Book: A Trip Abroad

D >> Don Carlos Janes >> A Trip Abroad




We have not lost faith in the Bible. There is no need for doing so. The
word of the Lord will endure forever. But meantime, brethren, let us be
faithful, prayerful, and cautious, and be not easily moved from the rock
of God's word by the pretensions of "scholars" or of science, falsely so
called.

I do not know that there is any necessary connection between the two,
but a belief in evolution and scholarly doubts about large portions of
the Old Testament, as a rule, go together. You must not profess to know
anything of science in many quarters if you doubt evolution. In the bulk
of even religious books it is referred to as a matter that science has
settled beyond dispute. To expect that many of our young people will not
be so far carried along by this current is to expect too much. Many of
them will be carried so far; it is a question of how many and how far.

There perhaps never was a theory before believed by as many educated
people without proof as the theory of evolution. It is an unproved
theory; there is not a fact beneath it. That you have low forms of life,
and forms rising higher and higher till you get to man, is fact. But
that a higher species ever came from a lower is without proof. Let those
who doubt this say when and where such a thing took place, and name the
witnesses. Not only are there no facts in proof of it, but it flies in
the face of facts without number. If like from like is not established,
then nothing can be established by observation and experience. What
other theory do we believe which contradicts all that we know to be true
in regard to the subject to which it refers?

Not only does it contradict fact and experience, it contradicts reason.
If you listen to the voice of reason, you can no more believe that the
greater came from the less than you can believe that something came from
nothing. We are intuitively bound to believe that an effect can not be
greater than its cause. But the theory of evolution contradicts this at
every step along the whole line.

I am anxious to find the truth in regard to anything that has a bearing
upon my belief in God or religion. But in trying to find the truth, I
have never regretted being true to myself. To slavishly follow others
is, to say the least of it, unmanly. I do not believe in evolution
because God has so made me that I can not. Wherever man came from, he
sprang not from anything beneath him. When a man asks me to believe a
thing that has not facts, but only theory to support it,--said theory
contradicting fact, experience and reason,--he asks me more than I can
grant. The thing is absurd, and must one day die.

I am agreeably surprised that we, as a people, have suffered so little
as yet from the sources of error referred to. Still they are all living
dangers, and if we would hold fast the faith once for all delivered to
the saints, we must see to our own standing, and as God has given us
opportunity let us be helpful to others. Our ground is God-given and
well tested. The fellowship with God and with each other that it has
brought to us has given us much happiness here. Let us be faithful and
earnest the few years that we have to remain here, and our happiness
will be increased when the Lord comes to reward us all according to our
works.

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