112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into 

 one." * 



Haeckel and some other evolutionists would go further. They 

 would believe, though all the experimental evidence is at present 

 against such a view, that life ultimately arose from inorganic 

 matter. But even here there is no suggestion as to the ultimate 

 origin of that matter, out of which all the world, as we know it, 

 came. In the language of technical theology, evolution deals 

 with secondary (i. e., derivative), but does not touch primary, 

 creation. In Haeckel's less exact way of stating the distinction 

 it deals with " creation of form," but knows nothing about 

 " creation of matter." Of the latter, i. e., original creation, 

 Haeckel says : " The process, if indeed it ever took place, is com- 

 pletely beyond human comprehension ; and can, therefore, never 

 become a subject of scientific inquiry." f 



Prof. Tyndall, speaking of the " evolution hypothesis," says : 

 " It does not solve — it does not profess to solve — the ultimate 

 mystery of this universe. It leaves, in fact, that mystery un- 

 touched." Prof. Clifford again says : " Of the beginning of the 

 universe we know nothing at all." Herbert Spencer, indeed, 

 rejects primary creation, but not on the ground that evolution 

 offers an alternative for it, but because it is " literally un- 

 thinkable"; and Prof. Huxley, on the ground that, as science 

 knows nothing about it, nothing can be known. Q. E. D. But 

 Mr. Darwin tells us that " the theory of evolution is quite com- 

 patible with the belief in a God " ; X that when he was collecting 

 facts for the " Origin " his " belief in what is called a personal 

 God was as firm as that of Dr. Pusey himself " ; * ; while even at 

 the time when the " Origin of Species " was published, he de- 

 served to be called a theist." || Later on he says : " The mystery 

 of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us ; and I for one 

 must be content to remain an agnostic." Yet, three years later 

 (1879), in a private letter, he writes, " In my most extreme fluct- 

 uations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the 

 existence of a God." ^ These quotations, which of course might 

 easily be multiplied, are enough to show that evolution neither 

 is, nor pretends to be, an alternative theory to original creation. 

 An evolutionist, therefore, who denies the fact of creation, goes 

 as far beyond the evidence which science offers as if he had as- 

 serted his belief in " the Maker of heaven and earth." 



2. But then evolution does clearly offer us a theory as to how 

 the world came to be what it now is, and in this we are told it 

 contradicts the Bible and the unvarying faith of Christendom. 

 We have here a clear issue raised between two alternative the- 



* " Origin of Species," p. 429. f " History of Creation," i, p. 8, English translation. 

 X " Life and Letters," i, p. 277. * Ibid., ii, p. 412. || Ibid., i, p. 282. ^ Ibid., i, p. 274. 



