Part 15 (2/2)

Now I wish simply to call your attention to the fact that doubt does not touch this eternal Power, does not touch the fact that this is a good Power, and that it is on the side of goodness, does not touch the fact that we are the children of that Power and may co-operate with it for good and share its ultimate triumph, does not touch the great hope that makes it worth while for us to suffer, to bear, to dare all things. And these great trusts, are they not all we need to be men, to be women, to conquer the conditions of life and prove ourselves children of the Highest?

EVOLUTION LOSES NOTHING OF VALUE TO MAN.

I TAKE two texts, one of them from the New Testament. It may be found in the fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, the seventeenth verse, ”Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.” The other text is from Emerson: ”One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost.”

The theory of evolution to-day, in the minds of all competent students, is quite as firmly established as is the law of gravity or the Copernican theory in astronomy. But, when it was first propounded in its modern form by Herbert Spencer, when he issued his first book, and when Darwin's ”Origin of Species” was published, there was an outcry, especially throughout the religious world. There was a great fear shuddered through the hearts of men. They felt as though the dearest things on earth were threatened and were likely to be destroyed.

Essayists declared that this theory undermined the foundations of morals. They said that it took away, not only the Bible, but G.o.d and all rational religion. They told us that, in tracing the ancestry of man back and down to the animals, humanity was being desecrated, and that the essential feature of man as a child of G.o.d was being taken away.

If I believed that any of these things were true, I might not be an enemy of evolution, if indeed it be established; for there is very little reason in a man's setting himself against an established truth.

But I should certainly be very sad, and should wish that we might hold some other theory of things. But I believe that it will appear, as we study the matter a little while carefully, that not only are these charges that have been brought against the theory baseless, but that right here is to be found not only the real progress of the world, but the true conservatism. Evolution is the most conservative theory that has ever been held. It keeps everything that has been found serviceable to man. It may transform it. It may lift it to some higher level, on to some loftier range of life; but it keeps and carries forward everything that helps. This inevitably and in the nature of things.

There are two great tendencies which are characteristic of that method of progress or growth which we call by the name of evolution. One is the hereditary tendency, and the other is the tendency to variation.

One, if it were in full force, would merely, forever and forever, repeat the past: the other, if it were in full force, would blot out all the past, and forever be creating something new. It is in the balance of these two tendencies that we discover the orderly growth of the world; and this orderly growth it is which const.i.tutes evolution.

Let me ill.u.s.trate: Here is a tree, for example. The tendency that we call heredity would simply constantly repeat the past: the tendency to vary would vary the tree out of existence. The ideal is that it shall keep its form, for example, as an oak, but that, in the process of growth, the bark shall expand freely and sufficiently to make room for the manifestation of the new life. Now, if the bark had power to refuse expansion, of course, you know, the tree would die. If there were not power enough to maintain the form, then, again, the tree would cease to exist. This you may take as a type and ill.u.s.tration of the method of all life and all progress everywhere.

Those people who naturally represent the heredity tendency what we call the conservative people of the world are the ones who are always afraid of any change. They deprecate the utterance of new ideas. They hesitate to accept any new-fangled notions, as perhaps they call them.

They are afraid that something precious, something sweet, something dear, that belonged to the past, may be lost.

This manifests itself in all departments of life. I suppose that there never was an improvement proposed in the world that somebody did not object to it in the interests of the established order. And yet, if these people that do not want any changes made had had control of the world ten thousand years ago, where should we be to-day? We should still be barbarians in the jungles. For it is because these people have not been able to keep the world still that we have advanced here and there in the direction of what we are pleased to call civilization. You remember, for example, as ill.u.s.trating this opposition, how the workingmen, the laborers of the time, a few years ago, in England, fought against the introduction of machinery. They said machinery was going to take their work away, it was going to break down the old industrial order of the world, it was going to make it impossible for the laborer to get his living. A few machines were to do the world's work; and the great mult.i.tude were to be idle, and, not having anything to do, were to receive no pay for labor, and consequently were to starve. This was the cry. The outcome has been that there has been infinitely more done, a much larger number of laborers employed, employed less hours in the day, paid higher wages; and in every direction the condition of the industrial world has been improved. I speak of this simply as an ill.u.s.tration of this tendency.

