Take the case of the Rev. Canon E. Barnes, D.Sc., F.R.S., late Bishop of Birmingham. At the Church Congress in 1920 he gave an address. Commenting on it The Daily Express (23rd October) said:- " The obsolete and unscientific belief that man was instantly created a perfect being was boldly flung overboard at the Church Congress today without a sign of dissent.... There was applause at the end of the Canon's address."
Was there ever a more significant sign of the apostasy of the present age? When a man, pledged by solemn oath to uphold the Bible, and drawing a large salary in virtue of his oath, publicly in the presence of the highest dignitaries of the Church repudiates the Bible narrative of the creation and all that that involves, we have truly a degrading spectacle. Where is common honesty in such proceedings? To utter these revolutionary ideas "without a sign of dissent," but punctuated by applause from the assembled clergy, is indeed a sign of the times. No wonder the pulpit is losing power over the pew.
Bishop Barnes said:- " Death did not come into the world through human sin; there was no first man made in the image of God (Manchester Guardian, September 7th, 1920).
Again preaching in Westminster Abbey (Jan., 1921), he said, speaking of evolution:- "I was taught it [evolution] as a boy, and I cannot remember the Genesis narrative of creation as a record of fact. Though some among us deplore it, the same outlook is becoming not exceptional, but practically universal. Evolution is, to use a common metaphor, in the air our young people breathe; it has come to stay in men's minds. Practically all students at our universities would as soon think of doubting that the earth goes round the sun as denying man's animal origin."
"Evolution began as a possible theory. Darwin showed that it was a probable theory. We now ASSUME it to be a fact, because all the evidence that biologists discover confirms the idea. We must accept the authority of men of science within their own domain."
" We have seen that the doctrine of biological evolution asserts that all existing species of animals, man included, are derived from primitive forms of life. The doctrine must be accepted because experts who examine all the available evidence are thereby convinced of its truth."
What a pitiable misstatement of facts! "All the evidence that biologists discover does NOT confirm the idea. We have seen how in the light of further evidence leading biologists have had to surrender the evolutionary theory as not supported by facts. Indeed in the light of further knowledge it is seen that science points in the opposite direction to evolution. It is pitiable to see how the Bishop surrendering the Bible he had sworn to uphold at the bidding of men of science, of which he had evidently only a very partial and one-sided knowledge.
The issue could not be more serious. If the evolutionary idea is true God must be a terrible monster, for if there were no fall, if " men," as the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher wrote, " have not fallen as a race," if men have come up," then man is as God made him; and therefore God made him with a sinful nature, that must express itself in sinful acts. Did not our Lord say, " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies " (Matt. 15:1919For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: (Matthew 15:19))?
Will anyone be so hardy as to say that is how God made man? The evolutionary theory makes God responsible for every sin committed in the world. The thought is abominable. It is too horrible to contemplate.
In sharp contrast to the mixture of poor science and still poorer theology which Bishop Barnes had been dealing out to his hearers are the words of Professor George McCready Price. The Bishop said, " We must accept the authority of men of science in their own domain." Will he accept the following words of Professor Price?
" It happens that the common people are still being taught in this second decade of the twentieth century, many things that REAL scientists outgrew nearly a generation ago, and assertions are still being bandied about around in the individual sciences which are wholly unwarranted by a general survey of the whole field of modern natural science. Indeed, in almost every one of the separate sciences, the arguments upon which the theory of evolution gained its popularity a generation or so ago are now known by the various specialists to have been blunders or mistakes or hasty conclusions of one kind or another " (Q. E. D., 4th edition, p. 10).
We would have advised Bishop Barnes to do some up-to-date reading, and save himself from the charge of secondhand and out-of-date science and the stultification of theology.
Evolution begins by a colossal assumption. It assumes the existence of the universe. It does not attempt to explain how force and matter came into existence. It then supposes that a speck of protoplasm with marvelous potentialities appeared; how is only wildly and vaguely guessed at. But how this bit of protoplasm received life they cannot tell.
Others shirk the question altogether. They began with an assumption, and go on with assumptions to the finish.
But this bit of protoplasm is wonderful. Professor Price says:- " Protoplasm is the physical basis of life, and, so far as we know, every material living thing is composed wholly of protoplasm and of the structures which, it has built up.
" This grayish, viscid, slimy, semi-transparent, semi-fluid substance similar to the white of an egg, is the most puzzling, the most wonderful material with, which science has to deal. Chemically it is composed of various proteins, fats carbohydrates, etc., and these in turn of but very few elements, all of which are common and none of which are peculiar to protoplasm itself, And yet its essential properties, its mechanical as well as its chemical make-up, have baffled the resources of our wisest men with all their retorts and other instruments of precision " (Q. E. D., pp. 44, 45).
Words cannot exaggerate the marvelous character attributed by scientists to this bit of protoplasm. It cannot shut out a Creator. Its very myriad wonders demand with an insistence that cannot be gainsaid a Creator, and of necessity a Creator infinitely more wonderful than His creation.
If the evolutionist endows this bit of protoplasm with such powers, why cannot he allow that God created fish, bird, beast and man as narrated in Gen. 1?
Listen to the nonsense, delivered with the utmost gravity
by Professor Drummond:-
" Oak and palm, worm and man, all start in life together. No matter what strangely different forms they may afterward develop, no matter whether they are to live on sea or land, creep or fly, swim or walk, think or vegetate—in the embryo as it first meets the eye of Science, they are indistinguishable. The apple which fell in Newton's garden, Newton's dog, Diamond and Newton himself, began life at the same point " (Natural Law in the Spiritual World, Chapter 10).