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CHRISTIAN MINUTEMAN REPORT

June 30, 2009

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Leviticus 25:10-12

And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.

It is still so surprising how little people really study the history of our nation and how deeply Christian its founders were. For instance, in Philadelphia where it faces Independence Hall, is the beloved symbol of America's freedom, the Liberty Bell. In its brief service it was rung for joy and for sorrow. It pealed in celebration of the Declaration of Independence, and it broke while mourning the passing of Chief Justice John Marshall in July 1835. Inscribed on its base are these words from Leviticus 25:10: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

It was so much plainer in days gone by, when our people were much humbler and nobler. God help us all to turn back to the time when our leaders and citizenry alike knelt before the feet of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

William Henry Seward was born on May 16, 1801. Secretary of State under Lincoln during the Civil War, he would arrange the purchase of Alaska in 1867. As Vice-President of the American Bible Society, he declared in 1836: "I know not how long a republican government can flourish among a great people who have not the Bible, but this I do know: that the existing government of this country never could have had existence but for the Bible. And, further, I do in my conscience believe that if at every decade of years a copy of the Bible could be found in every family in the land, its republican institutions would be perpetuated."

There is an interesting story that occurred in 1833. A Wyandot Indian named William Walker wrote a letter to the Christian Advocate and Journal in which he described his encounter with four Indians, three Nez Perces and one Flathead, who had traveled east 3,000 miles to Saint Louis, because "the white people away toward the rising sun had been put in possession of the true mode of worshipping the Great Spirit; they had a Book containing directions."

Would it not be grand if today, so many of our highly educated masses could latch on to this simpler yet powerful truth. God's word can change lives. It was not only native Americans that understood the importance of this either. Many of our leaders also understood the importance of the power of the Holy Scriptures.

In his preface to "The History of the United States", Noah Webster writes: "The brief exposition of the constitution of the United States, will unfold to young persons the principles of republican government; and it is the sincere desire of the writer that our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament of the Christian religion."

Even our early lawmakers had a deeply held understanding of our nation in relationship to our God. Daniel Webster, who was chosen by resolution of the Senate, as one of the five greatest senators in U.S. history, put it very well, when he proclaimed, "Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safety be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits. Whatever makes men Christians, makes them good citizens."

Let us all pray for the time when we, as a nation, will turn back to the faith of our fathers.

Proverbs 29:2-4

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn. Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father: but he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance. The king by judgment establisheth the land: but he that receiveth gifts overthroweth it.

The following information come from the fact sheet about the "SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE". It was published by the Center for Reclaiming America. You can reach them by telephone at 877-SALT-USA. By the way, the separation of church and state DOES appear in the constitution, but it only appears in the Constitution of the Soviet Union, not in the American Constitution. So my question becomes, why are we living under their rules?

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RESTORING THE CHRISTIAN VOICE

There are those who suggest that if you are a Christian, you have no right to influence public policy or even express your views in the public arena. The "Politically Correct" movement, which favors abortion on demand, special rights for homosexuals, and removing all references to the God of the Bible from public life, has greatly stifled any discourse that disagrees with the "correct" way of thinking. They have gained great ground and have intimidated Christians from influencing their community, state, and national policies by telling them that because of their faith, they have "no right to speak." Ironically, they base these opinions on documents that, in fact, say just the opposite.

The First Amendment

The religion clause of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Not only is there no reference to the phrase "separation of church and state," note that there is no reference to what the Church shall not do. It refers only to restrictions on Congress. It doesn't tell Johnny he can't pray in school or that a nativity scene can't be displayed in a public park; it restrains the power of the federal government from infringing on the religious freedoms of the people!

George Washington Presided Over it ...

George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention and said: "If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical Society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it." (Reply to Virginia United Baptist Churches, May 10, 1789).

James Madison Drafted it...

James Madison, who was the chief architect of the Constitution, said: "There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion." (June 12, 1788 to the Virginia Convention)

The Separation of Church and State

This phrase does not appear in our Constitution or any of our country's official documents. It does, however, appear in another prominent document, the Constitution of the former Soviet Union: "The church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the state and the school from the church" (Article 52).

The phrase also was penned in a private letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, who wrote to President Jefferson because they were concerned about the government getting involved in matters of religion. "I contemplate with solemn reverence the act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

It is clear that Jefferson's "wall of separation," referred to a one-directional wall to protect the Church from the State. He is the same one who said, "No power of the freedom of religion [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution," in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.

