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EXPLANATION.
[The Tabernacle Conference in session last week,
kept Dr. Broughton and his efficient secretary so
busy, that no time was left for the preparation of
his weekly sermon. The Golden Age is sorry, but
the sermon will be in next week. —Editor.]
HE world stumbles on, its eyes per
versely shut and its ears covered,
striving to keep God out of its
thoughts.
The pagan worshipers of the far
East are not more tied to their
idols, than the “enlightened”
American Christian Scientists are
to their errors of Eddyism.
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But the new theories, isms and cisms that
spring up like air bubbles on the surface of a
pool, glitter and attract for an instant with an
array of prismatic coloring, borrowed from the
glory of a sun whose very purity and un
changeableness explodes them one by one. And
still the sun shines on as serene and sufficient
as though the bubble had never been.
And so it is with the Son of Righteousness.
Foolish men and silly women the world over,
spend their strength and substance feeding
scientific cocoons and chasing psychological
butterflies, only to stumble, weary and dying,
at last on the brink of the grave, pouring out
the anguish of an unsatisfied heart in an agon
izing call, O, God!
Great Pon Is Dead.
The Christian Standard of Cincinnati,
gives the following vivid story of the birth and
death of a short-lived, but dazzling cult which
was conceived in the brain of a Swedish scien
tist:
Some of our readers may remember that re
cently we paid our respects to “Panspermy,”
which had just been put upon “the sure foot
ing of a satisfactory physical and mathematical
exposition,” by the great Swedish scientist,
Arrhenius. It now seems that, however “sure”
the “footing,” there was something wrong with
the feet themselves, for, according to no less
an authority than the great physicist, Bec
querel, Panspermy has fallen. Its feet, like
those of that other awe-inspiring dream-image
seen by Nebuchadnezzar, were partly strong
and partly brittle, having a little of the iron of
fact and a great deal of the miry clay of as
sumption. It was an imposing and colossal
image, but a little stone of fact smote its “sure
footing” and it lies in ruins.
Among the varieties of the brittle clay of as
sumption, so freely used in constructing this
image, was this —That all the life upon the
earth has been evolved from “one primeval liv
ing unit.” This “unit” could, according to the
requirements of Panspermy, have been only
one-eigth as large as the smallest known or
ganism, yet it contained “the promise and the
potency of all forms of life.” From it were
developed the majestic monarchs of the forest,
the fierce carnivora which hide in their shade,
the huge pachyderms, the mighty leviathons of
the deep—all living things with their correla
tions, and man over all with his marvelous
physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual facul
ties. In the faith that sees that which is invisi
ble, your Panspermist surpasses Moses, or even
Abraham.
But it was not in the packing away of the
boundless macrocosm of life into the inconceiv
ably infinitesimal microcosm of that “primeval
cell” that Panspermy failed. That was not the
vulnerable spot in the heel of this “sure foot
ing” of the theory. The Panspermists could
keep up their contention on this point until
doomsday, or until they had persuaded them
selves that Jehovah is
“Some christened Jove whom Peter’s keys
adorn,
And Pan to Moses lent his pagan horn.”
When Haeckel reported that he had blazed
the way of evolution from the monad to man,
through time’s wilderness, trillion-years broad,
ONE VY ONE THE ISMS DIES
They]Are 'Returning to the Vacuum From Whence They Sprang .
The Golden Age for March 23, 101 i.
the scientists, who are bound to deny intelli
gent creation at any cost, accepted the story as
readily as did the Copenhageners that of Dr.
C.ook. And there was no Peary to go over the
route and disprove it, albeit there are no rec
ords except those which Haeckel confesses to
having faked. But when Arrhenius, or even
Lord Kelvin, attempts to play
Interstellar Columbus on oceans of night;
To conduct the ten-thousand-year leaderless
flight
Os “units primeval,” all safe from mischance,
Through airless and lightless and warmthless
expanse,
it is too much even for the credulity of those
who are for anything to beat Moses. The
failure of the attempt was not so much in the
preparation as in the transportation of the
package. The latter was an attempt at avia
tion so spectacular and daring as to make that
of Walter Wellman look like thirty cents. And
it was more futile, as has been shown by ex
periments made by M. Becquerel. They prove
that life germs could not have been brought to
the earth in any such way as is claimed by the
Panspermists. Their theory requires, as stat
ed in our former editorial, that living germs
from some inhabited world should be trans
ported through millions of miles of space and
thousands of years of time and transplanted
upon our earth. The only conceivable vehicle
for these germs is light, and we pointed out
that “light kills microbes, whether it can trans
port them or not.” Even if they could survive
the cold so intense that it would freeze fire,
through long ages, it did not seem to us pos
sible that they could endure the light which is
destructive of all known microbes.
