In the days when Huxley and Herbert Spencer and the Victorian agnostics were trumpeting as a final truth the famous hypothesis of Darwin, it seemed to thousands of simple people almost impossible that religion should survive. It is all the more ironic that it has not only survived them all, but it is a perfect example (perhaps the only real example) of what they called the Survival of the Fittest.
-G.K. Chesterton, The Well and the Shallows
Darwin’s idea of the survival of the fittest, Chesterton says, has been abused. It leads to Capitalistic carnivores who devour the weak, Nietzchian Supermen who fly the swastika, and Eugenicists who decide who is worthy, or isn’t worthy, of life. The original idea, he says, is simply that of surviving. That is, does a species have the necessary equipment to survive the elements? If it does, it survives; if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t.
The great irony of all this understanding and misunderstanding of Darwinianism is that the Christian church is the great survivor. It has what it takes. Even the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. It is, he says, perhaps the only real example of Survival of the Fittest. Let the Beagle take a voyage to the last day and discover what the passenger will observe:
Who are these arrayed in white,
Brighter than the noon-day sun?
Foremost of the sons of light;
Nearest the eternal throne?
These are they that bore the cross,
Nobly for their Master stood;
Sufferers in His righteous cause,
Followers of the dying God.
-Charles Wesley, Who Are These Arrayed in White?
