in England, Dean Cockburn was denouncing Mary Somerville and the
geologists to the delight of churchmen; and the Rev. Mellor Brown
was doing the same thing for the edification of dissenters.

In America the mild suggestions of Silliman and his compeers were
met by the protestations of the Andover theologians headed by Moses
Stuart. Neither of the great English universities, as a rule, took
any notice of the innovators save by sneers.

To this current of thought there was joined a new element when, in
1844, Robert Chambers published his _Vestiges of Creation_. The book
was attractive and was widely read. In Chambers's view the several
series of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the
highest and most recent, were the result of two distinct impulses,
each given once and for all time by the Creator. The first of these
was an impulse imparted to forms of life, lifting them gradually
through higher grades; the second was an impulse tending to modify
organic substances in accordance with external circumstances; in
fact, the doctrine of the book was evolution tempered by miracle--a
stretching out of the creative act through all time--a pious
version of Lamarck.

Two results followed, one mirth-provoking, the other leading to
serious thought. The amusing result was that the theologians were
greatly alarmed by the book: it was loudly insisted that it
promoted atheism. Looking back along the line of thought which has
since been developed, one feels that the older theologians ought to
have put up thanksgivings for Chambers's theory, and prayers that
it might prove true. The more serious result was that it accustomed
men's minds to a belief in evolution as in some form possible
or even probable. In this way it was provisionally of service.

Eight years later Herbert Spencer published an essay contrasting
the theories of creation and evolution--reasoning with great force
in favour of the latter, showing that species had undoubtedly been
modified by circumstances; but still only few and chosen men saw
the significance of all these lines of reasoning which had been
converging during so many years toward one conclusion.

On July 1, 1858, there were read before the Linnaean Society at
London two papers--one presented by Charles Darwin, the other by
Alfred Russel Wallace--and with the reading of these papers the
doctrine of evolution by natural selection was born. Then and there
a fatal breach was made in the great theological barrier of the
continued fixity of species since the creation.

The story of these papers the scientific world knows by heart: how
Charles Darwin, having been sent to the University of Cambridge to
fit him for the Anglican priesthood, left it in 1831 to go upon the
scientific expedition of the Beagle; how for five years he studied
with wonderful vigour and acuteness the problems of life as
revealed on land and at sea--among volcanoes and coral reefs, in
forests and on the sands, from the tropics to the arctic regions;
how, in the Cape Verde and the Galapagos Islands, and in Brazil,
Patagonia, and Australia he interrogated Nature with matchless
persistency and skill; how he returned unheralded, quietly settled
down to his work, and soon set the world thinking over its first
published results, such as his book on _Coral Reefs,_ and the
monograph on the _Cirripedia_; and, finally, how he presented his
paper, and followed it up with treatises which made him one of the
great leaders in the history of human thought.

The scientific world realizes, too, more and more, the power of
character shown by Darwin in all this great career; the faculty of
silence, the reserve of strength seen in keeping his great
thought--his idea of evolution by natural selection--under silent
study and meditation for nearly twenty years, giving no hint of it
to the world at large, but working in every field to secure proofs
or disproofs, and accumulating masses of precious material for the
solution of the questions involved.

To one man only did he reveal his thought--to Dr. Joseph Hooker, to
whom in 1844, under the seal of secrecy, he gave a summary of his
conclusions. Not until fourteen years later occurred the event
which showed him that the fulness of time had come--the letter from
Alfred Russel Wallace, to whom, in brilliant researches during the
decade from 1848 to 1858, in Brazil and in the Malay Archipelago,
the same truth of evolution by natural selection had been revealed.
Among the proofs that scientific study does no injury to  the more
delicate shades of sentiment is the well-known story of this letter.
With it Wallace sent Darwin a memoir, asking him to present it to
the Linnaean Society: on examining it, Darwin found that Wallace
had independently arrived at conclusions similar to his
own--possibly had deprived him of fame; but Darwin was loyal to his
friend, and his friend remained ever loyal to him. He publicly
presented the paper from Wallace, with his own conclusions; and the
date of this presentation--July 1, 1858--separates two epochs in the
history, not merely of natural science, but of human thought.

In the following year, 1859, came the first instalment of his work
in its fuller development--his book on _The Origin of Species_. In
this book one at least of the main secrets at the heart of the
evolutionary process, which had baffled the long line of
investigators and philosophers from the days of Aristotle, was more
broadly revealed. The effective mechanism of evolution was shown at
work in three ascertained facts: in the struggle for existence
among organized beings; in the survival of the fittest; and in
heredity. These facts were presented with such minute research,
wide observation, patient collation, transparent honesty, and
judicial fairness, that they at once commanded the world's
attention. It was the outcome of thirty years' work and thought by
a worker and thinker of genius, but it was yet more than that--it
was the outcome, also, of the work and thought of another man of
genius fifty years before. The book of Malthus on the _Principle of
Population_, mainly founded on the fact that animals increase in a
geometrical ratio, and therefore, if unchecked, must encumber the
earth, had been generally forgotten, and was only recalled with a
sneer. But the genius of Darwin recognised in it a deeper meaning,
and now the thought of Malthus was joined to the new current.
Meditating upon it in connection with his own observations of the
luxuriance of Nature, Darwin had arrived at his doctrine of natural
selection and survival of the fittest.

