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Ifljl (Continued from page.2) *r AL DOCTRINE original philosopher of the last cen tury. A man who made a deeper im print on philosophy than any other man withfti a hundred years, whether right or wrong. More books have been written about him than probably all the rest of the philosophers in a hundred years. More college profes sors have talked about him. In a way he has reached more people and still he has been a philosopher of what we might call the intellectual cult. “He wrote one book called ‘Beyond the Good and Evil’ which has a crit icism of all moral precepts as we understand them, and a treatise that the intelligent man was beyond good and evil, that the laws for good and the laws for evil did not apply to anybody who' approached the super man. He wrote on the will power. “I have just made a few short ex tracts from Nietzsche that show the things that he (Leopold) has read, and these are short and almost taken at random. It is not how this would af fect you. It is not how it would af fect me. The question is, how it would affect the impressionable, vis ionary, dreamy mind of a boy—a boy who should never have seen it—too ly for him. « Philosophy of Materialism r “Quotation from Nietzsche: ‘Why l so soft, oh, my brethren? Why so soft, so unresisting and yielding? Why is there so much disavowal and abnegation in your heart? Why is there so little faith in your looks ? For all creators are hard and it must seem blessedness unto you to press your hand upon milleniunjs and upon wax. This new table, oh, my brethren, I put over you; became hard. To be obessed by moral considerations pre supposes a very low grade of intellect. We should substitute for morality the will to our own end, and consequently to the means to accomplish that A great man, a man whom nature has built up and invented in a grand style, is colder, harder, less cautious and more free from the fear of public opinion. He does not possess thdt vir tue which are compatible with respect ability, with being respected, nor any of those things which are counted among the virtues of the herd.” Mr. Darrow says “that the super man,” a creation of Nietzsche, has permeated every college and univer sity in the civilized world. • “There is not any university in the world where the professor is not fa miliar with Nietzsche, not one..... Some believe it and some do not be lieve it. Some read it as I do and take it as a theory, a dream, a vision, mixed with good and bad, but not in any way related to human life. Some take it seriously.There is not a university in the world of any high standing where the professors do not tell you about Nietzsche and dis cuss him or where the books are not ere. / .r “If this boy is to blame for this, he get it? Is there any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? And there is no question in this case hut what that is true, Then who is to blame. The university would be more to blame than he is; the< scholars of the world would be more to blarne than he is. The publishers of the world _ are more to blame than he is. Your honor, it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the phil osophy that was taught him at the university. It does not meet my ideas of fairness to visit upon his head the philosophy that has been taught by university men for twenty-five years. Darrow’s Cynical Ideas In fairness to Mr. Darrow, I think I ought to quote two more para graphs. After this bold attempt to excuse the student on the ground that he was transformed from a well-mean K ing youth into a murderer by the philosophy of an atheist, and on the further ground that this philosophy was in the libraries of all the col leges and discussed by the profes sors—some adopting the philosophy and some rejecting it—on these two grounds, he denies that the boy should be held responsible for the taking of human life. He charges that the scholars in the universities were mere responsible than the boy, and that the If universities were more responsible Hdhan the boy, because they furnished r such books to the students, and then he proceeded to exonerate the univer sities and the scholars, leaving nobody responsible. Here is Mr. Darrow’s language: “now, I do not want to bo misun derstood about this. Even for the sake of saving the lives of my cli ents, I do not want to he dishonest and tell the court something that I do not honestly think in this cue. 1 do not think that the univenities are to blame. I do not think they should he held responsible. I do not think, however, that they are too large, and that they1 should keep a' closer watch, if possible, upon,the individual, "But you cannot dsetroy thought because, forsooth, some brain may be deranged by thought. It is the duty, of the university, as 1“ conceive it, to be the greatest storehouse of the wis dom of the ages, and to Have its stu dents come there and learn and choose. I have no doubt but what it has meant the death of many, but that we cdnnot help” . Philisophy. liable philosophy, iipwytv . *1WWJf. » ' s the flower that #ooma e of evolution. guiltless if it permits such corrupting nourishment to be fed to the souls J that are entrusted to its care. But, go ja step farther, would the sfate be blameless if it permitted the universi ties under its control to be turned in to training schools for murderers? When you get back to the root of this question you will find that the legisla ture not only had a right to protect the students from the evolutionary hypothesis, but was in duty bound to do so. While