THE EVOLUTIONIST:
Science! O Science! unto thee
Life's pages past unfold,
And weird and wondrous are the things
We through thine eyes behold-
From "cell" up to our simian sire,
Some super-ape of old!
Yet, ape ancestral, thou abidest
A mystery profound:
For form or fossil we have sought,
Above, below the ground-
In vain, alas!-thou "Missing Link"
Art nowhere to be found!
But what although our theory lack
A vital link, or two?
And though the leading Scientists
Deride it-as they do.
That it belies what Scripture saith,
Commends it to our view!
By Evolution's trail we trace
Life to its primal clime:
Through all its myriad multiforms,
Since dimmest dawn of time,
To plasm and primordial cell
And ancient ocean slime.
"Man" may accept what Moses wrote –
No "simian" savant can;
He gives the cell and ape no place,
Says "God created man!"
The "slime" and "monkey" we prefer
For our creation plan:
Can Adam's race presume to claim
A lineage old as we?
Some few short thousand years ago
First signs of man we see:
To ages hoar our racial sire
We trace back-up a tree!
Beyond all language known to man
Our oral records reach,
To ages dim, when super-ape
First lisped in human speech
The lore of the primordial cell
Which we our apelings teach.
But though we have from Nature's heart
Her inmost secrets rent,
Through ages vast from cell and ape
Have traced our proud ascent,
Alas! our triumph yet alloyed
With fateful gloom is blent,
For all our science cannot keep
Great Nature's torch alight,
And e'en life's highest, fairest forms
Must fail and fade from sight,
And Evolution's long, long day
Shall surely wane to night.
For, soon or late, life's cycle vast
Its zenith must attain,
And high howe'er the height achieved
It may not fixed remain;
For Evolution's law demands
A downward curve again!
Life's order is Development,
Maturity, Decay,
And Evolutionary life
This order must obey.
And so, through transformations vast,
Through future ages, as through vast,
Life must fulfil its course at last,
Must ebb, and pass away!
E'en now, 'mid pleasure-loving throngs
That giddily go by,
'Mid fevered unrest, dire distress,
And pride that flaunteth high,
Disintegrating agencies
Fast spread and-multiply.
Why, some who flout our theory,
Don't scruple to avow
That we, the simian stars that gem
Our fair Science's brow,
In our primordial mud and slime
Are wallowing e'en now!
THE CHRISTIAN:
Beyond faith in a "Missing Link"
This "faith" has naught to show-
It knows not God, nor Christ, nor hope
Beyond this life below:
Ah! much the heart of "man" holds dear
The "simian" must forego!
The God of mankind, to redeem,
His Well-Beloved gave-
But 'twas the race of fallen man
He came to seek and save:
The anthropoidal race must share
The anthropoidal grave!
A glorious resurrection-morn,
A blest eternity,
Can seed of ape, howe'er so far
Removed, e'er hope to see?
Evolved into a "son of God,"
How could an ape e'er be?
The thought must wring the heart bereaved
With unassuaging pain,
That they and their beloved dead
Shall never meet again!
For Evolution cannot break
Nor free from death's cold chain.
This theory, brazenly, a mask
Of "so-called science" wears. "
One flesh of men, one flesh of beasts,"
The Word of God declares;
And all true science so affirms-
All nature witness bears.
In lieu of God's inerrant word
And sacred truths sublime,
Unfolding verities which link
Eternity and time,
It proffereth a concept based
On monkey hood and slime!
It knoweth but material life-
Somehow, sometime received;
Denieth man's immortal part-
The spirit God in breathed;
Enshroudeth present, future, past
In darkness unrelieved!
From all life's deep realities
It powerless stands apart-
It meeteth not one human need
Nor soothes one sorrow's smart;
It breathes no heavenly benison,
It heals no broken heart.
God's work creative it defames,
Redemption's truths deny;
The Man of Calvary's cross dethrones
To lift an ape on high;
And leaves its dupe at life's lone close
E'en like the beast to die!
But God's own Word inerrant saith
That all the dead shall rise,
And they must stand before that God
Whose Word they now despise.
Appalling thought! How shall they meet
Those holy, flaming eyes?
W. L. G.