It
makes man not merely carnal but devilish. It takes his lowest appetites
and propensities, and makes them his God and Creator. His higher
sentiments and aspirations, his self-denying philanthropy, his
enthusiasm for the good and true, all the struggles and sufferings of
heroes and martyrs, not to speak of that self-sacrifice which is the
foundation of Christianity, are, in the view of the evolutionist, mere
loss and waste, failure in the struggle of life. What does he give us in
exchange? An endless pedigree of bestial ancestors, without one gleam of
high and holy tradition to enliven the procession; and for the future,
the prospect that the poor mass of protoplasm, which constitutes the sum
of our being, and which is the sole gain of an indefinite struggle in
the past, must soon be resolved again into inferior animals or dead
matter. That men of thought and culture should advocate such a
philosophy, argues either a strange mental hallucination, or that the
higher spiritual nature has been wholly quenched within them. It is one
of the saddest of many sad spectacles which our age presents." (p. 395)
FOOTNOTE:
[39] _The Story of Earth and Man_. By J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S., F.
G. S., Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, Montreal.
Author of _Archaia, Acadian Geology_, etc. Second edition. London, 1873,
pp. 397.
_Relation of Darwinism to Religion.
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