Jefferson Wasn't There!

Despite all his writings to the contrary, imagine that Jefferson really meant for this wall to keep the Church from the State. It wouldn't really have mattered, since this was a private letter about the U.S. Constitution, of which Jefferson had no part. He was in France at the time!

The Acts of the Founding Fathers

One of the first acts of the first Congress of the United States was an act to establish chaplains for the U.S. House and the Senate. It was clear there was no "impregnable wall" as proclaimed by the ACLU in attempts to reverse these measures. It stands to reason that the Founding Fathers knew a little better what they meant when they ratified the Constitution than those in the twentieth century who seek to undo it. They did not mean for Christians to stay out of influencing public policy -- if it had been so, the vast majority of our Founding Fathers would have had to step down from office!

To remove Christians from politics is to allow only the ungodly to rule.

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I Timothy 6:20-21

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.

If you have ever wondered how we got so far away from our Christian roots as a nation, you need to understand that the current battle has been raging for nearly 100 years. It began when the God of Creation of supplanted in our schools by the God of Evolution. To better understand what is at stake, please read the following section, which is the first part of a speech given by William Jennings Bryan in 1922. Pray for America!

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When the mainspring is broken a watch ceases to be useful as a timekeeper. A handsome case may make it still an ornament and the parts may have a market value, but it cannot serve the purpose of a watch. There is that in each human life that corresponds to the mainspring of a watch—that which is absolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be, a real life and not a mere existence. That necessary thing is a belief in God. Religion is defined as the relation between God and man, and Tolstoy has described morality as the outward expression of this inward relationship.

If it be true, as I believe it is, that morality is dependent upon religion, then religion is not only the most practical thing in the world, but the first essential. Without religion, viz., a sense of dependence upon God and reverence for Him, one can play a part in both the physical and the intellectual world, but he cannot live up to the possibilities which God has placed within the reach of each human being.

A belief in God is fundamental; upon it rest the influences that control life.

First, the consciousness of God’s presence in the life gives one a sense of responsibility to the Creator for every thought and word and deed.

Second, prayer rests upon a belief in God; communion with the Creator in the expression of gratitude and in pleas for guidance powerfully influences man.

Third, belief in a personal immortality rests upon faith in God; the inward restraint that one finds in a faith that looks forward to a future life with its rewards and punishments, makes outward restraint less necessary. Man is weak enough in hours of temptation, even when he is fortified by the conviction that this life is but a small arc of an infinite circle; his power of resistance is greatly impaired if he accepts the doctrine that conscious existence terminates with death.

Fourth, the spirit of brotherhood rests on a belief in God. We trace our relationship to our fellowmen through the Creator, the Common Parent of us all.

Fifth, belief in the Bible depends upon a belief in God. Jehovah comes first; His word comes afterward. There can be no inspiration without a Heavenly Father to inspire.

Sixth, belief in God is also necessary to a belief in Christ; the Son could not have revealed the Father to man according to any atheistic theory. And so with all other Christian doctrines: they rest upon a belief in God.

If belief in God is necessary to the beliefs enumerated, then it follows logically that anything that weakens belief in God weakens man, and, to the extent that it impairs belief in God, reduces his power to measure up to his opportunities and responsibilities. If there is at work in the world to-day anything that tends to break this mainspring, it is the duty of the moral, as well as the Christian, world to combat this influence in every possible way.

I believe there is such a menace to fundamental morality. The hypothesis to which the name of Darwin has been given—the hypothesis that links man to the lower forms of life and makes him a lineal descendant of the brute—is obscuring God and weakening all the virtues that rest upon the religious tie between God and man. Passing over, for the present, all other phases of evolution and considering only that part of the system which robs man of the dignity conferred upon him by separate creation, when God breathed into him the breath of life and he became the first man, I venture to call attention to the demoralizing influence exerted by this doctrine.

If we accept the Bible as true we have no difficulty in determining the origin of man. In the first chapter of Genesis we read that God, after creating all other things, said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let him 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.”

The materialist has always rejected the Bible account of Creation and, during the last half century, the Darwinian doctrine has been the means of shaking the faith of millions. It is important that man should have a correct understanding of his line of descent. Huxley calls it the “question of questions” for mankind. He says: “The problem which underlies all others, and is more interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place which man occupies in nature and of his relation to the universe of things. Whence our race has come, what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature’s power over us, to what goal are we tending, are the problems which present themselves anew with undiminished interest to every man born in the world.”