As the great dogmatic barrier between the old and new views of the
universe was broken down, the flood of new thought pouring over the
world stimulated and nourished strong growths in every field of
research and reasoning: edition after edition of the book was
called for; it was translated even into Japanese and Hindustani;
the stagnation of scientific thought, which Buckle, only a few
years before, had so deeply lamented, gave place to a widespread
and fruitful activity; masses of accumulated observations, which
had seemed stale and unprofitable, were made alive; facts formerly
without meaning now found their interpretation. Under this new
influence an army of young men took up every promising line of
scientific investigation in every land. Epoch-making books appeared
in all the great nations. Spencer, Wallace, Huxley, Galton,
Tyndall, Tylor, Lubbock, Bagehot, Lewes, in England, and a phalanx
of strong men in Germany, Italy, France, and America gave forth
works which became authoritative in every department of biology. If
some of the older men in France held back, overawed perhaps by the
authority of Cuvier, the younger and more vigorous pressed on.

One source of opposition deserves to be especially mentioned--Louis
Agassiz.

A great investigator, an inspired and inspiring teacher, a noble
man, he had received and elaborated a theory of animated creation
which he could not readily change. In his heart and mind still
prevailed the atmosphere of the little Swiss parsonage in which he
was born, and his religious and moral nature, so beautiful to all
who knew him, was especially repelled by sundry evolutionists, who,
in their zeal as neophytes, made proclamations seeming to have a
decidedly irreligious if not immoral bearing. In addition to this
was the direction his thinking had received from Cuvier. Both these
influences combined to prevent his acceptance of the new view.

He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a
barrier across the current of evolutionary thought. Linnaeus in the
second half of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first half,
and Agassiz in the second half of the nineteenth--all made the same
effort. Each remains great; but not all of them together could
arrest the current. Agassiz's strong efforts throughout the United
States, and indeed throughout Europe, to check it, really promoted
it. From the great museum he had founded at Cambridge, from his
summer school at Penikese, from his lecture rooms at Harvard and
Cornell, his disciples went forth full of love and admiration for
him, full of enthusiasm which he had stirred and into fields which
he had indicated; but their powers, which he had aroused and
strengthened, were devoted to developing the truth he failed to
recognise; Shaler, Verrill, Packard, Hartt, Wilder, Jordan, with a
multitude of others, and especially the son who bore his honoured
name, did justice to his memory by applying what they had received
from him to research under inspiration of the new revelation.

Still another man deserves especial gratitude and honour in this
progress--Edward Livingston Youmans. He was perhaps the first in
America to recognise the vast bearings of the truths presented by
Darwin, Wallace, and Spencer. He became the apostle of these
truths, sacrificing the brilliant career on which he had entered as
a public lecturer, subordinating himself to the three leaders, and
giving himself to editorial drudgery in the stimulation of research
and the announcement of results.

In support of the new doctrine came a world of new proofs; those
which Darwin himself added in regard to the cross-fertilization of
plants, and which he had adopted from embryology, led the way, and
these were followed by the discoveries of Wallace, Bates, Huxley,
Marsh, Cope, Leidy, Haeckel, Muller, Gaudry, and a multitude of
others in all lands.[70]


                IV. THE FINAL EFFORT OF THEOLOGY.

DARWIN'S _Origin of Species_ had come into the theological world like
a plough into an ant-hill. Everywhere those thus rudely awakened
from their old comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and
confused. Reviews, sermons, books light and heavy, came flying at
the new thinker from all sides.

The keynote was struck at once in the _Quarterly Review_ by
Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He declared that Darwin was guilty
of "a tendency to limit God's glory in creation"; that "the
principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with the
word of God"; that it "contradicts the revealed relations of
creation to its Creator"; that it is "inconsistent with the fulness
of his glory"; that it is "a dishonouring view of Nature"; and that
there is "a simpler explanation of the presence of these strange
forms among the works of God": that explanation being--"the fall of
Adam." Nor did the bishop's efforts end here; at the meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science he again
disported himself in the tide of popular applause. Referring to the
ideas of Darwin, who was absent on account of illness, he
congratulated himself in a public speech that he was not descended
from a monkey. The reply came from Huxley, who said in substance:
"If I had to choose, I would prefer to be a descendant of a humble
monkey rather than of a man who employs his knowledge and eloquence
in misrepresenting those who are wearing out their lives in the
search for truth."

This shot reverberated through England, and indeed through
other countries.

The utterances of this the most brilliant prelate of the Anglican
Church received a sort of antiphonal response from the leaders of
the English Catholics. In an address before the "Academia," which
had been organized to combat "science falsely so called," Cardinal
Manning declared his abhorrence of the new view of Nature, and
described it as "a brutal philosophy--to wit, there is no God, and
the ape is our Adam."

