Samuel Christian Schmucker

“ The Wall Street canyon is not deep enough, nor contracted enough, nor free enough of food to blot out the life of the English sparrow. At the heart of the deepest gully among the skyscrapers of our biggest cities we find this little bird hopping between the horses' feet, darting out from under the wheel of the push-cart, fluttering only a few yards to a place of safety, to return at once to his scanty meal upon the pavement as soon as opportunity offers. ”

“ God is a deeper, a finer, a nobler something than hands, than ears and eyes. The image of God lies within ourselves: the image of God is that which makes us what we are. In every noble purpose, in every earnest endeavor to uplift ourselves or our fellowman, in every thought that turns us from the evil of a repented past, in every desire with which our hearts yearn to strengthen, support and sustain our friends and even our enemies, shines forth the image of Almighty God. This it is that links us with the Eternal: this it is that makes it worth while that we should be Eternal. ”

“ The mating of our children must be inspired, not directed.
There is one taint from which society has the right and the duty of freeing itself, so far as in its power lies. This is the taint of feeble-mindedness. Of all the calamities that can befall a human being, feeble-mindedness is, perhaps, the worst. From most misfortunes it is possible to recover; with most of the rest one may exist without detriment to the race. To be feeble-minded simply means to hark back to the level of our animal ancestors, without regaining their power to guide life. ”

“ So our ancestry runs back to the very beginning, when it originated in the one-celled animals which are also the ancestors of all the rest of the animal world. If we are inclined to deny our ancestors in the trees, what shall we say of our forefathers in the seas?
The question of course is not to be decided by our likes or our dislikes. If the evolution of man is true it will not make it less true because the process is not to our liking. It is our part, if this be the truth, to accept it as we do any other truth. ”

“ It is a most wholesome tendency which leads us to esteem religion as the main interest in life. We must feel a sense of shame when we consciously permit the influences, which most favorably mold our character, to weaken their hold upon our lives. Certainly in our time religion is the essential agent by which character is molded. Any of us would be foolishly short-sighted were he willing to weaken the hold of religion upon his life for the sake of a scientific theory, the truth or falsity of which could have but little practical bearing upon his conduct. We must hold to religion at all hazards. ”

“ We are by no means clean to-day. A fair proportion of our novels leave much to be desired. The stage is the scene of much we could wish to see cleaner. Above all this grossness there towers a sweetness and beauty of thought, and an earnestness of purpose, a sincerity of effort, which makes the present time fuller of moral purpose, fuller of the desire to be clean and to help others to be clean, than graced any previous period in the history of either England or America. ”

“ As long as we thought of each sort of animal as being a separate species shaped in the beginning by the hands of the Creator, each of these devices seemed to us a new manifestation of the Divine Providence, whose fertile planning had conceived so many methods of providing for his children. Unconsciously we thought of God acting as man acted. Each animal seemed a purely separate invention purposely designed for an especial place. Now we understand the plan in creation better, and see that each animal has come from another not quite like itself, some distance back, and this from still another. ”

“ The time is ripe for a broader conception of theology and of science on the part of those who are not trained to be specialists in either. We are becoming more and more inherently religious. We are becoming more and more enamored of the truth in all its forms. The times are ripe for us to cease the struggle and to strive for peace. So long as men insist that the important things in faith are the things on which men differ there will be eternal strife. ”

“ The second truth which seems to me to underlie this magnificent parable of creation is the truth that this great God has created the universe and that he cares for his people. Gods before had been objects of terror. Gods before had lived lives such as the people themselves would not have respected among their companions. Gods before were to be shunned. If one could but escape the attention of the gods it was his greatest good fortune. Now we have the conception of an all-knowing, ever-present God to whom his people are dear. The terms in which it was stated in those days matter but little. ”

“ His heart is valiant above that of most birds so that he has dared to make of man his near neighbor when other birds consider him their worst enemy. I love him for it. When I am in the midst of a big city with its cliffs of offices and its gorges of paved streets, it is to me a cheer and a delight to see this happy little fellow who has adapted himself to circumstances against which no other bird, excepting the pigeon, can cope. ”

“ But no one could speak convincingly on the subject before modern times, when a wider acquaintance with the animal world gave a body of facts on which it was safe to base conclusions. Even then the idea eluded men, until there came a worker trained by a long voyage around the world in which he had nothing to do except to study nature. He finally gathered in his mind material sufficient to convince himself not only of the truth of evolution but of the process by which this evolution was brought about. Every scientific principle is simple in its basal idea. ”

“ All ideal workers must point to the life-long union of a strong, vigorous, clean-minded and clean-lived man with a similarly fine, strong, clean-minded and clean-lived woman. Such an ideal may be slow in its attainment, but he aims too low who aims to secure anything less than this. The long struggle out of bestiality into pure monogamy has been so slow, so gradual, so noble in its attainments, and is still so far from perfection, that it would be an inconceivably stupid blunder to let go a single point that has been gained. ”

“ Man is only slowly coming to be a city-dwelling animal. Although it is a voluntary process with him, he still usually visits the country with much enjoyment. He has not as yet learned to adapt himself thoroughly to the city, for somehow city life kills him. Families that move into the city gradually have a smaller number of children in each generation until shortly the family is wiped out. The population of the city must constantly be replenished from the country. But the English sparrow is more adaptable than are the people. He has made himself at home in the heart of the biggest city. ”