When we come to religion, it is perfectly natural that the opposition here should be bitterer than anywhere else in the world; and it always has been. If you think of it just a little, if you read the history of the world a little, you will find that the last thing on earth that people have been willing to improve has been their religion. And this, I say, is perfectly natural. Why? Because men have instinctively felt and rightly felt, as I believe that religion was the most important thing in human life. They felt that it was the most sacred thing, that on it depended higher and more permanent interests than on anything else; and they have naturally been timid, naturally shrunk from change, with the fear that changing the theories and the practices and the thoughts was going to endanger the thing itself. They have said, We will hold on, at any rate, to these reverences, these wors.h.i.+ps, these precious trusts, these hopes; and we will hold on to the vessels in which we have carried them, because how do we know, if the vessels are changed or taken away, that we may not lose the precious contents themselves? This, I say, has been the feeling; and it has been a perfectly natural feeling.

I wish then, this morning, for a little while to review with you some of the steps in evolution that the world has taken, and let you see how it has worked in different departments of human thought and human life, so that you may become convinced if possible, as I am that evolution has never thrown away, has never lost, anything precious in any department of the world since human life began. If I believed it did, I would fight against it. For instance, here is a devout Catholic servant-girl. She believes in her saints. She counts her beads and recites her Ave Marias. She goes to the cathedral on Sunday morning.

And this is her world of poetry and romance. Here is a source of comfort. This throws a halo around the drudgery of the kitchen, the service of the house in which she is an employee. Would I take away this trust, this poetry, this romance, untrue as I believe it to be in form, inadequate as I believe it to be? Would I take it away, and leave her mind bare, her heart empty, leave her without the comfort, without the inspiration? Not for one moment. I would take it away only if, in the process, I could supply her with something just a little better, a little more nearly true, something that would give her comfort, something that would be an inspiration to her, something that would buoy her up as a hope, something that would help her to be faithful and true in the work of her daily life. This is what evolution means. It means taking away the old, and, in the process, subst.i.tuting therefore something a little bit better. I would not take away the idol of the lowest barbarian unless I could help him to take a step a little higher, so that he should see the intellectual and spiritual thing that the idol stood for, and so enable him to walk his pathway of life as firmly, as faithfully, as hopefully, as he did before.

I have been watching the work that has been going on in our streets during the last months. You, too, have seen how they will replace the track on an entire line of railway without stopping the running of the cars. They take away the old and worn and poorer, but constantly subst.i.tute something better for it; and human life moves right on.

Everything is better; the change has come; but that change is; an improvement. This is what evolution does; for evolution is nothing new in the world. It is only the name for the method of G.o.d, which is as old as the universe itself, new to us because we have just discovered it; but as old as the light of a star that has been travelling for twenty-five thousand years, and has just come into the field of the astronomer's telescope, so that he announces it as a new discovery..

This is what it means.

Now let me call your attention to the fact that in the world below us the world of the trees and the shrubs and the flowers and the plants this evolutionary force is working after precisely the same method that I have just been indicating. All the fair, the beautiful things have been developed under this process, in accordance with this method, out of the first bare and rough and crude manifestations of vegetable life.

Nothing has been thrown away that was of any value. Take it, for example, in regard to the wild weeds which have become the oats and the wheat and the barley and the rye of the world. All the old that was of value has been kept and has been developed into something higher and finer and sweeter. The aboriginal crab-apple has become a thousand luscious kinds of fruits; and the flowers all their beauty, all their fragrance, all their color and form? are the result of the working of this method of G.o.d's power that we have called evolution. Nothing of any value is left behind in the uncounted ages of the past. All that is of worth to-day has been transformed and lifted to some higher level and made a part of the wondrous life that is all around us.

So, when you come to the animal life, you find the same thing. The swift foot, the flas.h.i.+ng wing, the beauty of color, all the wonders of animal life have simply been developed in accordance with this method and under this impelling force which we call evolution, which is only a name for the working of G.o.d.

When we come up to the level of man, what do we find? Man as an animal is not the equal of a good many of the other animals in the world. He is not as swift as the deer, he is not as strong as the lion, he cannot fly in the air like a bird, he cannot live in the sea like the fishes.

