Letter from Wm. Thorn [William Thorn] to an unidentified addressee, with message for George Maw
Information
Title
Letter from Wm. Thorn [William Thorn] to an unidentified addressee, with message for George Maw
Record type
Archive
Original Reference
MAW/1/336
Date
10 Feb 1862
Scope & content
Written from 87 Harrow Road, Edgware Road, London. Manuscript
He says to tell Mr Maw [George Maw] that the root of his name is Maai, from Nehemiah 12:36; he considers Maw’s review of Darwin complete; it is true that Darwin sees harmony in the works of his Creator, but not such that he draws inference from it; man may have evolved from an ‘inferior organism’, but no geological study of his has ever shown fossil remains of less evolved humans; since he must prove his pedigree if he claims to be descended from a historical figure, so Darwin should prove his links of descent by evolution; he thinks it is ‘analogy run mad’ that he could be descended from some primeval cold-blooded animal; he likes Maw’s allusions to Revelation and admits there will be a gradual and progressive improvement, but only to ‘render our intellect sanctified and Christlike’, and there will always be those with ‘diabolical [...] unsanctified intellect’; he compares human evolution to the ‘kingdom of priests’ in Isaiah 61; in this way, there will always be antagonism between those who believe in Christ and those who are ‘ungodly’, until the latter are turned out of God’s kingdom; God has been working in mankind to bring about this state of things, so it is strange that all these discoveries by men ‘who wish to have great names’ begin by upsetting the accounts given in the Bible, but Satan works upon man’s vanity; Newton’s discoveries were scientifically great, but the sanctified part of him went to the prophetic scripture; he does not need to continue explaining what the recipient’s sacred calling teaches him so well; he can only say that he ‘would rather drive a plough with the childlike faith of a Christian, than be a man of mark and note without Christ in the world, without a pole star, or a compass, or a ship, or even a cockle boat, to tide me over the ocean of time into the haven of eternity’