“ A later age saw in the stars the rulers of man's destiny. He was jovial, or saturnine, or martial, depending on the planet which was in the ascendant at the time of his birth. Now we know "it is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings." Everything a man is comes to him from within or from without; from nature or from nurture; from his heredity or from his environment. ”

“ To open the egg of a chicken and examine it by the most refined methods known to science is to find in it absolutely nothing that could be by the widest stretch of the imagination considered anything like a chicken. The biologist who has examined such eggs before and knows them in all stages of the process may recognize in an egg which had been incubated for a short time something which his previous experience tells him will become a chicken. But it has not the faintest resemblance to a chicken until later in its development. ”

“ But within this century the scientist has so persuaded the world of the unity underlying the activities of the universe, that so soon as a principle is established men begin to run it out to the very end. Everyone knows perfectly well that if it could be proved that the dog and the horse had a common ancestor, still more if it could be made apparent that the dog and the frog and fish had sprung from the same stock, then there could be no question of what would be the final application of the theory. ”

“ The great mass of our bird population has left us until warmer weather shall bring back to us once more our feathered friends. It is true that we are south to the snowbirds or juncos, and their little slate-colored bodies, with their light breasts and their white on each side of the tail, make our bare hedge rows brighter by their presence. A few of our birds like the song sparrow and the cardinal are hidden away in the thicket, and have not all joined their comrades in the south. ”

“ Again we understand that we are made in the image of our Maker. Again we understand the power of the uplift of this idea. From the conflict it has emerged in new and glorified form. Hath a God eyes that he may see? Hath a God ears that he may hear? Hath a God hands that he may work? These we know to be but human forms of speaking. Eyes, ears, and hands we may owe to the brute from whom we have sprung; in our eyes and ears and hands we show the relationship we bear to them. ”

“ Gradually we have come to understand the whole matter of reproduction very much better. Minute and careful dissections of rabbits, of dogs and cats, of animals slaughtered for food, with occasional post-mortem examinations of human beings in various stages of the development of the young, leave us no longer in doubt concerning the main features of the process. The better we come to understand it the more clearly it becomes evident that in the development of the mammals we have no new procedure, but, as in so many other activities, new developments of an old process. ”

“ The regularity with which each animal reproduces its kind is no more surprising than the faithfulness of that reproduction. Some of our birds have wonderful markings on their plumage. It is astonishing to see with what fidelity the feather of a bird may reproduce the corresponding feather of its parent. It will occur to everyone how, in the human family to which he belongs, there is some little peculiarity which, while not appearing in every member of the family, when it does appear is remarkably uniform. ”

“ Why then should we feel that such beginnings in the lower world are too humble for man? Why do we think his present superiority diminished by his lowly origin? Why can we not see that precisely the reverse is true? The more humble the level from which he sprang the more gloriously creditable is his present position. Instead of being ashamed of having risen from the brute, it should be the glory of man that he has so sprung. ”

“ The whole question of the descent of man from the lower animals, or his ascent from them, as Drummond aptly termed it, is to most people so entirely repugnant as to set them at once, and finally, against all willingness to consider the question of Evolution. This, however, does not solve the problem. Even though truth be horribly unpalatable, it is still to be believed if it is only the truth. There is practically no doubt left among scientific men of the origin of man in lower forms. The evidences grow more and more complete year by year, and from every line of investigation. ”

“ Consequently, if generation by generation the so-called accidents of life are constantly eliminating the unfit in overwhelming proportions, not only must the positively unfit disappear, but even the less fit. The more keen the struggle, the fewer could survive and the fitter they must be to survive at all. This is Selection. These, then, are Darwin's four great factors of evolution: Heredity, Variation, Multiplication, Selection.
From these it results that the animals and plants naturally become better adapted to the situation in which they are placed. ”

“ For the most part the balance of the animal world is fairly even, and any species does not ordinarily change rapidly enough or migrate widely enough to show us its new features. It is difficult to see the struggle which we are so sure is going on. The life of animals is so hidden in many of its details that their joys and sorrows, if such we may call them, scarcely fall under our observation. Now and then an opportunity comes to see the process of adaptation work itself out. ”

“ Each has countless enemies which prey upon him, and these have scarcely devoured him before they themselves become the prey of some stronger creature. Until Mr. Darwin gave us his elemental idea it was taken for granted that it was a matter of pure accident which survived and which yielded in the struggle and cares of life. It was Darwin who showed us that in this tremendous struggle against those of his own kind in the search for the same food, against the elements, in securing a mate, any animals possessing a superiority, however slight, must have some little advantage in the battle. ”

“ Nearly all the world besides believed in many gods. Each nation had a God peculiarly its own, each city had a minor god caring for it particularly. There were gods of the woods, gods of the oceans, gods of the streams. Gods and goddesses were everywhere. To this people wandering through the terrible monotony of the sandy desert, the "Garden of Allah," there came the inspired comprehension of the eternal oneness of Almighty God. ”