396 THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN. 



specimen of its race. God does not so treat His 

 / creatures. There is far more truth to nature in the 

 / |. doctrine which represents him as listening to the 

 / young ravens when they cry for food. But as applied 

 to man, the theory of the struggle for existence and 

 survival of the fittest, though the most popular phase 

 of evolutionism at present, is nothing less than the 

 basest and most horrible of superstitions. 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 enthu- 

 siasm 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 or 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 that our 

 a^e presents. Still these j^en deserve credit for their 