He is restricted to the comparatively contracted area of the surface of the land. He is not as perfect as an animal; but what has evolution done? It has given him power of conquest over all these, because the evolutionary force has left the bodily structure, we need expect no more marked changes there, and has gone to brain. So this feeblest of all the animals physically speaking he would be no match for a hundred different kinds of animals that are about us is able to outwit them all, that is, to outknow, he has become the ruler of the earth. And not only has this evolutionary force gone to brain, it has gone to heart; and man has become a being whose primest characteristic is love. The one thing that we think of as most perfect, that we dream of as characterizing his future development, is summed up in his affectional nature. Then, too, he has become a moral being.

There are times, like the present, when it seems as though the animal were at the top, and the affectional nature suppressed, and the conscience were ruled out of court; and yet you study the methods of modern warfare as compared with those of the past, you see how pity and tenderness and care walk by the side of every gun, hide in the rear of every battlefield to attend to the wounded and suffering. And you know what talk there has been of pity for the hungry, the desire of the world to feed those that need; and the one dominant note in the discussion of the war all over the world has been the question as to its being right. No matter how we may have decided, whether the decision be correct or not, the civilized world bows itself in the presence of its ideal of right, and demands that no war shall be fought the issue of which is not to be a better condition of mankind.

Evolution, then, tends to the development of brain, heart, conscience, and the spiritual nature of man. It has left nothing behind that is of any value to us. It has transformed or sublimed or lifted all up into the higher range of the life that we are living to-day, and contains within itself a promise of the higher and the grander life that we reach forward to to-morrow.

I wish now, for a moment, to ill.u.s.trate the working of this in regard to some of the inst.i.tutions of the world. If I had time, I could show you that the same law is apparent in the development of the arts, sculpture, painting, poetry. I must pa.s.s them by, however. As ill.u.s.trating what I mean, let me take the one art of music. From the very beginning man has been interested in making some sort of sounds which, I suppose, have been regarded as music by him. Most of those that are a.s.sociated with the barbaric man would be anything but music to us. The music, for example, that they give in connection with a play in a Chinese theatre would not be acceptable to the cultivated ear of Americans. We have left behind much that the world called music. We have left behind any number of musical instruments. We do not now have those that the Psalmist makes so much of, the old-time harp, the sackbut, the psaltery. I do not know, though you may, what kind of instruments they were. The world has completely forgotten them, and left them out of sight. And yet no musical note, no musical chord, no musical thought, no musical feeling, has been forgotten or dropped along the advancing pathway of the world's progress; and in our organs all the attempts at instruments of that kind from the beginning of the world are preserved, transformed and glorified. In our magnificent orchestras all the first feeble beginnings are developed until we have a conception of music to-day such as would have been utterly incomprehensible to the primeval man. What I wish you to note is and this is the use of my ill.u.s.tration that the advancing growth of the music of the world has forgotten nothing that it was worth while to keep.

Let me give you one more ill.u.s.tration. Take it in the line of government. The first tribes were governed by two forces, brute force and superst.i.tious fear. These were the two things that kept the primal tribes of the world in order, such order as was maintained in those far-off times. The world has gone on developing different types of government, different types of social order. I need not stop to outline them for you this morning: you know what they are; and I only wish you to catch the thought I have in mind. I suppose that every time one of the old types was about to pa.s.s away the adherents of that type have been in a panic lest anarchy was threatening the world. Believers in these types have said that it was absolutely necessary to keep them, in order to preserve social order. Take the att.i.tude of the monarchy to-day, for example, as towards the republic. When we attempted to establish our republic here in this western world, it was freely said by the adherents of the old political idea in Europe that it would of necessity be a failure, that there was no possibility of a stable human order without a hierarchy of n.o.bles with a king at the top; and I suppose they believed it. But we have proved beyond question that we can have a strong government, an orderly government, without either n.o.bility or king. There is less government in the United States here to-day than in almost any other country of the world, a nearer approach to what the philosopher would call anarchy. Anarchy does not mean disorder, when a philosopher is talking: it means merely the absence of external government. And that is the ideal that we are approaching.

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