on this subject, let me call your attention to another proposition embodied in Mr. Darrow’s speech. He said that Dicky Loeb, the younger boy, 'had read trashy novels af the blood and thunder sort He even went so far as to commend an Illinois statute which forbids mihors from reading 'stories of crime. Here is what Mr. Darrow said: , “We have statute in this state, passed only last year* if I recall it, which forbids minors reading stories I of crime. /Why? There is only one reason; because the legislature in its wisdom thought it would have a tendency to produce these thoughts and this life in the boys who read them.” ! If Illinois can protect her boys, why can not this state protect the boys of Tennessee ? Are the boys of Il linois more precious than yours? But to return to the philosophy of an evolutionist, Mr. Darrow said; "I say to you seriously that the parents of Dickey Loeb are more responsible than he, and yet few boys had better parents” . . . Again, he says, I know that one of two things happened to this boy; that this ter rible crime was inherent in his organ ism and came from some ancestor, or that it came through his education and his training after he was bom.” He thinks the boy was nob responsible for anything; his guilt was due, accord ing to this philosophy, either to her edity or to environment.” (Quintessence ot involution. But let me complete Mr. Darrow’s philosophy based on evolution. He | says: “I do not know what remote ances Stor may have sent down the seed that corrupted him, and I do not know through how many ancestors it may i have passed until it reached Dickey Loeb. All I know is, it is true and there is not a biologist in the world who will not say I am right.” 'Psychologists who build upon evo lutionary hypothesis teach that man ! is nothing but a bundle of charac Iteristics inherited from brute ances , torsi That is the philosophy which Mr. Darrow applied in this cele brated criminal case. “Some remote ancestor,” ... he does not know how remote—“sent down the seed that corrupted him.” You cannot punish the ancestor—he is not only dead but, according to the evolution ists, he was a brute and may have lived a million years ago. And he says that all the biologists agree ! with him—no wonder so small a per cent of the biologists, according' to Leuba, believe in a personal God. This is the quintessence of evolu tion, distilled for us by one who follows that doctrine to its logical conclusion, analyze this dogma of darkn^s and death. Evolutionists say that back in the twilight of life a beast, name and nature unknown, planted a murderous seed that the impulse that originated in that seed throbs forever in the blood of the .irute’s descendants, inspiring kill ings innumerable for which munder •>rs are not responsible because co 'rced by a fate fixed by the laws of heredity! It is an insult to rea i son and shock to the heart. That doctrine is as deadly as leprosy; it may aid a lawyer in a criminal case, but it would, if generally adopted, destroy all sense of responsibility and menace the morals of the world. A brute, they say, can predestine a man to crime, and yet they deny that God incarnated in the flesh can release a human beihg from this bondage or save him from ances tral sins. No more repulsive doc trine was ever proclaimed by man; if all the biologists of the world teach this doctrine-as Mr. Darrow says they do—then may heaven de fend the youth of our land from their impious baUipgs. Trifling Speculation. Our third indictment against evo lution is that it diverts attention from pressing problems of great im portance to trifling speculation. While one evolutionist is trying to imagine what happened in the dim past, an other is trying to pry open the door of the distant future. One recently over ancient worms, 76,000 be bald and toothless. Both those who en deavor to clothe our remote ances tors with hair and those who en deavor to remove the hair from the heads of our remote descendants ignore the present with its impera tive demands. The science of “how to live*’ is the most important of all the sciences. It is desirable to know the physical sciences, but it is necessary to know how to live. Christiana desire that their children shall he taught all the sciences, but they do not want them to lose sight of the rock of ages while they study the age of the rocks; neither do they desire them to become so ab sorbed in measuring the distance be tween the stars that they will ferget Him who holds the stars in his hand. While not more than ? per cent of Otir»population are college graduates, these, because of enlarged powers, need /Mp||J| than those less that their used for not against the r Evolution is < if* of a i do not i hey ion” even more both for their assure society will be and professional world, in the' political world—even in the religious world— is for consecrated, talents—for ability plus a passion, for service. Paralyzes Hope of Reform. Our fourth indictment against the evolutionary hypothesis is that by paralyzing the hope of reform, it discourages those who labor for the improvement of man’s condition. Every upward looking man or wo man seeks to lift the level upon which mankind stands, and they trust that they will see beneficient changes during the brief span of their own lives. Evolution chills thgir enthu siam by substituting aeons for years. It obscures all beginnings in the mists of endless ages, t is represented as a cold and heartless process, begin ning with time and ending in eternity, and acting so slowly that eveh the