PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Northern Advocate, 26 August 1902, Page 2

PRESB YTERI AN CHU RCH

On Sunday night at the evening service in the Presbyterian Church the Rev. W. P. Matthew delivered the lecture as notified, on "Whence is Man ? The Problem of Evolution." He took for his text, Eccles., 3rd chap., 21 Hi verse : "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth." The preacher said that man was the representative on earth of a higher realm, his spirit having its origin from above ; according to Pascall he was "the glory and the scandal of the universe." Proceeding, he said man stood at the head of the animal kingdom, at the same time being exclusive from it. He held that the evolutionary theory, that all life had grown from a single cell, was not tenable. Dr. Darwin did not remove by his theory the power, the omnipotence of the Almighty : to speak of God as working anthropomorphically, is to speak of Him as if He was a man, so Tyndall put it, and there is no room, therefore, for a free creative act on the part of the deity, if deity there be. Darwin believed that nature by some mysterious process, selected such variations as were favourable to the growth and development of species, and this was his theory of natural selection. According to Tang, nature proceeded in her work, and succeeded in it by chance. For one success achieved according to the evolutionist there were a million blunders, but where were they ? A struggle implies the presence of an opponent, but we can get no trace of the vanquished ; if for every surviving animal of to-day, there were at least a million failures the earth must be a veritable graveyard packed with nature's blunders. Referring to the sting of the bee, the speaker held that it was admirably suited to the rational uses for which it was intended, it being only when the bee sallied forth to war against monsters that it met with death for its temerity. Advocates of the evolution theory admit that fifty million years were required for its development. In fact, Sir William Thompson puts the time at twice that period. Now the insect that builds up the coral reef has undergone no change — no accidental variation — in a quarter of a million years. The evolution theory set aside the theory of the Bible that " God created each animal according to his kind." If the evolution theory is correct, then man must have passed through a series of transformations, until he finally attained his present organisation and character. The lowest of these lower forms through which he must have passed (according to Danvin) was of course that of the anthropoid apes, whose bodies have a certain resemblance to man. But there are two. considerations that seem to militate against establishing a relationship between man and monkey : the gibbon, for instance, which approaches nearest to man in form, can be traced back without the slight* est indication of change 'to the tertiary period of the woi'ld's geological history : that is, for an untold number of years before man appeared iu> j on the scene. There' is no trace from' that period of any" variation in the form of the gibbon, nor a vestige of any animal, that might serve as a | link between the four-handed ape and the two-handed man. There is a moral and intellectual gulf between them. Another point is that- had man or partially 'developed 'man, been in existence for the enormous number of ages requisite for that selection, then long ere this, judging from the .fact that populations in fairly favourable circumstances double -, themselves f in' from one to two centuries, the world c would have been filled to overflowing with the human race long ago. If man was _(levek>ped-foom the family -et the" apes where arc the traces of his development ? < Referring next to the glacial period, ] which intervened between the tertiary and the quaternary periods, and to the date of the breaking up of the ice, Dr. Chas. Lyell, basing his calcu- I lations on the rate of erasion of the rocks at the falls of Niagara, makes out the termination of the glacial period to have been only some eight thousand years ago. The date of man's creation has then been calculated at from six thousand to seven thousand five hundred years ago. Darwin held that man was bxit a human ape, but the scripture saith that "God breathed into him the breath of human life." I believe that man has had a loftier origin than the evolutionist theorists conceive : we lmist have facts, not sentiment. After referring to 'mgauients put forward ly Grant Alhti concerning, ancient skulls found in recent years, and quoting Dr. Owen, who had contradicted the arguments put forward at the time, saying that in this skull as in the case of mankind, the muscles stop at the temples, and do not extend their origin to the upper surface of the cranium, as in the apes ; while as to the structure of the human body, he also tells us that the multiplication of man's upper limbs in fulfilment of the behests of his creation, testify to the same conclusion, namely, that there is no family i-clationship whatever between man and that of the inferior races, and the corresponding degrees of modification of the lower limbs, combine and agree in raising proud man above and beyond the apes. The skull in question was found to possess a brain capacity in excess of the average human skull of the present day. It has been maintained by Dr. Page that the difference between the brain capacity of man and that of the ape is not greater than the difference between those of a civilised and that of a savage man, but on being put to the test of measurement it has been found that the average largest European skull contains one hundred and twelve cubic inches and the Australian aboriginal— the lowest of mankind at the present day — a capacity of one hundred inches, being only a dif-, ference of twelve inches. Now, the brain capacity of the largest of the apes, the gorilla, is thirty cubic inches, or seventy inches below the savage : another point is that the primeval skulls have a brain volumn con- | sidcrably in excess of the average of | the present day, which turns the theory of evolution against its advocates. Prehistoric men were quite as fully elevated above the bruto creation as the most cultured and civilised of their descendants of to-day. The whole structure of the human body, especially the large development of the brain, to say nothing of his intellectual attainments and moral instincts, testify to the immeasurable superiority of his position and creation to those of the apes, from which, some think, he is developed. The book of books says that man was created in the image of his God. The reverend gentleman then concluded a vigorously delivered lecture by a stirring poetical quotation. The church was well filled, and close attention was given to the preacher throughout. After the service the organist, Mrs Storey, played the "Dead March in Saul," the congregation reverently standing, in memory of the late Mr D. C. Wilson.