The materialists deny the existence of God and seek explain man’s presence upon the earth without a creative act. They go back from man to the animals, and from one form of life to another until they come to the first germ of life; there they divide into two schools, some believing that the first germ of life came from another planet, others holding that it was the result of spontaneous generation. One school answers the arguments advanced by the other and, as they cannot agree with each other, I am not compelled to agree with either.

If it were necessary to accept one of these theories I would prefer the first; for, if we can chase the germ of life off of this planet and out into space, we can guess the rest of the way and no one can contradict us. But, if we accept the doctrine of spontaneous generation we will have to spend our time explaining why spontaneous generation ceased to act after the first germ of life was created. It is not necessary to pay much attention to any theory that boldly eliminates God; it does not deceive many. The mind revolts at the idea of spontaneous generation; in all the researches of the ages no scientist has found a single instance of life that was not begotten by life. The materialist has nothing but imagination to build upon; he cannot hope for company or encouragement.

But the Darwinian doctrine is more dangerous because more deceptive. It permits, one to believe in a God, but puts the creative act so far away that reverence for the Creator—even belief in Him—is likely to be lost.

Before commenting on the Darwinian hypothesis let me refer you to the language of its author as it applies to man. On page 180 of “Descent of Man” (Hurst & Company, Edition 1874), Darwin says: “Our most ancient progenitors in the kingdom of the Vertebrata, at which we are able to obtain an obscure glance, apparently consisted of a group of marine animals, resembling the larvae of the existing Ascidians.” Then he suggests a line of descent leading to the monkey. And he does not even permit us to indulge in a patriotic pride of ancestry; instead of letting us descend from American monkeys, he connects us with the European branch of the monkey family.

It will be noted, first, that he begins the summary with the word “apparently,” which the Standard Dictionary defines: “as judged by appearances, without passing upon its reality.” His second sentence (following the sentence quoted) turns upon the word “probably,” which is defined: “as far as the evidence shows, presumably, likely.” His works are full of words indicating uncertainty. The phrase “we may well suppose,” occurs over eight hundred times in his two principal works. (See Herald & Presbyter, November 22, 1914.) The eminent scientist is guessing.

After locating our gorilla and chimpanzee ancestors in Africa, he concludes that “it is useless to speculate on this subject.” If the uselessness of speculation had occurred to him at the beginning of his investigation he might have escaped responsibility for shaking the faith of two generations by his guessing on the whole subject of biology. If we could divide the human race into two distinct groups we might allow evolutionists to worship brutes as ancestors but they insist on connecting all mankind with the jungle. We have a right to protect our family tree.

Having given Darwin’s conclusions as to man’s ancestry, I shall quote him to prove that his hypothesis is not only groundless, but absurd and harmful to society. It is groundless because there is not a single fact in the universe that can be cited to prove that man is descended from the lower animals. Darwin does not use facts; he uses conclusions drawn from similarities. He builds upon presumptions, probabilities and inferences, and asks the acceptance of his hypothesis “notwithstanding the fact that connecting links have not hitherto been discovered” (page 162). He advances an hypothesis which, if true, would find support on every foot of the earth’s surface, but which, as a matter of fact, finds support nowhere. There are myriads of living creatures about us, from insects too small to be seen with the naked eye to the largest mammals and, yet, not one is in transition from one species to another; every one is perfect It is strange that slight similarities could make him ignore gigantic differences. The remains of nearly one hundred specie: of vertebrate life have been found in the rocks, of which more than one-half are found living to-day, ant none of the survivors show material change. The word hypothesis is a synonym used by scientists fog the word guess; it is more dignified in sound and more imposing to the sight, but it has the same meaning as the old-fashioned, every-day word, guess. If Darwin had described his doctrine as a guess instead of calling it an hypothesis, it would not have lived a year.¹

Probably nothing impresses Darwin more than the fact that at an early stage the fetus of a child cannot be distinguished from the fetus of an ape, but why should a similarity in the beginning impress him more than the difference at birth and the immeasurable gulf between the two at forty? If science cannot detect a difference, known to exist, between the fetus of an ape and the fetus of a child, it should not ask us to substitute the inferences, the presumptions and the probabilities of science for the word of God.