rocks cannot preserve a record of the imaginary changes through which it is credited with having carried an, original germ of life that appeared; some time from some where. Its only program for man is scientific breed ing, a system under which a few sup posedly superior intellects, self-ap pointed, would direct the mating and the moyements of the mass of mankind—an impossible system. Evo lution, disputing the miracle, and ig noring the spiritual in life, has no place for the regeneration of the indi vidual. It recognizes no cry of re-1 pentance and scoffs at the doctrine that one can be bom. It is thus the intolerant and re lenting enemy of the only .process that can redeem society through the redemption of the individual. An evolutionist would never write such a story as the prodigal‘son; it con tradicts the whble theory of evolu- j tion. The two sons inherited from the same parents and through their parents, from the same ancestors, proximate and remote. And these sons were reared at the same fire- j side and were surrounded by the1 same environment during all the. days of their youth; and yet they were different. If Mr. Darrow is j [correct in the theory applied to Leob;' ! namely, that his crime was due either to inheritance or to environment, how will he explain the difference between the older brother and the wayward son? The evolutionist may under stand from observation, if not by ex perience, even though,he cannot ex plain, why one of these boys was guilty of every immorality, squander ed the money that the father had la boriously earned, and brought dis gmce upon the family name; but his theory does not explain why a wicked young man underwent a change of heart, confessed his sin, and begged for forgiveness. And because the evo lutionists cannot understand this fact, one of the most important in the human life, he cannot understand the infinite love of the heavenly fa ther who stands ready to welcome home any repentant sinner, no matter how far he has fallen, or how deep he has sunk in sin. The Doctrine of Hope Your honor has quoted from a won derful poem written by a great Ten nessee poet, Walter "Malone. I ven ture to quote another stanza which puts into exquisite language the new opportunity which a merciful God gives to every one who will turn from sin to righteousness: “Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep; “I lend My arm to. all who say ‘I can.’ “No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep “But he might rise and be again a man.” There are no- lines like these in all the evolutionists have ever writ ten. Darwin says that science has nothing to do wityi the Christ who taught the spirit embodied in the words of Walter Malone, and yet this spirit is the only hope of human progress. A heart can be "changed in the heart. If one heart can be chang ed, it is possible that many hearts can be changed, and if many hearts can be changed it is possible that lall hearts can .be changed—that a world can be born in a day. It is this fact that inspires all who labor for man’s betterment. It is because Christians believe in individual regeneration and in the regeneration of society through the regeneration of individuals that they pray. “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Evolution makes a mockery of the Lord’s prayer! To interpret the words to mean that the improvement desired must come slowly through unfolding ages —a process which with each genera tion could have little to do—is to de fer hope, and hope deferred maketh the heart sick. ‘Would Eliminate Lore. Our fifth indictment of the evolu tionary hypothesis is that, if taken seriously and made the basis of a philosophy of life it would eliminate lave and carry man back to a strug gle of tooth and claw. The Chris tian* who have allowed themselves to be deprived into believing that evolution is a benefident, or even, a rational process, have been asso ciating with thpse who either do not understand its implications or dare not avow their knowledge of these im plications. Let me give you some au thority on this subject. I will begin with Darwin, the high priest of evolu tion, to whom all evolutionists bow. On pages 149 a*d 160 in “the de scent of man," already referred to, he says: “With savages, the weak in body or mjad are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly ex hibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do ohr utmqdt to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the maimed and die poor laws; and men exert their utmost the life of every one jfp,: jam 11 of domestic animals will, doubt this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly di rected, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but, Excepting in the case of man himself; hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to brefed. “The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an in cidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally ac quired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously -indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Now could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of Our nature. . We must, therefore, bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind. The Survival of the Fittest. Darwin reveals the barbarous sen timent that runs through evolution and dwarfs the moral nature of those who become obscessed With it. Let us analyze the quotation just given. Darwin speaks with approval of the ; savage custom of eliminating the weak so that only the strong will survive and complains that “we civil ized men do our utmost to check the process of elimination.” How inhuman such a doctrine as this! He thinks it’s ihjurious to “build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick,” or to care for the poor. And then note his hostility to vaccination because it has "preserv ed thousands who from a weak cons titution, would but for vaccination have succumbed to smallpox.” All of the sympathetic activities of civilized society are condemned because they enable “the weak members to propa gate their kind.” Then he drags man kjmd down to the level of the brate and compares the freedom given to man unfavorable with the restraint that we put on barnyard beasts. The second paragraph of the above j quotation shows that his kindly j heart rebelled against the cruelty of! his own doctrine. He says that we “feel impelled to give to the help less,” although he traces it to a sym pathy whieh he thinks is developed by evolution; he even admits that we could not check this sympathy “even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration of the noblest part of our nature.” “We must therefore bear’.’ what he regards as “the undoubetdly bad effect of the weak surviving and propagating their kind.” Could any doctrine be more destructive of civ ilization ? ' Hq/wants us to believe that evo lution develops a human sympathy that finally becomes so tender that it repudiates the law that created' it and thus invites a return to a level where the extinguishing of pity and sympathy will permit the brutal instincts to again de their progres sive work. Becomes More Brutal. Let no one think that this accep tance of barbarism as the basic principle of evolution died with Dar win. Within three years a book has I appeared whose author is even more frankly brutal than Darwin. The book is entitled, “The New Decalogue of ! Science,” and has attracted wide at jtention. One of our most reputable magazines has recently printed an ar ticle by him defining the religion of a scientist. In his preface he acknowl edges indebtedness to 21 prominent scientists and educators, nearly all of the doctors and “professors.” One of them who has recently been elevated to the head of a great state univer sity, and read the manuscript over twice and made many invaluable sug gestions. The author describes Neit zsche who, according to Mr. Darrow, made a murderer out of Babe Leo pold, as “the bravest soul since Jesus.” He admits that Nietzsche was “glori ously wrong,” not certainly, but “per haps,” in many details of technical knowledge, but he affirms that Nietzsche was “gloriously right in his fearless questioning of the universe and of his own soul.” Evolution may amaze some of the ministers who have not- been ad mitted to the inner circle of the iconoclasts whose theories menace all the ideals of civilized society. Do these ministers know that “evolution is a blood business? Do they know that “barbarism is the only process by which man has ever organically de clined?” Do they know that “the bloody, brutfd hand of natural selec tion” is “beneficent?” and that the “artificial selection" found in civiliza tion is “dangerous?” What shall are think of the distinguished educators and scientists who rfead the manu script before publication and did not protest against this pagan doctrine! A World-Wide Matter. To shpw that this is a world-wide matter I now quote from a book issued from the press in 1918, seven years ago. The title of the book is “The Science of Power,” and its au thor, Benjamin Kidd, being an Eng lishman could not have any Na tional prejudice against Darwin. On pages 46 and 47, we find Kidd's in terpretation of evolution: “Darwin’s presentation of the evo lution world,as the product of nat ural selection in never ceasing war --as a product that is to say of a struggle in which the individual ef ficient in the fight for his own in terests was always the winning type— touched the profoundest depths of the psychology of the yfeat. The id§k seemed to present the whole order of progress in the world as the result of a purely mechanical and materialistic process resting on tone. In so doing it was a concep which With spe t the degenerate,” ar.d democracy as “the refuge of weaklings.” Kidd says that Nietzsche gave Germany the doctrine of Darwin’s efficient aaimal in the voice of his superman, and that Bem hardi and the military textbooks in due time gave Germany the doctrine of the superman translated into the National policy of the super-state aiming at the world power (page 67). And what else but the spirit of ev ,volution can account for the popular ity of the selfish doctrine, “each one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost,” that threatens the very existence of the doctrine of brother hood? In 1900—25 years ago—while an international peace conference was in session at Paris, the following editor ial appeared in L’Univers: “The spirit of peace has fled the earth because evolution has taken possession of it. The plea for peace in past years has been inspired by faith in the divine nature and the di vine origin of man; men were then looked upon as children of apes— what matters it whether they are slaughtered or not?” Continues to Break Out Whin there is poison in the blood no one knows on what part of the body it will break out, but we can be sure that it will continue to break out until the blood is purified. One of the leading universities of the South (I love the State too well to mention its name) publishes a month ly magazine entitled “Journal of So cial Forces.” In the January