible are not- com pelled to fall back on evolution to explain the various races of mankind. They are modest enough to adm it th a t they do not know how th is differentiation came about. There are not sufficient scientific data a t hand to enable any of us to form a h ard and fast judgment. Nor is it necessary. We can still deal w ith all human beings, whatever their race and color, as belonging to th e hum an genus, and as th erefo re capable of salvation th rough Jesus Christ. We m ight offer some guesses, a la th e evolutionists, on the problem of ethnic origins, bu t we would not proclaim them dogmatically, as do the evolutionists. Accepting the Bib lical records, we m ight say th a t God Himself, when He con fused th e language of the people a t Babel and scattered them over th e earth, may have injected some change into th e germ-plasms or the pigments th a t gave rise to th e var ious races. But we assert nothing; we simply offer this as a suggestion th a t would account adequately for the results. Many ethnologists th ink th a t varieties of climate and other environm ents afford a fairly reasonable expla nation. A good book on this subject Js John B. Tannehill’s “Naamah and N imrod: A Defense of the F aith of our F ath e rs.” Mr. T annehill’s proposed solution is not dog m atically set forth, bu t only tentatively, and yet it seems quite reasonable. "We reg ret th a t Dr. Rice confuses creation and evolution. He speaks about God, as first cause, “revealing His cre ative power through the n atu ra l phenomena of evolution.” Then he quotes Gen. 1:27: “And God created man in His own image; in th e image of God created He him .” But creation means to bring something new into exis tence, something th a t had no prior existence (creatio ex n ih ilo ); whereas evolution means th e development of some thing th a t already exists. Terms should be used w ith pre cision, or th ere can be no hope of coming to an understand ing. If God intended to teach in Gen. 1:27 th a t He evolved man th rough the animals into His own image, He should have said so plainly. He should have used th e proper verb: tsamach, which means to “ grow,” in some places “to cause to grow,” instead of b ara, which means to bring something into being th a t had ho previous existence. In closing we would ask th e evolutionist w hether he would identify the bestial prim itive man of evolution with the first man of Genesis, who was created in the image of God, was placed in a garden, and held in telligen t commun ion w ith his Maker. Was th e Piltdown man created in the divine image? Was th e ape-man of Java? Was the Nean derth al man? Were th e Cro-Magnon men, who, coming up from the M editerranean Sea into Central Europe, pounced upon the N eanderthal race, and exterm inated them root and branch? If none of these prim itive folk were “ created” in the divine image, when did th a t image come into existence in the soul of man? Yes, th e evolutionary theory causes many more difficulties th a n it explains.
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