But from what are we saved? clearly from eternal judgment (Heb. 6:22Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:2)). No, say some, not eternal, but age-long. It is admitted that whether the meaning of the word αἰώνιος is age-long or eternal, depends upon the context. Where God's governmental dealings with this world are concerned (i.e. where αἰώνιος is spoken of in reference to the duration of a dispensation, or to a course of things in this world), it no doubt has the accommodated sense of age-long, and this is the sense of “forever” almost invariably in the Old Testament. But in the New Testament, where the curtain which previously shut out the future, is, as it were, drawn aside, and eternal issues, in the strictest sense of the term, are disclosed, we find the word αἰώνιος used in its most absolute sense in reference to God, and as the context proves in an absolute sense also as regards either the future happiness or future punishment of men. Nothing, for instance, could be more arbitrary or illogical than to assert that the word αἰώνιος signifies different periods of duration in the two clauses of Matt. 25:4646And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25:46). If the life is eternal in the latter clause, and in the absolute sense of the term, so it is in the case of everlasting punishment, i.e. in the former clause. And in whatever sense the Spirit is eternal in Heb. 9:1414How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (Hebrews 9:14), in that sense as to futurity is judgment eternal in Heb. 6:22Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:2). Nor is the meaning of never-ending (in contrast with what has a termination, i.e. with what is temporal) unknown to Greek classical writers; on the contrary, it is distinctly used in this contrast, as convincingly pointed out by others. It is therefore deeply to be regretted that professed teachers in the Church assert otherwise. Far safer and more true is the opinion of Pearson, in his “Exposition of the Creed” (Article, “And the life everlasting"). So likewise Neander, in his Church History, vol. p. 11, note, says: “Hence the different meanings given by the Gnostics to the word αἰών, which besides its primitive—signification eternity is used by them to denote sometimes the Eternal, as a distinguishing attribute of the Supreme Essence; sometimes the primary divine powers above described; sometimes the whole emanation-world, πλήρωμα, as contradistinguished from the temporal world. In the last-mentioned sense it is employed by Heracleon.” The simple Christian may rest assured that the natural meaning to which he is accustomed is the true one. Universalism (or the doctrine that all will be saved in the end) lays God, as it were, under a compulsion, under a law of love, a necessity arising from His nature as love, which not only ignores His being light, but which really is a denial of free and sovereign grace on His part, whilst it utterly denies the incisive and decisive terms of the gospel, and the critical form in which it is presented to us in Scripture by denying the finality of its issues, viz. everlasting life, and everlasting judgment. It implies that God would not be love, and that He would not be just if He punished any eternally, and thus virtually judges God, even though this may be far from being intended.
Again, there are two distinct resurrections, that of life and that of judgment (John 5:2929And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. (John 5:29)). As regards those raised from the dead in the latter, is it conceivable that they will again die, and again be raised? Yet this must be the case if they are to have glorified bodies. No! these states are fixed and everlasting. There is the second death, the lake of fire, but no third death, and no second resurrection for the same persons. Men may endeavor to force Scripture, so as to suit their own predilections; but the truth remains unalterable in itself, and palpable to those who read it in honesty and simplicity.
“All men,” says the Apostle, “have not faith.” Faith is indeed the greatest vantage ground that the creature could receive. Wealth, power, intellect,—these fall infinitely short of it; for faith connects one with God, and gives an intelligence which even intellect cannot attain. But the sad thing is that, not only men generally have not faith, but they are opposed to those who have, and to those things which can only be apprehended by faith. When redemption is known, and the love of Christ in saving us, what could be more interesting to us—as at any time what could be more solemn for all men—than the account of our creation, as revealed to us in the word of God! What deliberation “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” “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.” Thus Adam is called “the Son of God” (Luke 3:3333Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda, (Luke 3:33)), and God's loving interest in him is thus expressed, “And my delights were with the sons of men” (Prov. viii. 31).