issue of thfe year, a contributor has a lengthy article on “Sociology and Ethics,” in the course of which he says: “No attempt will be made to take up the matter of the good or evil of sexual intercourse among humans aside from the matter of conscious procreation, but as an historian, it might be worthwhile to ask the ex ponents of the impurity complex to explain the fact that without except ion the great periods of cultural af florescence have been those character ized by a large amount of freedom in sex relations, and that those of the greatest cultural degradation and de cline have been accompanied with greater sex repression and purity.” No one charges or suspects that alt or any large percentage of the ad vocates of evolution sympathize with this loathsome application of evolu tion to social life, but it is worth while t5 inquire why those in charge of a great institution of learning allow filth to be poured out for the stirring ot tne passions or its stuaents. Just one more quotation: The Southeastern Christian Advocate of June 25th, 1925, quotes five eminent college men of Great Britain as joining in answer to the question, “Will civilisation jsqnftve?” Their reply is that: “The greatest danger menacing our civilization is the abuse of the achievements of \ science. Mastery over the forces of nature has endowed the twentieth century man with a power which he is not fit to exercise. Unless the development of morality catches up with the development of technique, humanity is bound to de stroy itself. “Can any Christian remain indif ferent? Science needs religion to direct energies and to inspire with lofty purpose those who employ the forees that are unloosed by science. Evolution is at vv^r with religion be cause religion is supernatural; it is therefore, the relentless foe of Christ ianity, whfth is a revealed religion.” No Moral Restraints Let us then hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Science is a mag- j nificient material force but it is not I a teacher of morals. It can perfect i machinery, but it adds no moral re straints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rodder for the control of storm-tossed human ves sels. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of i its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius: it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be* content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plain—the earth’s surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below, and to go up in the clouds and shoot down from Above, thus making the battlefield three times as boldly as it was before, but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit sui cide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the, cruelties of wars that may comb in the future. If civilization is tqi be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the mor al code of the meek and lowly Naza rene. His teachings and his teach ings alone can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world. The world needs a Saviour more than it ever did before and there is only one name under Heaven given among men whereby we might be saved. It is this name that evolution degrades, for, carried to Me logical conclusion, it robs Christ of the glory of a virgin birth, of thfe majesty of His Deity and mission,-and of the triumph of His resurrection. It also disputes the doctrine of the atonement. Choice of God and Baal , It is for the jury to determine whether this attack upon the Chris tian religion shall be permitted in the public schools of Tennessee by teachers employed by the State and paid out of the public treasury. This ress of the world, and behind the Ro man government were the Legions of Rome. Before Pilate stood Christ the Apostle of Love. Force triumphed; they nailed him to a "tree and those who stood around mocked and jeered and said, “He is dead.” But from that day the power of Caesar waned and the power of Christ increased. In a few centuries the Roman govern ment was gone and its legions forgot ten; while the crucified and risen Lord has become the greatest ‘fact in history and the growing figure of all time. Again force and love meet face to face, and the question, “What shall I do for Jesus?” must be answered. A bloody, brutal doctrine—evolution— j demands as the rabble did • nineteen hundred years ago that He be cruci- j fied. That cannot be the answer of this I jury representing a Christian State, and sworn to uphold the laws of Ten nessee. Your answer will be heard throughout the world; it is eagerly awaited by a praying multitude. If the law is nullified, there will be re joicing wherever God is repudiated, the Saviour scoffed at and the Bible ridiculed. Every unbeliever of every kind and degree will be happy. If, on the other hand, the law is upheld and the religion of the school children pro tected, millions of Christians will call you blessed, and, with hearts full of gratitude to God, will sing again that grand old song of triumph: “Faith of our fathers, living still, In spite of dungeon, fire and sword; O, how our hearts beat high with joy, Whene’er we hear the glorious word, Faith of our fathers—holy faith; We will be true to thee till death.” MOFFITT ARMY STORE ANNOUNCES ONE MORE AUCTION SALE OF THE / SEASON All Day Sale, August 15th Can supply needs of all kinds. 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The Courier (Asheboro, N.C.)
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Aug. 6, 1925, edition 1
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