Science has rendered invaluable service to society; her achievements are innumerable—and the hypotheses of scientists should be considered with an open mind. Their theories should be carefully examined and their arguments fairly weighed, but the scientist cannot compel acceptance of any argument he advances, except as, judged upon its merits, it is convincing. Man is infinitely more than science; science, as well as the Sabbath, was made for man. It must be remembered, also, that all sciences are not of equal importance. Tolstoy insists that the science of “How to Live” is more important than any other science, and is this not true? It is better to trust in the Rock of Ages, than to know the age of the rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the Heavenly Father, than to know how far the stars in the heavens are apart. And is it not just as important that the scientists who deal with matter should respect the scientists who deal with spiritual things, as that the latter should respect the former? If it be true, as Paul declares, that “the things that are seen are temporal” while “the things that are unseen are eternal,” why should those who deal with temporal things think themselves superior to those who deal with the things that are eternal? Why should the Bible, which the centuries have not been able to shake, be discarded for scientific works that have to be revised and corrected every few years? The preference should be given to the Bible.

The two lines of work are parallel. There should be no conflict between the discoverers of real truths, because real truths do not conflict. Every truth harmonizes with every other truth, but why should an hypothesis, suggested by a scientist, be accepted as true until its truth is established? Science should be the last to make such a demand because science to be truly science is classified knowledge; it is the explanation of facts. Tested by this definition, Darwinism is not science at all; it is guesses strung together. There is more science in the twenty-fourth verse of the first chapter of Genesis (And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so.) than in all that Darwin wrote.

It is no light matter to impeach the veracity of the Scriptures in order to accept, not a truth—not even a theory—but a mere hypothesis. Professor Huxley says, “There is no fault to be found with Darwin’s method, but it is another thing whether he has fulfilled all the conditions imposed by that method. Is it satisfactorily proved that species may be originated by se lection? That none of the phenomena exhibited by the species are inconsistent with the origin of the species in this way? If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, Mr. Darwin’s view steps out of the ranks of hypothesis into that of theories; but so long as the evidence adduced falls short of enforcing that affirmative, so long, to our minds, the new doctrine must be content to remain among the former-an extremely valuable, and in the highest degree probable, doctrine; indeed the only extant hypothesis which is worth anything in a scientific point of view; but still A hypothesis, and not a theory of species.” “After much consideration,” he adds, “and assuredly with no bias against Darwin’s views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence now stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural.”

But Darwin is absurd as well as groundless. He announces two laws, which, in his judgment, explain the development of man from the lowest form of animal life, viz., natural selection and sexual selection. The latter has been abandoned by the modern believers in evolution, but two illustrations, taken from Darwin’s “Descent of Man,” will show his unreliability as a guide to the young. On page 587 of the 1874 edition, he tries to explain man’s superior mental strength (a proposition more difficult to defend to-day than in Darwin’s time). His theory is that, “the struggle between the males for the possession of the females” helped to develop the male mind and that this superior for strength was transmitted by males to their male offspring.

After having shown, to his own satisfaction, how sexual selection would account for the (supposed) greater strength of the male mind, he turns his attention to another question, namely, how did man become a hairless animal? This he accounts for also by sexual selection—the females preferred the males with the least hair (page 624). In a footnote on page 626 he says that this view has been harshly criticized. “Hardly any view advanced in this work,” he says, “has met with so much disfavour.” A comment and a question: First, Unless the brute females were very different from the females as we know them, they would not have agreed in taste. Some would “probably” have preferred males with less hair, others, “we may well suppose,” would have preferred males with more hair. Those with more hair would naturally be the stronger because better able to resist the weather. But, second, how could the males have strengthened their minds by fighting for the females if, at the same time, the females were breeding the hair off by selecting the males? Or, did the males select for three years and then allow the females to do the selecting during leap year?

But, worse yet, in a later edition published by L. A. Burt Company, a “supplemental note” is added to discuss two letters which he thought supported the idea that sexual selection transformed the hairy animal into the hairless man. Darwin’s correspondent (page 710) reports that a mandrill seemed to be proud of a bare spot. Can anything be less scientific than trying to guess what an animal is thinking about? It would seem that this also was a subject about which it was “useless to speculate.”

