It is unlikely that any of these texts are still copyrighted due to how old they are. Most are from government publication departments.
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Minot Judson Savage (1841-1918)
Published in the year +1,876 Gregorian Calendar, this book was one of the first written by a Christian minister regarding evolution and evolutionary theory. As the writer stated in his book:
"One of the results of evolution cannot possibly contradict evolution itself. I am none the less a Christian, then, because I am an evolutionist. I will even say I am a Christian because I am an evolutionist. To justify this position, to trace the progress of religion until it culminates in Christianity, and to show the relation it sustains to those religions that have preceded it, - this is my present purpose."Savage's wrote that since evolution is an observed fact that cannot be refuted, and since evolutionary theory sucessfully and brilliantly defines and describes the fact of evolution, it is both absurd and injurous to the Body of Christ to not acknowledge the factuality of evolution and the correctness of evolutionary theory. Ther author acknowledged the fact that Christianity itself has evolved from earlier religions, as have ethics and morals and laws.
This book contains both science and theology from the perspective of a Christian minister. His science was cutting-edge and up-to-date for his time, as was his knowledge of history. Therefore his pro-Christianity bias and his pro-culture bias are products of his time and place in the world, and he should not in my opinion be faulted for those biases.
It is interesting to note that Rev. Savage had, 130 years ago, refuted and answered most of the assertions and claims we still see Creationists make. This book proves once again that there is nothing new to Creationism that has not already been refuted.
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Extract from Modern leaders, being a series of biographical sketches written by Justin McCarthy and published in the year +1,872 Gregorian Calendar. This extract from the book is the chapter titled "Science And Orthodoxy In England." As the author wrote, "It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of the struggle which is now openly carried on between Science and Orthodox Theology." This chapter addresses part of that struggle, with science "winning," occuring at that time in England; Professor Thomas Huxley ("Darwin's Bulldog") and many of his peers are lauded, rightly, as bringers of enlightenment to the world with courage in the face of abuse and ridicule. However the author was quick to point out his belief that religion and science are two totally different arenas of human endeavor and not implacable foes that each must strive to defeat the other.
"I may therefore hope not to be at once set down as an irreligious person, merely because I venture to describe the war indirectly waged against orthodox theology, by a new school of English scientific men, as the severest trial that system has ever yet had to encounter, and one through which it can hardly by any possibility pass wholly unscathed."However, I suspect he was wrong in that opinion. Every time, without exception that I am aware of, religion has always lost when it contended with science over a subject which resides within the venue of science; the defenders of theology may have broken the bones and burned the flesh of scientists throughout the ages, but the scientists' achievements and enlightenments have "often enough" lived on within the mind of other scientists.
Science does not seek, nor strive, to maim, cripple, and/or destroy religious beliefs--- science does these things to religious beliefs as an unintended by-product, a bonus, a boon to humanity: it just happens as a consequence of what science does best; science winnows the truth from falsehood, and religious beliefs blow away like chaff.
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What Is Darwinism? written by Charles Hodge (b1797 d1878) and published in the year +1,874 Gregorian Calendar. This will be of interest to Creationists as well as scientists and "lay natural philosophers" such as myself, though perhaps more interesting to Creationists. Within this brief (182 pages) book Hodge laid down many, perhaps most, of the arguments Creationist would use for the next 120 years--- regardless of how many times those arguments have been refuted.
While Hodge's arguments against "Darwinism" (and evolutionary theory) in his book are at times absurd and may be considered naive, his science and theology were "cutting-edge" for his time and place and he should therefore not be criticized too much for that naiveté (modern Creationists do not have that excuse). Many of his arguments were based on issues that science had not yet then answered but eventually were answered: his "asking" them seems to me to have been dishonest (scientific discovery is a never-ending process--- not all questions can be answered at the moment they are asked).
The Adobe Acrobat version is probably the easiest to read, with the Microsoft Word version the second easiest; the HTML version has been rendered close enough to the original to have page titles and page numbers inserted where they belong, with foot notes also intact: that renders the HTML page somewhat confusing when read as one long document instead of as a collection of pages.
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But from the first appearance of the Darwinian doctrine, every moderately logical thinker must have regarded man as similarly modifiable, and as the result of the mutability of species ; and Darwin has now told us, in his work on the " Descent of Man," why he did not enunciate this self-evident inference in his first book ; he did not wish thereby to strengthen and provoke prejudice against his view. Knowing human weakness, he withheld the conclusion. " It seemed to me sufficient," he says, "in the first edition of my 'Origin of Species,' that by this work light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history, and this implies that man must be included with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting the manner of his appearance on this earth."Nay, Darwin himself has now gone further, and, to the terror of all who can scarce imagine man except as created shaven and armed with a book on etiquette, he has sketched a certainly not flattering, and perhaps in many points not correct, portrait of our presumptive ancestors in the phase of dawning humanity.
The Adobe Acrobat version (2.2 megabytes) is probably the easiest to read, with the Microsoft Word version (7 million bytes) the second easiest; the HTML version has been rendered close enough to the original to have page titles and page numbers inserted where they belong.
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"We live in the nineteenth century, when science is abroad knocking at every door, not excepting the church door; flashing light into the dark corners of superstition and bigotry, regardless of the hooting of the owls and the screaming of the bats that inhabit them. It is useless to lock and bolt the door; for science carries the club that can demolish every barrier. In vain you hide in the dark ; for her lamp makes day of the blackest night. Build to the skies, she will soar and scan the very top stone; dig centre deep, she will dive to the foundation. Heaven is not too high for her fetterless wing, nor the fires of hell hot enough to prevent her most searching examination."Stimulated by her example, we are no longer content to crawl at a snail's pace, but have put on the "seven-leagued boots," and are striding with the pace of a giant. We have left slavery behind us, with its terrible curses, --- old notions of the earth and heavens, which lie like boulders by the wayside, as we still go marching on. It is vain for the cynic to sneer at, the conservative to lament over, or the skeptic to deny, the progressive tendency of the age. It is true as the sun, and resistless as the motion of the planets."
