The Church The Schools and Evolution/The Present Controversy - The Cure
CHAPTER II
The Present Controversy—the Cure
IN the previous pages we went back to the cause of the present controversy between the Church and the Schools. We found that the unproven and discredited theory of evolution lies at the bottom of it. We also concluded that no compromise that permits entrance to this theory in any form is possible, for the truth which is at once both the life and the message of the Church, and the theory of evolution, are mutually exclusive.
In this chapter we will seek to find the cure for this distressing controversy. That there is a cure is beyond all possible question. And if it is not found and applied, the controversy cannot fail to intensify until it may force a re-alignment in the Church—a thing a great company of the most earnest in the Church are fighting to prevent.
Now the only possible basis on which both the Church and the Schools can take their stand, if this controversy is to be settled without final disunion in the Church, was laid down by Christ in that scientific formula:
- If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from Myself.
To follow this formula in our search for common ground is to be utterly scientifie, for it is the laboratory method of experiment. The true Church has always believed and received the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, not because, in blind credulity, she has followed some irrational and unscientific impulse, but precisely because she has been scientific enough to work by this formula and carry the laboratory test to its final analysis. And for the Schools to follow this same formula with scientific accuracy would be for them to arrive at the same place at which the true Church has arrived. For when the Church and the Schools start out in search of truth and do not arrive together, it is either because they did not start together, or because one or both of them did not proceed all the way with scientific exactness. Truth is an eternal unity, and conclusions regarding it that are mutually exclusive and therefore the cause of controversy prove to a demonstration that somebody's methods of investigation were unscientific.
If we really intend to be scientific, therefore, when we start out to investigate truth of any sort and in any realm, the first thing we will do will be to classify. We can neither start nor proceed together unless we do. Indeed, if we are to be scientific enough to follow the formula laid down by Christ, we will be compelled to classify before we can even begin our investigation. Therefore—