With the utmost deliberation God forms man, directly and immediately, from the dust of the ground, and, by the direct and personal impartation of His breath, endows man with a rational and imperishable soul. Adam is thus formed in the image of God. True, of all living creatures upon the face of the earth, Adam and Eve were the last formed. This terrestrial creation, of which Adam was to be the head and lord, was first prepared for him, and then, by a distinct and superior creative act, Adam was placed at the head of it. In the face of this plain yet noble statement of divine revelation, what are we to think of the disgusting and atheistical theory of Evolution? That in other ages of the world men have so utterly given up God, and become so debased in their minds and thoughts, as to propound and believe all kinds of irrational theories, is indeed true;—what is so extraordinary and so startling is, that in the light of Christianity, and side by side with the Bible, such atheistical theories can exist and find acceptance. It is infidelity as to the Bible, and as to every truth the Bible contains. In a certain sense and to a certain degree men may persuade themselves to anything; yet we doubt if a man can ever succeed in altogether eliminating from his mind and conscience the conviction that there is a God. We doubt if there is such a being as a genuine atheist. We doubt, too, the possibility of really believing in annihilation. There is that within us all which tells us that the rational soul cannot die, and that to God it is accountable. And why, the gospel being what it is, should men wish it to be otherwise? “Come, for all things are now ready,” is the gracious invitation to us all. It is infatuation, and worse than infatuation, to refuse it. It is to reject Divine mercy, and to retain a responsibility which renders men liable to eternal punishment. Throughout the whole of Scripture we can trace, as it were, two parallel threads, which are never separated, yet never confused. These are righteousness and grace, represented in the Garden of Eden by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (responsibility), and by the tree of life (grace). In Christ alone these have been perfectly reconciled, so that God's love and mercy can now have free course. Out of Christ they are irreconcilable, and judgment consequently ensues.
And it is striking to observe that whilst righteous judgment is so much the subject of the Revelation of John, yet the other thread of Divine grace can be so conspicuously traced throughout it. The very fact that God used the Apostle, who in his other writings dwells so much upon the intrinsic nature of God as Love (though as Light also), to write the book of Revelation, is itself no small indication that even there grace cannot be forgotten. But the awful consequences to the sinner of responsibility without life, i.e. without Christ, are inevitable, and are shown with fearful clearness in this book.
The theory of evolution puts man as a created being at the greatest possible distance from his Creator, and, denying the directness with which he came from the hands of God, destroys the sense of relationship to, and of immediate dependence on, God; it mocks the solemnity of his creation as described in Scripture, ignores the moral likeness to God in which he was created, and leaves the first origin of life wholly unaccounted for. It admits a sort of climax or goal, towards which the process of evolution is tending, or has tended, and prefers to attribute to it, rather than to diversity in unity, as God's creative plan, the wonderfully complex yet harmonious universe of which we form part, i.e. to blind impulse rather than to a preconceived design on the part of the Almighty. There is in organic life a continuity of design, and a unity in design. Emanating from the same creative center, the Deity, there is progress in the scale of creation, yet with separativeness of origin. Hence, like so many other catch phrases, Lyell's use of the term “independent creation” is, to say the least, extremely ambiguous.
Distinct acts of creation harmonize with creation as a whole, whilst being distinct: as each piece in a dissected map is in itself distinct, yet requisite to the completeness of the map in its entirety. In all God's works, creation as well as revelation, there is a wonderful co-ordination, and mutual adaptation, and in this sense no one specific act of creation is independent. But as to the fact of distinct and separate acts of creation, Scripture is express, and all human investigation and discovery, confirm it. Speaking of the grass, the herb, and the fruit tree, it says of each, “whose seed was in itself after his kind;” and of fishes “after their kind,” also of terrestrial animals that they were created “after their kind:” i.e. God created each kind separately, endowing each with its own seed; as conversely we read in 1 Cor. xx. 38, 39 that to each seed God has given its own body, and that in a similar manner one flesh differs from another. Hence in principle the definition of species is true, viz., “a species consists of individuals having a common resemblance, and reproducing their like by generation.” The records of geology, confirmed by all human experience and observation, establish the fixity within reasonable limits of species as above defined, and are utterly opposed to the theory of transmutation.
Absurd as is the notion of transmigration or metempsychosis, we could more readily believe it than that of evolution, and think the doctrine of Pythagoras just about as reasonable as that of Darwin, both being in fact, and in effect, simply heathenish. All that believe the Bible know very well that there are such beings as angels,—that they were created long before man, and that as an order of creation (we speak not now of what redemption will accomplish in due time, and in this respect) they are superior to man. Yet the pre-existence of a superior class of creatures is antagonistic to the theory of transmutation. In all points, Divine revelation, human experience, and geological records are opposed to it. We readily acknowledge that Mr. Darwin in his work on the “Origin of Species” has brought together many highly interesting facts—facts of importance in truly scientific investigation; but there is an infinite gap between any conclusion or conclusions they really support and justify, and the monstrous conclusion it is simply assumed that they warrant. Interesting natural phenomena are here most artfully intermixed with ingenious but unfounded surmises, whilst not a thing which essentially makes for the Darwinian or Lamarckian theory is proved, nor is one which makes for the Bible account of creation disproved. Whether we go back to the period of Egyptian history, or much farther back to the glacial period, or to any geological period whatever, the necessary links in the chain of evidence are wholly wanting. That every germinal vesicle in nature has sprung from one primordial spore,—vesicles which, whatever may be their apparent resemblance, are each endowed with its own form of life, and each requiring a principle of life peculiar to itself, in order to fertilize it,—that vesicles thus specially distinct could have sprung from one primordial spore, and this from some inherent power of development, amounts to a moral contradiction, and is even more absurd than to say that all the chemical elements have originated from one pure and simple; for here, at least, it could be no question of opposed organic tendencies leading to separate and independent existence.