While on this subject it may be worth while to call your attention to other fantastic imaginings of which those are guilty who reject the Bible and enter the field of speculation—fiction surpassing anything to be found in the Arabian Nights. If one accepts the Scriptural account of the creation, he can credit God with the working of miracles and with the doing of many things that man cannot understand. The evolutionist, however, having substituted what he imagines to be a universal law for separate acts of creation must explain everything. The evolutionist, not to go back farther than life just now, begins with one or a few invisible germs of life on the planet and imagines that these invisible germs have, by the operation of what they call “resident forces,” unaided from without, developed into all that we see to-day. They cannot in a lifetime explain the things that have to be explained, if their hypothesis is accepted—a useless waste of time even if explanation were possible.

Take the eye, for instance; believing in the Mosaic account, I believe that God made the eyes when He made man—not only made the eyes but carved out the caverns in the skull in which they hang. It is easy for the believer in the Bible to explain the eyes, because he believes in a God who can do all things and, according to the Bible, did create man as a part of a divine plan.

But how does the evolutionist explain the eye when he leaves God out? Here is the only guess that I have seen—if you find any others I shall be glad to know of them, as I am collecting the guesses of the evolutionists. The evolutionist guesses that there was a time when eyes were unknown—that is a necessary part of the hypothesis. And since the eye is a universal possession among living things the evolutionist guesses that it came into being—not by design or by act of God—but just happened, and how did it happen? I will give you the guess—a piece of pigment, or, as some say, a freckle appeared upon the skin of an animal that had no eyes. This piece of pigment or freckle converged the rays of the sun upon that spot and when the little animal felt the heat on that spot it turned the spot to the sun to get more heat. The increased heat irritated the skin—so the evolutionists guess, and a nerve came there and out of the nerve came the eye! Can you beat it? But this only accounts for one eye; there must have been another piece of pigment or freckle soon afterward and just in the right place in order to give the animal two eyes.

And, according to the evolutionist, there was a time when animals had no legs, and so the leg came by accident. How? Well, the guess is that a little animal without legs was wiggling along on its belly one day when it discovered a wart—it just happened so—and it was in the right place to be used to aid it in locomotion; so, it came to depend upon the wart, and use finally developed it into a leg. And then another wart and another leg, at the proper time—by accident—and accidentally in the proper place. Is it not astonishing that any person intelligent enough to teach school would talk such tommyrot to students and look serious while doing so?

And yet I read only a few weeks ago, on page 124 of a little book recently issued by a prominent New York minister, the following:

“Man has grown up in this universe gradually developing his powers and functions as responses to his environment. If he has eyes, so the biologists assure us, it is because light waves played upon the skin and eyes came out in answer; if he has ears it is because the air waves were there first and the ears came out to hear. Man never yet, according to the evolutionist, has developed any power save as a reality called it into being. There would be no fins if there were no water, no wings if there were no air, no legs if there were no land.”

“You see I only called your attention to forty per cent of the absurdities; he speaks of eyes, ears, fins, wings and legs—five. I only called attention to eyes and legs—two. The evolutionist guesses himself away from God, but he only makes matters worse. How long did the “light waves” have to play on the skin before the eyes came out? The evolutionist is very deliberate; he is long on time. He would certainly give the eye thousands of years, if not millions, in which to develop; but how could he be sure that the light waves played all the time in one place or played in the same place generation after generation until the development was complete? And why did the light waves quit playing when two eyes were perfected? Why did they not keep on playing until there were eyes all over the body? Why do they not play to-day, so that we may see eyes in process of development? And if the light waves created the eyes, why did they not create them strong enough to bear the light? Why did the light waves make eyes and then make eyelids to keep the light out of the eyes?

And so with the ears. They must have gone in “to hear” instead of out, and wasn’t it lucky that they happened to go in on opposite sides of the head instead of cater-cornered or at random? Is it not easier to believe in a God who can make the eye, the ear, the fin, the wing, and the leg, as well as the light, the sound, the air, the water and the land?

There is such an abundance of ludicrous material that it is hard to resist the temptation to continue illustrations indefinitely, but a few more will be sufficient. In order that you may be prepared to ridicule these pseudo-scientists who come to you with guesses instead of facts, let me give you three recent bits of evolutionary lore.

