176 THE IMMORTALITY OF ANIMALS 



But lest I should be misunderstood I reluctantly 

 advert to a subject I would much prefer not to 

 introduce. Some modern scientists have assumed 

 the hypothesis that the ancestors of the human 

 race originally sprung from the mammalia next 

 highest to man. This theory has been advocated 

 by several learned naturalists of Europe, but 

 Charles Darwin is the modern champion of the 

 theory that man and lower animals descended from 

 " only four or five progenitors." 



While I admire Darwin's great mental labors and 

 his profound researches into the dark and hidden 

 mysteries of nature, yet there is no doubt his 

 theory has been a great hindrance to the cause of 

 humanity, and has worked a great hardship to suf- 

 fering animal life. It has had a tendency to cause 

 some Christians to draw a wider distinction be- 

 tween themselves and the lower animals. They do 

 not desire to be considered on Darwin's side, and so 

 they try to make the gulf between man and an- 

 imals as wide and deep as possible. Some would 

 prefer to say that animals were senseless, automatic 

 machines, without any rights or sense of feeling, 

 rather than to admit that they have immortal souls. 

 But no man should be so self-important as to dis- 



