IN the creating of the earth, we see certain groups which never combine nor pass into each other. One of these groups is Gas. There are gases which combine and form other entities, such as water. But no combination or development of gas ever produced the higher creation of minerals. These, again, are subject to various changes by amalgamation, but they never evolve even the simplest plant.
The vegetable kingdom follows the same law, which limits it to produce its own species, but admits of variations. Here we find a distinct upward move into another group. Life is bestowed; therefore neither gas, nor mineral, could be the progenitor of vegetation. Here also begins the mystery of generation, not in an embryo stage, as the Evolutionist would suppose, but an exquisite perfection of detail, by which plants preserve the precious seed from destruction, and bring it to development.
But no plant ever changed into an animal. The Hand of its Creator is clearly seen, and greater powers are bestowed. Progression, voice, enjoyment of life, some mental faculties, raise the animal far beyond the plant. No plant, however beautiful, however sensitive to the touch, ever uttered a cry or raised a song, or ever moved at will on earth or in air. And yet there is a greater likeness between the vegetable and animal kingdom than there is between the animal and man. For some plants catch and devour insects, and some animals attach themselves to one place and never move again.
But when we come to man the divergence is enormous. And yet the Evolutionist can believe that he crept on from stage to stage, from the lowest form of life to the highest, made in the image of God. If we should grant this, then the theory requires that to evolve an intellectual being, the animal with the highest mental powers should be chosen. Is an ape (capable only of imitation) to be ranked higher in intelligence than the dog? The shepherd can trust his dog to fetch home the flock; he can send him to find the lost sheep. Could he send a monkey? Again, it is an established fact that no animal has so much of the reasoning power as the elephant. Yet who traces his descent from the elephant, as the last link in the chain of development.
May it not well be that the ape was specially designed by the Creator to prove that there may be an outward resemblance as to body, and yet an almost infinite separation from man?
But the Evolutionist neither begins soon enough, nor takes us far enough. Can man evolve into an angel? We are told he was “made a little lower than the angels”—why in the 6,000 years since has not the fittest leaped beyond that “little lower” and shown us superhuman powers? It is because each order came fresh from the great mind of its Creator, each with its own gifts, its own laws, and its own limitations. Therefore, it would become a transgression of the law were a creature to pass into another order by an act of its own will. How could it then be expected to be gifted with endowments of the higher form of being?
Man will never become an angel. But Christ came to impart to him a new life which will be the final step to glory. Not evolved out of the old life, but the fruit of a new birth, by which he become a partaker of the Divine nature. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”—H. M. Barclay in the Bible League Quarterly.