It has been shown that the germ-destroying
power of light is in the ultra-violet rays. M.
Becquerel, knowing that the interstellar
spaces abound in ultra-violet rays, at once pro
ceeded to test Arrhenius’ “sure footing” of the
theory of Panspermy. He found that when ex
posed to these rays all germs perished in a
few hours, even when placed in vacuums rep
resenting interplanetary space in temperature
and dryness. No microbe could survive on the
agelasting Panspermic voyage for a single day,
according to these tests.
Suppose, however, that Arrhenius and his
disciples should make this theory (which they
confess “seems more like a poetic rhapsody
than a sober scientific reflection”) so plausible
that it could be accepted by those who are so
biased against the doctrine of intelligent crea
tion as to say that “there is no other supposi
tion possible”—suppose that it should come
to this, how much nearer are they to the so
lution of the great problem of life than they
were before? When these colonizing germs
“slide down gently on some current of air, to
fertilize an anticipating world (‘hungering for
life,’ as the Panspermist puts it), the invisible,
infinitesimal ancestors of all that may be there
brought forth,” they tell us nothing of their
origin, or how they came to be the possessors
of such incredible potencies. The theory sim
ply shifts the beginning of life from one point
to another of the material universe, without
diminishing its mystery a whit.
The “primeval unit” has brought from its
distant ancestral home, wrapt up in its little
cell, all the possibilities of our universe of life,
throbbing with passion and aspiration, with
consciousness and conscience, with reason and
reverence (which some of its descendants seem
to have missed), and where did it get them?
The audacious theory comes no nearer furnish
ing a “sure footing” for the origin of life than
does the Oriental fable furnish a sure founda
tion for the earth—that it rests upon an ele
phant, the elephant resting upon a turtle, the
turtle upon a rock, and that there are rocks all
the way down. It is a far flight, but it is nO'
escape from the dreadful alternative that life
upon the earth is the gift of the living God.
It is the reductio ad absurdum turned end for
end; a logical boomerang. By banishing intel
ligence from his theory, the Panspermist thinks
he has banished it from the universe.
And this absurd theory of Panspermy, with
many another equally absurd, if not so far
fetched, is the product of “scientists” to whom,
we are told, we must look for permission to
accept the miracles of the Bible! One would
think that the believers in Panspermy would
find the Scripture miracles easy of acceptance.
So they would but for the fact that they are
driven to such an absurdity because “they re
fuse to have God in their science” (Rom. 1:28),
and are ready to “exchange the truth of God
for a lie.” It is the fruit of the enmity which
the carnal mind entertains toward God, and
the carnal mind is yet with us.
*
Fite's Fearless Fight.
(Continued from Page 1.)
it is to enforce the law, and who knows that
the law is being violated, and it is in his power
to enforce it and fails and refuses to do so,
violates his oath of office and should be im
peached and removed from office. Secret
crimes have always been and will always be
committed, mainly, because it is difficult to
get the proof sufficient to convict, or to ap
prehend the offender, however honest, faith
ful and efficient the officials may be; and no
blame should attach to them on account of
their failure to entirely prohibit such crimes.
But this is not true of crimes that are openly
and notoriously committed, for they can and
should be promptly suppressed, and the offi
cials are culpable if this is not done. Such is
the condition of affairs in Georgia today and
the officials from Governor to Bailiff are re
sponsible for it, each in proportion to his of
ficial authority. Every brewery and every so
called near-beer saloon in Georgia is being
run in open and notorious violation of the law,
and these officials know it, and could close them
in twenty-four hours, but fail and refuse to
do it; and what is more, the men who operate
the breweries and near-beer saloons know that
these officials know it. The only difference be
tween these men and the blind tigers is that
the blind tigers do not respect the law, but fear
it; while the brewers and near-beer saloonists
neither respect nor fear the law; nor do they
either respect or fear the officials who fail and
refuse to enforce the law. It has been said
that—
“ ’The law condemns the man or women,
Who steals the goose from off the common;
But turns the greater felon loose,
Who steals the common from the goose.’
“This is not true as applied to the law itself,
but, alas! is too often true when applied to
the administration of the law; and it is true in
Georgia today. This state of affairs cannot
long continue. We must fight or surrender.
We must enforce the law or repeal it.
“In conclusion let me say that there is no
distillery, no brewery, and no near-beer saloon
in the Cherokee Circuit, and will not be as long
as I am on the bench and the law remains as
it is. If I were a Judge in Atlanta, Savannah,
Augusta or Macon, I would close the breweries
and the near-beer saloons out, or they would
run me out.”
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