We find a very different standpoint in Christianity, and it is reflected in the pregnant saying of the Apostle Paul who also is trying to account for the human collapse.
"The earnest expectation of the Creation waiteth for the revealing of the Sons of God." In other words the Christian theory is that man has not yet risen to the occasion, has not kept step with the demands of his environment. Far from being too clever for his part and taking the heights of possibility by storm, as the book of Genesis suggests, the progress of Creation is held up on his account. Instead of the purpose of God being hurried prematurely by man's united effort, the fault is all the other way. It is man's refusal to take his proper place in a growing, evolving creation that obstructs the divine purpose. The longing of creation is still baffled by the lethargy of the Sons of God.
That is the Christian Key I want to put into your hands this morning, wherewith to unlock the causes of the present distress. I want to enforce the declaration of the Apostle Paul that humanity is on its trial for failing to meet the demands of the age and being condemned by virtue of the law of evolution. Herbert Spencer for one has made it clear that life implies the growing response of the organism to its environment. And the Christian Apostle lays down the same law when he says that by failing to fulfil our function of divine sonship we have kept the universe waiting and sighing.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.