Last November I was passing through Philadelphia and read in an afternoon paper a report of an address delivered in that city by a college professor employed in extension work. Here is an extract from the paper’s account of the speech: “Evidence that early men climbed trees with their feet lies in the way we wear the heels of our shoes—more at the outside. A baby can wiggle its big toe without wiggling its other toes—an indication that it once used its big toe in climbing trees.” What a consolation it must be to mothers to know that the baby is not to be blamed for wiggling the big toe without wiggling the other toes. It cannot help it, poor little thing; it is an inheritance from “the tree man,” so the evolutionists tell us.

And here is another extract: “We often dream of falling. Those who fell out of the trees some fifty thousand years ago and were killed, of course, had no descendants. So those who fell and were not hurt, of course, lived, and so we are never hurt in our dreams of falling.” Of course, if we were actually descended from the inhabitants of trees, it would seem quite likely that we descended from those that were not killed in falling. But they must have been badly frightened if the impression made upon their feeble minds could have lasted for fifty thousand years and still be vivid enough to scare us.

If the Bible said anything so idiotic as these guessers put forth in the name of science, scientists would have a great time ridiculing the sacred pages, but men who scoff at the recorded interpretation of dreams by Joseph and Daniel seem to be able to swallow the amusing interpretations offered by the Pennsylvania professor.

A few months ago the Sunday School Times quoted a professor in an Illinois University as saying that the great day in history was the day when a water puppy crawled up on the land and, deciding to be a land animal, became man’s progenitor. If these scientific speculators can agree upon the day they will probably insist on our abandoning Washington’s birthday, the Fourth of July, and even Christmas, in order to join with the whole world in celebrating “Water Puppy Day.”

Within the last few weeks the papers published a dispatch from Paris to the effect that an “eminent scientist” announced that he had communicated with the spirit of a dog and learned from the dog that it was happy. Must we believe this, too?

But is the law of “natural selection” a sufficient explanation, or a more satisfactory explanation, than sexual selection? It is based on the theory that where there is an advantage in any characteristic, animals that possess this characteristic survive and propagate their kind. This, according to Darwin’s argument, leads to progress through the “survival of the fittest.” This law or principle (natural selection), so carefully worked out by Darwin, is being given less and less weight by scientists. Darwin himself admits that he “perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection and the survival of the fittest” (page 76). John Burroughs, the naturalist, rejects it in a recent magazine article. The followers of Darwin are trying to retain evolution while rejecting the arguments that led Darwin to accept it as an explanation of the varied life on the planet. Some evolutionists reject Darwin’s line of descent and believe that man, instead of coming from the ape, branched off from a common ancestor farther back, but “cousin” ape is as objectionable as “grandpa” ape.

While “survival of the fittest” may seem plausible when applied to individuals of the same species, it affords no explanation whatever, of the almost infinite number of creatures that have come under man’s observation. To believe that natural selection, sexual selection or any other kind of selection can account for the countless differences we see about us requires more faith in chance than a Christian is required to have in God.

Is it conceivable that the hawk and the hummingbird, the spider and the honey bee, the turkey gobbler and the mocking-bird, the butterfly and the eagle, the ostrich and the wren, the tree toad and the elephant, the giraffe and the kangaroo, the wolf and the lamb should all be the descendants of a common ancestor? Yet these and all other creatures must be blood relatives if man is next of kin to the monkey.

If the evolutionists are correct; if it is true that all that we see is the result of development from one or a few invisible germs of life, then, in plants as well as in animals there must be a line of descent connecting all the trees and vegetables and flowers with a common ancestry. Does it not strain the imagination to the breaking point to believe that the oak, the cedar, the pine and the palm are all the progeny of one ancient seed and that this seed was also the ancestor of wheat and corn, potato and tomato, onion and sugar beet, rose and violet, orchid and daisy, mountain flower and magnolia? Is it not more rational to believe in God and explain the varieties of life in terms of divine power than to waste our lives in ridiculous attempts to explain the unexplainable? There is no mortification in admitting that there are insoluble mysteries; but it is shameful to spend the time that God has given for nobler use in vain attempts to exclude God from His own universe and to find in chance a substitute for God’s power and wisdom and love.

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This brings us to our Christian Minuteman question of the week. Which American president said the following? "I enter upon my eightieth year, with thanksgiving to God for all the blessings and mercies which His providence has bestowed upon me throughout a life extended now to the longest term allotted to the life of man; with supplication for the continuance of those blessings and mercies to me and mine, as long as it shall suit the dispensations of His wise providence, and for resignation to His will when my appointed time shall come." God bless. MARANATHA!

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