The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-02-11

humility a grandeur that lay beyond
 the scope of his most widespread theo-
 rtes. Was there buried in that grave not only the great Darwin but also the famous conclusions of Darwinism 1 When I came to this pulpit ten years ago stood quite alone in saying that | 'Darwinism'' failed as working
 basis for studying the questions that
 relate to life upon the earth, because
 in it so much is taken for granted and ! so much more is assumed as being
 parts of the fact that are said to have
 been lost. You will remember that at
 that time said we must be careful 1 to distinguish between a statement
 that God could not work along the lines that have been suggested by Dar-
 win and the statement that there is no
 satisfactory evidence to show that God
 did in fact work in such a way" Evo-
 lution stands distinct from Darwinism 1 and may still be true in many of it's | phases even after Darwinism itself has | come to be recognized as an abandon ] ed belief to which men at one time 1 gave almost general assent. Evolution | includes the whole drama of cosmic changes Darwinisn is a particular interpretation of the mechanism in the plan and plot Of the drama Ten years ago the professor of physics in the State Normal school at New Ha- ven, a man whose fellowship I greatly
 
 his classes. At that time the same thing was being taught in Yale Per- haps in both these institutions these same theories still hold sway, and that In daring to differ from an accepted theory I shall be committing an un- pardonable intellectual sin. But what are the facts? I can answer the ques- tion in no better way than by quot ing Professor F'leishman, of Erlangen, in the statement: "The Darwnian theory of descent in the realms of na- ture has not a single fact to confirm research, but purely the product of the imagination"
 Even Professor Ernst HaSckel Dar- wins ever-ready defender, laments that he stands almost alone and ac- knowledges that "most modern inves- tfgatore of science have come to the conclusion that the doctrine of evolu tion and particularly Darwinism is an error and cannot be maintained" He then gives a list of names of prominent scientific men who once held but now have abandoned the theory. But if anything more were needed to show the swing of the leading thought on the other side of the Atlantic there is the statement of St. George Mivart on Darwinism: T cannot call it anything but puerile hypothesis" The very elaborate scheme by which the Scien- tfftc American worked out the pedigree of the horse is upset entirely by the discoveries of more recent times.
 If then, 1t might be asked, there is for g. theory as we'll as for a man, "a time to be born and a time to die' and Darwinism has come to the time of dying, if not of decent burial why take his name into the pulpit and link it with the great names that have done much for the world? For many req sons HiS was a mind 1rYt ra nm aJ1ad in it's thinking. The world today needs nothing more than it needs un- trammelled thought Whatever shall be the ultimate conclusion of the theory of evolution, the epoch-making importance of the Darwinian presen- tation of that theory will never be questioned. It set other men thinking and out of the crucible of intense thought there shall come facts that are eternal.
 Besides this, Darwin gave to the world, not only in his writings but in that the unused faculty, the unimprov ed muscle, ceases to be. And what if this were true of the powers of the soul? Men sometimes foolishly say there cannot be such a thing as an atheist. There is, there must be, for not see God. Suppose that the eye be so long closed that it lose the power of seeing. Suppose that the ear be so long stopped that it lose the power of hearing. Shall it then be thought strange that men are both blind and deaf? Darwins youth was character ized by delight in beauty that was wholly lost to his old age. Writing | to his friend Hooker he says: eff I had to live my life again, I would make it a. rule to read some poetry | and listen to some music at least once a week, for perhaps the parts of the brain now atrophied would thus have | been kept active through use.'
 We do not see clearly enough the l relation between acts and habits in life | aS shaping character. An act once | performed is easily repeated. An act oft repeated becomes a habit. A habit l continued becomes part of ones na- sert that there is no other way in which even God Himself can make good men and good women of us than by creating within us love for the doing of good things until we do them by simple force of habit. We must do the good so habitually, SO customar- fly, so continually, that it becomes the best part of self to do good. And what if we shall refuse to thus do the good? Well, can see only the awful opposite. We shall continue to do the until it shall have become our nature ana we S1nk Into the nell or a wasted life. We may close the eye till the sunlight would become torture and then we shall seek the shade and the deepening darkness and think there to find rest. We may stop the ear till the faintest whisper becomes c1amorous with discord and then shrink away beyond the call of duty, beyond the pleadings to come up into g. higher manhood, and never more think of the life that would otherwise F have been possible to us. This is the lesson that I bring from the centenary ,f Charles Darwin: the lesson that he illustrates by pointing to the pigeons losing all their beauty and becoming what they one time had been; the les son of the rose that falls back again to it's meaner first condition; the lesson of the ground mole without vision: the lesson of the fish in the caves without the power to see; the lesson in his own fife of an unused faculty that atrOphied the peril of a life that has in it no time for prayer, no looking out upon ;he beauty of Gods holiness, no hear ng of the Voive that speaks when all other sound are still.
 Rev. c. s. Bullock will preach a spec al sermon to the members of Okenuck Tribe of Red Men at the Neighborhood church next Sunday night. The mem oers of the tribe will meet at the Red Mems hall at o'clock and proceed to .he church in a. body.