Alexander Patterson

“ The Bible teaches that in order that man might enjoy this, Christ had to come and die, "the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God." He died as a sacrifice, as an offering, as a ransom, as a propitiation, as a reconciliation. His death made it possible in justice as well as in mercy to save man. ”

“ Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by fact. Men adopt a theory and then strain their facts to support it. I read all their books, but they make no impression on my belief in the stability of species. Some men are ready to regard you as a fool if you do not go with them in all their vagaries, but this museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. ”

“ Evolution dwells upon the splints in the leg of the horse and passes over lightly the vast unbridged gaps between organic and inorganic matter, the origin of the vertebrates, the countless missing links between the species. It rests its argument on the "gill-slits" in the necks of embryonic fish, puppies and infants, and passes airily over the origin of matter, of life, of consciousness and of Christian experience. It presents ex-parte evidence.
2. Evolution fails in classification. We have seen the testimony of Evolution itself on this point. Nor is there any agreed definition of species. ”

“ Christianity rests on facts, from these we derive doctrines and from doctrines come experiences, which give rise to conduct and that ends in suitable prospects. Facts form the basis of Christianity. When, therefore, Evolution attacks the Facts of the Bible, it attempts to undermine the very basis of all Christianity. President Francis L. Patton has said: "You may put your philosophy in one pocket and your religion in another and think that, as they are separate, they will not interfere, but that will not work. You have to bring your theory of the universe and your theory of religion together. ”

“ Once received into a minister's heart the edge of his sword is dulled if indeed the sword is not itself sheathed. He may not preach Evolution either as a method of creation or a method of salvation, but his own inner faith is weakened in the old truth which had such power to convert the souls of hearers. ”

“ Now when the pictures of an evolutionist's imagination are held up as facts, as in the description of man's development from the brute, he leaves the realm of science and enters that of fiction. Mr. Gladstone has said of this: "To the eyes of an onlooker their pace and method seem to be like a steeple-chase. They are armed with a weapon always sufficient if not always an arm of precision, 'the scientific imagination.' They are impatient of that most wholesome state a Suspended Judgment." ”

“ CHAPTER I. EVOLUTION AS AN UNPROVEN THEORY.
With perhaps the exception of Prof. Ernst Haeckel of Jena, all evolutionists admit that Evolution is unproven. One of the latest writers, and most impartial, is Prof. H. W. Conn, who says in his "Evolution of To-day:" "Nothing has been positively proved as to the question at issue. From its very nature, Evolution is beyond proof.... The difficulties offered to an unhesitating acceptance of Evolution are very great, and have not grown less since the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, but have in some respects grown greater." ”

“ The Bible teaches that all are guilty and condemned and lost, and without excuse. It teaches that man fell from a high state as a race and as a race is responsible for his condition. It cites death as the proof of this. It teaches that man is inherently averse to God by nature and wilfully continues to do wrong and in short is condemned and lost. It teaches that he once had the truth and wilfully gave it up for sin. ”

“ Sir J. William Dawson thus sums up the evidence: "The simplicity and completeness of the evolutionary theory entirely disappear when we consider the unproved assumptions on which it is based and its failure to connect with each other some of the most important facts in nature; that in short, it is not in any true sense a philosophy, but a mere arbitrary arrangement of facts in accordance with a number of unproved hypotheses. Such philosophies, falsely so-called, have existed ever since man began to reason on nature, and this last of all is one of the weakest and most pernicious of all. ”

“ Most of the great teachers of Evolution, such as Ernst Haeckel of Jena, are and have been atheists.
It is true that many evolutionists are theistic. But it is not enough to be theistic. The devil is "theistic," so was Thomas Paine. Christianity is far more than theism. It is the grossest sophistry to teach that because a belief has some truth in it we must therefore tolerate it. All false doctrine is sugarcoated with truth. That we are not overstating the dangerous nature of the theory will appear from the following opinions of competent scholars and observers. ”

“ Virchow, the most eminent pathologist of Europe, wrote as follows: "There always exists a sharp line of demarcation between man and the ape. We cannot pronounce it proved by science that man descends from the ape, or from any other animal. Whoever calls to mind the lamentable failure of all attempts made very recently to discover a decided support for the 'generatio aequivoc' in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any form accepted as the basis of our views of life." ”

“ It will be shown that Evolution is not accepted by all scientists and scholars; that it is rejected by some of the greatest of these; that it is admittedly an unproven theory; that it has never been verified and cannot be; that not a single case of evolution has ever been presented, and that there is no known cause by which it could take place. Its arguments will be considered one by one and their fallacy shown. ”

“ It is then that the rotting platform of unbelief goes down in wreck. The other extreme is also a cause of ruin. In the time of great prosperity when all the allurements of life and time and sense present themselves, it requires all the purpose one has to stem the tide of temptations. It is here that a false belief will work havoc. The mind conceives that after all sin is not so hateful or salvation so needed or doom so fearful. ”

