TAIL TO YALE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 718, 18 July 1929, Page 9

TAIL TO YALE

Descent from Monkey Theory Assailed DR. W. H. PETTIT S LECTURE Said the monkey , as he swung by his tail , To the little monks , female and male—*'lf you're careful , my dears, In a fexo thousand years , You may be professors at Yale.’' THIS whiplash of ridicule was vigorously applied by Dr. W. H. Pettit in a trenchant attack on the evolutionary theory that man developed from the apes, addressing a crowded house in Scots Hall last evening. The most amazing feature of the present situation, Dr. Pettit declared, was that the men who claimed to be exponents of the Scriptures and preached them were denying the reliability and infallibility of God's work. Most amazing of all was the pronouncements by loaders of thought disputing authority of His testimony to Genesis. He could understand the man who rejected the Scriptures of Divine revelations and turned to the theory of evolution, whom he likened to the man who put out the light and wandered in the darkness of philosophical nonsense. He, however, could not fathom the attitude of men claiming to preach ti e Gospel, vrho drew their salaries from people who believed in and loved Him. and who yet accepted evolutionary philosophy. “It is pathetic,” he said, “that the pulpits, instead of fortifying young men and women against this false philosophy, are reechoing it throughout the country,” He claimed that acceptance of the evolutionary theory to a certain point was an inconsistent attitude, which he said, would lead others to enter fully into the spirit of this philosophy. Comparative illustrations of anthropoid apes and man were extensively used by the lecturer to disprove the theory of man’s evolution from the monkey. A hearty vote of thanks was accorded Dr. Pettit for his address.