The fact that a species consists of individuals bearing a common resemblance and reproducing their like by generation, remains (allowance being made for a certain range in each case within which variation is possible, though unstable) unaltered and unalterable. That the two processes are going on at the same time, viz. propagation by generation, and transmutation, would seem an extraordinary state of things, yet this must be if transmutation is true, for what is there to put a stop to it?—and if stopped, why (for each genus and species) just where it is,—the relative proportions of the various parts of animate nature so beautifully observed. But the gap between even the highest developed ape and the lowest example of humanity is immense;—how is this, and what has become of the missing links? It seems to us, in short, that the Darwinian theory is sufficiently refuted by those cases of evolution which nature does exhibit. For instance, the egg, the larva, the chrysalis, the butterfly, and then the egg again,—yet from the egg to the butterfly but one life, but one act of generation. So again we find the egg, the tadpole, the frog, and again the egg, i.e. the circle of evolution completed in one life and with only one act of generation,—all originating in one germinal vesicle, to which, specifically, it returns. In no other way or sense is evolution possible. The doctrine of development, whether as applied to biology or to theology is really infidel,—an attempt to stamp with the Divine sanction, and thus to justify, thorough and fatal departure from the truth as contained in Divine revelation.
Christ is the truth absolutely—the Scriptures in a written form: there can be no development in these, though there may be in individuals the increasing in the know ledge of the truth, the “growing up to Christ in all things.” But whatever is opposed to Scripture is error, and no development of truth at all. It is true that Scripture does not profess to teach science, and as little to teach, what it does teach or narrate, in a scientific way; its language in this respect is generally phenomenal. As connected with nature, science has its use; Scripture is concerned with an infinitely more momentous object and subject, the glory of God where sin is in question;—still any conclusions of science which contradict Divine revelation are necessarily and at once judged by it. If the upholders of science venture to deny the omnipotence of God, or to assert the eternity of matter, God's word, i.e. Divine authority, judges such conclusions as untrue and dishonoring to God. We think it is to be regretted that a Hebrew scholar of no little weight in this country, himself no doubt a Christian man, should deny that in Gen. 1:11In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1) bara means to create out of nothing. It is true that it does not in all cases mean so, but in the above text it certainly means to create in the most absolute sense, i.e. out of nothing, or an argument is thus unintentionally given for the ungodly notion of the eternity of matter. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This alludes to the very origin of matter, not to formation, but to creation. Is it conceivable that nowhere in the Bible is God spoken of as having in the absolute sense created matter? and where should it be asserted that He did so, but in the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis? He is the absolute Creator of matter as of life, as also the organizer of nature in its different kingdoms, the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal. These different kingdoms are constituent parts of, so to speak, one imperial whole. The Schoolmen, following Aristotle, state four universal causes of existing things: 1, the Material; 2, the Formal; 3, the Efficient; 4, the Final. The material cause was supposed to be that common substance or nature out of which things are made; the formal, that by which one object is made to differ from others produced out of the same common matter; the efficient, or motive cause, that which originates the motion or change from which the particular thing results; the final, that tendency or end to which the whole process of formation has reference, and in which it is completed. Corresponding with this, there are four words in Hebrew signifying to create, make, or form, and of these Bara refers to the Efficient cause.
Whether as regards Creation, or as regards the entrance of sin and misery into this world, no satisfactory solution exists, but that which is given in Divine Revelation. The wisest and best of the heathen writers of old were utterly baffled in the attempt to solve the problem; nor is it to be wondered at that those who now attempt to solve it apart from Scripture signally fail to do so. Yet confident in their own powers and theories, men reject the only true Light. But even though thought weak and contemptible by the wise of this world, the Christian may with truth say, “By the words of thy lips have I kept me from the paths of the destroyer,” and may rest assured that he is “kept by the power of God through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed.”
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