Lehre und Wehre St. Louis, Missouri — Februar 1917, Seite 78

German transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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78 Vermischtes.

Mexico, the Toltees of Central America, and the Incas of Peru.
Some of us can remember how Wendell Phillips was wont to thrill
us with his lecture on The Lost Arts. Some of the arts of these
ancient civilizations aré Jost' éven to the preésent day. Therefore we
maintain that the story of nations, so far as it can be traced by both
history and archacology, does not point to à period of primeval
savagery, but the reverse. And that fact invalidates the theory 0f
evolution. The like is true of the history of religion. It is a well-
known fact, brought out by Max Muller, Orr, and many other writers,
that the further back vou trace most of the ethnie religions, the more
nearly they abproach to pureé monotheism. The discovery of the
Egyptian Booh of the Dead, the most ancient bit of Egyptian litera-
tureé yet found, corroborates this statement, for it shows that the
most ancient ritual of that nation asserted the view of only one
God. A similar claim can be upheld for the religions of India,
China, and Persia. The evolutionists often aver that the primitive
religion of mankind was fetishism or animism. This cannot be
proved. There is not one erπample on reécord of à nation that has
evolved by its oun efforts from animism through polytheism to
monotheism.“ „We have shown that the history of nations, their
civilizations and religions, disprove the hypothesis of evolution. So
does human biography. In Gréeece most of the truly great men came
t00 soou for the theory of evolution. Homer, who flourisbed about
1000 B. C., had no contemporaries or successors who were his equals
in epie poetry. And there is Pericles, the greatest in statesmanship;
Euripides, in tragic poetry; Phidias, in sculpture; Demosthenes, in
oratory; and that triumvirate of philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle, — all of them came prematurely, and so do not fit into the
evolution hypothesis; for they were born, lived, wrought, and died
without leaving successors who were their equals. The same may be
said of Rome with her Cicero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. Other
nations gave the world its Shakespeareé, Milton, Goethe, Schiller,
Washington, and Lincoln long before the strategie moment had come
to prove the pet theory of the day to be a verified hypothesis. Human
history is a rather recalcitrant pupil in the school of evolution. It is
interesting to note that Biblical history follows in this respeéct the
same réhime as secular history. Here and theére recur conspicuous
characters as beacon lights for the rest of the world, standing almost
alone in the sphere of spirituality — Enoch, Abraham, Moses, David,
Isaiah; then in the New Testament Christ came in the fulness 0f
time' according to the divine plan, but, if evolution is true, very
much out of season. In this respect Biblical and secular history
coincide — they do not display aà uniform progressive process, but
echibit individuals who stand head and shoulders above their con-
temporaries, and describe alternating periods of eivil and religious

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