MR. J. STORES SMITH ON EVOLUTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 265, 31 May 1878, Page 17

MR. J. STORES SMITH O N EVOLUTION.

But the law of evolution, natural selection, survival of the fittest and all the rest of it. is laid down and offensively enforced when there is not one single fact tliat imperatively demands it, and when ninetynine out of every hundred facts tell against it. Ever since man appeared on the globe, and was able to record what he saw about him on stone, in pictures, or by verbal description, there is not one scintilla of evidence that any living creature has tended to grow out of its genus. A sheep lias always been a sheep, a horse a horse, a monkey a monkey, and a man a man. Great variations occur, and those far more frequently hy man's interference than by natural selection, but nothing acquires any of the marked characteristics of the group above it, and all, if left alone, tend to breed hack to the primal type. Nature seems to have as great an abhorence of any departure from the original form, as it "has of a vacuum. Nor can any instance be found in the geological record among the fossils ; and many can be found agaiust it. I have not read the anti-evolution side of the case. I have read the writings of Mr. Darwin and Professor Huxley and others, and had the advantage of personal talk with an eminent friend of theirs, who shares their views, and I have read without prejudice, but failed to find that they advanced one solid argument in support of their views. lam quite certain that if this controversy could be turned into a lawsuit, any judge on the bench would dismiss the case against the Evolutionists with costs, without calling for a reply. The eminent Mend I allude to, himself one of the first living mathematicians, and an intimate associate of Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, &c, and sharing their views, was candid enough to admit that the theory was beset with difficulties, that quite as many facts were against it as for it, that it hardly seemed susceptible of proof. And, "when I asked why he held the theory under such a condition of the evidence, why on the assumption of this law, Dr. Tyndall chaffed and derided prayer, and Professor Huxley gnashed, his teeth at dogma, and chuckled over the base deceit of man, his reply was :—": — " We arc bound to hold it, because it is the only theory yet propounded which can account for life, all we see of life, without the intervention of a God. Nature must be held to be capable of producing everything by herself, and within herself, with no interference db extra, and this theory explains how she may have done it. Hence we feel bound to hold it and to teach it." Shade of Bacon ! here is Science ! This is the argument in a circle. There is no interference with nature on the pa-vt of God, or any other force or power ah extra. We prove this by the law of evolution. What proves the law 'of evolution? Why, nothing, except that its assumption is necessary to the former Law ? This was the outcome of Science, whose boast was that it walked firmly from certitude to certitude, not dealing in fancies and beliefs and undemonstrablc imaginings, like us poor illogical Believers.