Page:The World's Most Famous Court Trial - 1925.djvu/256

252 omit such emphasis only at the expense of his self-respect and of his moral integrity. Such teaching would be criminal malpractice just as truly as would be a physician's failure to follow established sound methods of treatment because of fear of persecution by ignorant neighbors. For a teacher to fail to bear testimony is as essentially sinful as for a man to fail to stand by his religion. Truth is one, whether scientific truth or religious truth, and it calls for loyalty from every worthy man. The fact of evolution—of man, of all living things, of the earth, of the sun, of the stars—is as fully established as the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. Change, growth evolution, is a fundamental, a pivotal truth in all nature. Those familiar with the phenomena of nature testify with unanimity to this. The great mass of evidence of different sorts from different sources, when once seen, is overwhelmingly convincing to any normal, human mind. It can be only the uninformed who fail to accept evolution as a fact established beyond doubt. On the other hand, there is great uncertainty as to the method by which evolution has been brought about. Many different factors have been in operation, among them probably the chief has been the mysterious intimate activities of the living substance itself about which as yet we know so little. As to the numerous "causes" of evolution and their relative importance, there are about as many varieties of opinion as there are students of evolution. I am somewhat acquainted personally with nearly all the zoologists in America who have contributed extensively to the growth of knowledge in this field and I know many of the botanists and a goodly number of the geologists and I doubt if any two of these put exactly the same relative emphasis upon all the numerous interacting "causes" of evolution. But of all these hundreds of men not one fails to believe, as a matter of course, in view of the evidence, that evolution has occurred.

None of this, of course, has any bearing upon the question of God as the creator of the universe. It is only a matter of the method He has chosen in creation—whether immediate fiat or gradual growth accompanied by divergence. The evidence is overwhelming that the latter was and is His method. God is just as truly and just as intimately acting in the gradual growth of a plant from a seed or of a man from a fertilized egg as He would be in creating the full grown plant or man all at once in a thousandth part of a second of time.

There is no conflict, no least degree of conflict, between the Bible and the fact of evolution, but the literalist intepretationinterpretation [sic] of the words of the Bible is not only puerile; it is insulting, both to God and to human intelligence.

But the fundamentalist would do much worse than insult God. He is in reality, although he doesn't realize this, trying to shut man's mind to God's ever-growing revelation of Himself to the human soul. He teaches, in effect, that God's revelation of Himself was completed long ago, that He long ago ceased to unfold His mind to men in new revelation. This is evil influence, criminal, damnable. Truth is sacred and to hinder; men's approach to truth is as evil a thing, as unChristian a thing, as one can do. The thought that God is at odds with Himself, that his revelation of Himself to men of old is at variance with His works in nature is as blasphemous as it was for the Jewish leaders to say of Jesus that "He casts out devils through Beelzebub, the prince of the devils." Jesus made short work of this attack upon him.

No, the thing is not to attempt to guide God’s self-revelation into channels of our own ignorant choosing, but is, rather, humbly and in a wholly teachable spirit to seek His thought and Himself in nature, in history, in the vision of Himself He has given to men of old and is still giving to the humble minded today. One of the greatest of God's revelations of Himself to men has come