There perhaps never was a theory before believed by as many educated people without proof as the theory of evolution.  It is an unproved theory; there is not a fact beneath it.  That you have low forms of life, and forms rising higher and higher till you get to man, is fact.  But that a higher species ever came from a lower is without proof.  Let those who doubt this say when and where such a thing took place, and name the witnesses.  Not only are there no facts in proof of it, but it flies in the face of facts without number.  If like from like is not established, then nothing can be established by observation and experience.  What other theory do we believe which contradicts all that we know to be true in regard to the subject to which it refers?

Not only does it contradict fact and experience, it contradicts reason.  If you listen to the voice of reason, you can no more believe that the greater came from the less than you can believe that something came from nothing.  We are intuitively bound to believe that an effect can not be greater than its cause.  But the theory of evolution contradicts this at every step along the whole line.

I am anxious to find the truth in regard to anything that has a bearing upon my belief in God or religion.  But in trying to find the truth, I have never regretted being true to myself.  To slavishly follow others is, to say the least of it, unmanly.  I do not believe in evolution because God has so made me that I can not.  Wherever man came from, he sprang not from anything beneath him.  When a man asks me to believe a thing that has not facts, but only theory to support it,—­said theory contradicting fact, experience and reason,—­he asks me more than I can grant.  The thing is absurd, and must one day die.

I am agreeably surprised that we, as a people, have suffered so little as yet from the sources of error referred to.  Still they are all living dangers, and if we would hold fast the faith once for all delivered to the saints, we must see to our own standing, and as God has given us opportunity let us be helpful to others.  Our ground is God-given and well tested.  The fellowship with God and with each other that it has brought to us has given us much happiness here.  Let us be faithful and earnest the few years that we have to remain here, and our happiness will be increased when the Lord comes to reward us all according to our works.