The editor of The Outlook is publishing a series of essays in his magazine under the title "The Theology of an Evolutionist," which show that he is developing very rapidly into an unbeliever.

      On the subject of inspiration he has reached the point of rejecting the miraculous in it and reducing it to the level of the influence which is exerted by oratory and music. He says in his issue of January 23: "A congregation listens to an inspiring address; an audience to inspiring music. We are inspired by reading the records of past heroism. Emotions, thoughts, feelings pass from mind to mind. One soul breathes its life into another soul; God breathes his life into us all. This is inspiration: the elevating or clarifying influence which our spirit may have upon another spirit. Belief in divine [176] inspiration is belief that God's Spirit has such an influence on human spirits."

      He has evolved out of belief in much that is written as history in the bible. He says of "the Christian evolutionist": "It is quite immaterial with him that the world was not made in six days; that there never was a universal deluge; that Abraham mistook the voice of conscience calling on him to consecrate his only son to God, and interpreted it as a command to slay his son as a burnt offering; that Israel misinterpreted righteous indignation at the cruel and lustful rites of the Canaanitish religion for a divine summons to destroy the worship by putting the worshipers to death," etc.

      He has dropped down to belief in the fragmentary origin of our four Gospels, of which he says: "Fragments of the story of his life were told and written down. Fragments were possessed by one church, other fragments by another. These fragments were exchanged among the churches. They grew into a connected story."

      He has reached such a point of infallibility himself that he submits to no infallible authority. He says: "There is no infallible authority. Infallible authority is undesirable. God has not given it to his children."

      Perhaps the reader is about to ask, What has all this to do with evolution? Well, nothing at all; for Dr. Abbott is not much in the habit of sticking to his text. He is one of Jude's wandering stars. He has left his orbit, and goes bumping around against everything that lies in the way. His next essay is on "Jesus and Evolution." I hope to notice some things in it next week. They are things in advance of these: for a wandering star can not stand still even for a week. A consistent evolutionist must keep evolving; that is, a human evolutionist; for those of the lower order of animals [177] sometimes stop. When the tadpole turns to a frog, he goes no further: he afterward turns neither to a bird nor a mud turtle; but when a human sophist starts out on a career of evolution he is seldom willing to stop until he lands in atheism, the ultima thule of evolution.

      Evolution, properly defined as a theory of the origin and growth of things, means development from within; and it excludes any and every force from without. This being true, to talk of theistic evolution is to use contradictory terms, and to talk nonsense. If God in any way exerts a power in the growth of matter external to matter as such, then the theory of evolution is false; and all this theorizing about theistic evolution is but a deceptive use of words. It is a delusion and a snare.

[SEBC 176-178]