“There are many difficulties in the way of the universal acceptance of evolution as an established fact, as an obvious law of nature; and, at the foundation of these difficulties, is the Christian belief, which underlies our civilization. The Christian world has believed it to be a literal fact that in six days God created the world and everything in it, and then ceased from the work of creation. Recently, however, there has been such an accumulation of evidence disproving this statement that the majority of thinkers are rejecting the old form of belief, and it is now generally accepted that, in place of six days, we must understand six periods of time—cycles. This is in accord with the words of the Christ who, when he was rebuked for working on the Sabbath day, replied, “My Father worketh even until now, and I work.” (John 5:17.)
If God had not ceased from his work at the time of Christ, we have no reason to think that he has ceased at the present time. On the contrary, we see progression all around us, in every department of life. If a nation ceases to progress—renew its life and constantly unfold higher characteristics—it soon perishes and passes away, and the individual is subject to the same law. We have but to look back fifty years to see the marked progress, not only in science, art, and mechanics, but in the actual brain-power and organic quality of the people.
Another difficulty in the way of accepting the theory of evolution is, that the work of archaeologists has revealed indications of a high state of civilization which antedates history. It has been urged—and we think reasonably—that there are evidences of an early civilization more advanced than our own. We should remember that there are a few isolated cases in which even the American Indian has obtained knowledge of certain things that we do not possess, and certainly more should be expected of old nations that had reached a comparatively high state of civilization.
It has been said, and it is a historic fact, that “the star of empire westward takes its course.” We have before us today, the great old nation of China, embodying the civilization of a remote period. Next, in order of time and place, come India, Egypt, and the countries east of the Mediterranean—Palestine—where our Lord gave the revelation of the Christian religion. This religion has traveled westward over the continent of Europe, until it has reached the Atlantic coast, and has crossed to America, where its light shines from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the dawn of which is beginning to break over China and India.
Again, civilization in its nature is cumulative; like the winding of a thread upon a ball, as in a sense, it overlaps itself, it buries beneath the surface the old, only that it may establish the new upon ever higher ground. When we look for an immediate cause for the successive rise and decadence of nations and their civilization, we find that each nation, having reached in its turn, a comparatively high state of development, probably as high as it was capable of reaching, was overcome and destroyed by nations less advanced than itself. For history makes the fact clear, that as man ascends in the scale of development, he sees the folly of war, combat, and struggle. He tires of struggling and arranges an order of peace, and thus, soon loses the ability to protect himself, when the lower races come in and. destroy him.
We also find that the civilization of a nation has been led out always by some special principle. In the case of the Greeks, it was the love of beauty and the perfection of physical manhood. We may say that art was the center of their civilization. With the Romans, it was conquest and love of power, which degenerated into self-indulgence and oppression, until finally they lost their power and fell. The center around which the civilization of Egypt gathered, was magic, the laws of nature, the psychic forces in the human family.
Thus, could we possess the history in detail of every nation that has risen and fallen, we should find, that like vegetable life, each possessed its own specific quality. Each grew and matured a special quality of mind which, like the husk of the grain of wheat, enveloped some great truth, and when maturity came and its work was accomplished, the nation passed away as a form of vegetable life, that had borne its ripe fruitage.”
Hiram Butler
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 