“ The law of the Struggle for Existence never taught Christian ethics. The self-sacrificing Christian has something which never came from Evolution. The Cross is the final test of Evolution. By it that theory and all other false theories are weighed in the balances and found wanting. The struggle for existence is the law of self and is the antithesis of the Cross, which is the very opposite of the struggle for existence. Nor is the struggle for existence the law of the lower creature. That law is to bring forth fruit, to propagate their species. ”

“ Introduce Christian experience and you have Christianity with all the civilization which proceeds and flows from it.
There is no such consistent body of testimony for any fact, science or truth as there is for Christian experience. It is the same in all ages, in all lands and in all classes of society, and in all circumstances of life. This evidence is perfectly legitimate and must be considered by the student of human life and character. Let Evolution then account for Conversion which changes man's inner nature, and gives a life which lives contrary to natural human instincts and conduct ”

“ THE BIBLE ACCOUNT.
(Gen. i:26, 27; ii:7; v:1, 2.)
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.... And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.... And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.... In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him: male and female created he them; and blessed them and called their name Adam."
EVOLUTION'S ACCOUNT.
(From Darwin's Descent of Man, ii, 372.) ”

“ Evolution is silent when we ask, Whence came these mighty forces? Calling them Laws of Nature does not answer the question. Laws need law makers and enforcers also. Laws do not enforce themselves. As forces, they show the ceaseless giving out of energy. Where is the dynamo from which this perpetual energy originated and still proceeds?
In this connection, let us notice the reticence and limitations of really great scientists as to the nature of these energies. ”

“ The Bible has never failed and we believe will not fail now. We therefore ask, What does it teach as to Evolution? We are amazed to find Evolution makes no appeal to the Bible, and the Bible makes no allusion to Evolution. They are strangers to each other. The argument from Scripture for Evolution has not yet been written. The best the theistic evolutionist can say as to the Bible account of the origin of man is an apology for its narratives, or some explanation which vaporizes its facts into figures of speech. ”

“ Evolution is not a force. There is no power or cause which is known as Evolution. The word simply describes the order in which things have been supposed to come. We must draw a clear line of distinction between Cause and Order of Appearance. There is a certain order in the succession [29] of living things as they came, but what caused that order is the very question at issue. The Duke of Argyle warns against confusing these when he says, "Evolution puts forward a visible order of phenomena as a complete and all-sufficient account of its own origin and cause." (Theories of Darwin.) ”

“ Out and out Evolution has but a fraction of the difficulties, either physical or spiritual, to face that this make-shift compromise "theistic" theory has before it. It is not surprising that the thorough-going evolutionist rejects this strange compound of fiction and theology.
We appeal to the common, every-day man of fair judgment: Which takes more faith, or if preferred, credulity, the accepting of that strange, complex, unauthenticated account of man's origin or the simple and, with an omnipotent God in mind, entirely possible account of the Bible? ”

“ The little bird will struggle more fiercely for its young than for its food, or even for its life, which it imperils often to save its brood. Below the unfallen creation and regenerated humanity is the unregenerated selfish man. ”

“ Where to-day is the Hindu race that could build the Taj Mahal? What Greek race to-day could reproduce the architecture or statuary of their ancestors? The ruins of all eastern and many western lands point to fallen races as well as ruined structures. The world's history is that of the fall of great nations such as Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, in all of which are sad examples of architecture and peoples alike in decay. ”

“ Mind is the same thing wherever it exists. [71] To say therefore that because animals have certain characteristics like those of man, they are the ancestors of man, is a leap to a conclusion entirely unwarranted by either facts or logic. Yet it is on such conclusions that Evolution rests. Creation would proceed on the same comprehensive plan, and we have seen that man does also. He applies his forces as he does his materials to the most varied uses.
Nor has any instance of the development of a brute or his faculties to any approach to man's faculties ever been known. ”

“ Evolution in vain attempts to account for the wonderful complex adjustments we see in nature, such as the mimicry of animals and plants; the walking stick so closely resembles a twig that it deceives the closest observer. The withered leaf butterfly, with spots and wrinkles, is exactly like the thing it imitates. This is true also of the leaf butterfly and of another which exactly resembles a bird's dropping. Evolution cannot account for the ventriloquism of insects, such as the cricket and tree toad ”

“ In its consistent form, Evolution leaves no room for a Creator. Indeed Haeckel, the greatest of living evolutionists and the legitimate successor to Darwin's place and greatness, states, as already quoted, thus: "It entirely excludes supernatural process, every prearranged and conscious act of a personal character. Nothing will make the full meaning of the theory of descent clearer than calling it the non-miraculous theory of creation." (History of Creation, pp. 397, 422.) Another evolutionist, [135] Carl Vogt, says: "Evolution turns the Creator out of doors." ”

“ Large sections of the world we know historically nothing or little of, such as Asia and Africa. We must remember that progress is confined mostly to Europe and America and these form but a third of the population of the world. Also that European progress is a comparatively recent matter. We are now considering the entire history of the race and must take in these vast outside regions to arrive at correct conclusions. To judge the entire progress of mankind from a short-sighted view of a limited portion is as unscientific as it is unscriptural. ”