Sir Arthur Keith on Darwinism.
—The British Association held its meetings this year at Leeds. Sir Arthur Keith, the President, devoted his address to Darwinism. It was as dogmatic an utterance as the most devoted Darwinian disciple could wish for. No one could learn from it that Darwinism had been attacked by some of the most distinguished scientists of the day and that its basic principles had been found to run counter to the laws of biology, to say nothing of those operating in the wider spheres of human progress and activity. Our objection, however, to evolution is not so much that it is unscientific, having never been proved, but to the fact that Sir Arthur Keith’s thesis, if true, would make the Bible story of creation a lie. There are evolutionists who try to hold by Christianity, but their efforts to do so are ridiculed as much by one side as the other. In the evolutionary hypothesis there is no room for the Incarnation and the Atonement, and where can the evolutionist in his scheme of things get in the great Christian doctrines of the new birth, justification, sanctification, and the resurrection? Where can it get a place for sin and the fall? When one reads such a sentence as the following, in which a learned scientist at the recent British Association meeting traced man’s origin back to the sponge, he may be excused for being puzzled:—”When metazoa arose, the world contained protista, sponges and algae. It seems more easy to imagine the evolutionary steps which would convert a sycon into an enterozoon than those which would build one up out of unicellular protozoa, or convert into a beast of prey, the green and innocent volvox.” Compare this learned jargon with the dignified simplicity of Scripture—”And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them” (Gen. ii. 26, 27).
Honouring the Founders of Modern Spiritualism.
—Sir A. Conan Doyle, says “The Dawn” (London) has just given £100 towards the erection of a memorial column near the spot, in Hydesville, U.S.A., where the Fox girls, through whom in 1848 Spiritualism entered the modern world, were born. For thirty years these unhappy girls acted as two of its most important mediums. After being long deceived and deceiving others, they left the following striking testimony:—”I loathe the thing I have been,” said the elder (Mrs Fox Kane). “As I used to say to those who wanted me to give a séance—’You are driving me to hell.’ Spiritualism is the most wicked blasphemy known to the world.” The testimony of the younger, Mrs Jenckens, is no less emphatic—”I regard Spiritualism as one of the very greatest curses that the world has ever known.”
Both had an inglorious end—dying of drink, “with little else than profanity upon their lips.” Yet it is women of this stamp who cursed the delusion that gripped themselves, that are being honoured by their deluded followers in the 20th century, boasting of its enlightenment and deliverance from all superstition. What an illustration of the Redeemer’s words—“If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt. vi. 23).
Imaginative Preaching of a Bad Kind.
—The imagination is one of God’s precious gifts, and when under the control of a sound judgment is a great blessing. But when it takes the reins in its own hands and flouts the guidance of the judgment, then it becomes a very uncertain and, at times, a very dangerous guide. This is seen in a sermon preached recently by Dr Norman Maclean, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the gist of which is reported in the “Campbeltown Courier.” His text was Hebs. xii. 1—the great cloud of witnesses. Dr Maclean took “witness” in the sense of “spectator” rather than “one who bears testimony,” and in the course of his sermon said:—“Our blessed Lord took it for granted that the dead should continue to be interested in and watch over the living. The corridors of creation are crowded with the blessed dead watching over the living. . . . The congregation in this church that night was a mere fragment of a great invisible congregation, a tiny section of that other congregation, worshipping with them—the men and women whose souls were born there and still visited the place where they got a glimpse of the eternal.” This is the imagination run riot. If we understand the Scripture aright, the blessed dead never return to join in the imperfect worship of this world. They are engaged in a worship in which there is no jarring note; in adoration and praise that come from hearts filled to overflowing with the love of God. What help would Dr Maclean’s “invisible congregation” be to Christians fighting the stern battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil; but if we take the word as indicating “one who bears testimony,” then assuredly this great cloud of men and women who have fought this battle in the strength of their Lord and reached everlasting blessedness encourages and comforts those who are engaged in a similar conflict. Dr Maclean would do well to restrain his Celtic imagination on such a theme, and seek to keep it within the bounds of what is revealed in Scripture.