These attacks from such eminent sources set the clerical fashion
for several years. One distinguished clerical reviewer, in spite of
Darwin's thirty years of quiet labour, and in spite of the
powerful summing up of his book, prefaced a diatribe by saying
that Darwin "might have been more modest had he given some slight
reason for dissenting from the views generally entertained."
Another distinguished clergyman, vice-president of a Protestant
institute to combat "dangerous" science, declared Darwinism "an
attempt to dethrone God." Another critic spoke of persons accepting
the Darwinian views as "under the frenzied inspiration of the
inhaler of mephitic gas," and of Darwin's argument as "a jungle of
fanciful assumption." Another spoke of Darwin's views as suggesting
that "God is dead," and declared that Darwin's work "does open
violence to everything which the Creator himself has told us in the
Scriptures of the methods and results of his work." Still another
theological authority asserted: "If the Darwinian theory is true,
Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to
pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it,
is a delusion and a snare." Another, who had shown excellent
qualities as an observing naturalist, declared the Darwinian view
"a huge imposture from the beginning."

Echoes came from America. One review, the organ of the most
widespread of American religious sects, declared that Darwin was
"attempting to befog and to pettifog the whole question"; another
denounced Darwin's views as "infidelity"; another, representing the
American branch of the Anglican Church, poured contempt over Darwin
as "sophistical and illogical," and then plunged into an
exceedingly dangerous line of argument in the following words: "If
this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible an unbearable
fiction;... then have Christians for nearly two thousand years been
duped by a monstrous lie.... Darwin requires us to disbelieve the
authoritative word of the Creator" A leading journal representing
the same church took pains to show the evolution theory to be as
contrary to the explicit declarations of the New Testament as to
those of the Old, and said: "If we have all, men and monkeys,
oysters and eagles, developed from an original germ, then is St.
Paul's grand deliverance--`All flesh is not the same flesh; there
is one kind of flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes,
and another of birds'--untrue."

Another echo came from Australia, where Dr. Perry, Lord Bishop of
Melbourne, in a most bitter book on _Science and the Bible_, declared
that the obvious object of Chambers, Darwin, and Huxley is "to
produce in their readers a disbelief of the Bible."

Nor was the older branch of the Church to be left behind in this
chorus. Bayma, in the _Catholic World_, declared, "Mr. Darwin is, we
have reason to believe, the mouthpiece or chief trumpeter of that
infidel clique whose well-known object is to do away with all idea
of a God."

Worthy of especial note as showing the determination of the
theological side at that period was the foundation of
sacro-scientific organizations to combat the new ideas. First to be
noted is the "Academia," planned by Cardinal Wiseman. In a
circular letter the cardinal, usually so moderate and just, sounded
an alarm and summed up by saying, "Now it is for the Church, which
alone possesses divine certainty and divine discernment, to place
itself at once in the front of a movement which threatens even the
fragmentary remains of Christian belief in England." The necessary
permission was obtained from Rome, the Academia was founded, and
the "divine discernment" of the Church was seen in the utterances
which came from it, such as those of Cardinal Manning, which every
thoughtful Catholic would now desire to recall, and in the
diatribes of Dr. Laing, which only aroused laughter on all sides.
A similar effort was seen in Protestant quarters; the "Victoria
institute" was created, and perhaps the most noted utterance which
ever came from it was the declaration of its vice-president, the
Rev. Walter Mitchell, that "Darwinism endeavours to dethrone God."[73]

In France the attack was even more violent. Fabre d'Envieu brought
out the heavy artillery of theology, and in a long series of
elaborate propositions demonstrated that any other doctrine than
that of the fixity and persistence of species is absolutely
contrary to Scripture. The Abbe Desorges, a former Professor of
Theology, stigmatized Darwin as a "pedant," and evolution as
"gloomy". Monseigneur Segur, referring to Darwin and his followers,
went into hysterics and shrieked: "These infamous doctrines have
for their only support the most abject passions. Their father is
pride, their mother impurity, their offspring revolutions. They
come from hell and return thither, taking with them the gross
creatures who blush not to proclaim and accept them."

In Germany the attack, if less declamatory, was no less severe.
Catholic theologians vied with Protestants in bitterness. Prof.
Michelis declared Darwin's theory "a caricature of creation." Dr.
Hagermann asserted that it "turned the Creator out of doors." Dr.
Schund insisted that "every idea of the Holy Scriptures, from the
first to the last page, stands in diametrical opposition to the
Darwinian theory"; and, "if Darwin be right in his view of the
development of man out of a brutal condition, then the Bible
teaching in regard to man is utterly annihilated." Rougemont in
Switzerland called for a crusade against the obnoxious doctrine.
Luthardt, Professor of Theology at Leipsic, declared: "The idea of
creation belongs to religion and not to natural science; the whole
superstructure of personal religion is built upon the doctrine of
creation"; and he showed the evolution theory to be in direct
contradiction to Holy Writ.

But in 1863 came an event which brought serious confusion to the
theological camp: Sir Charles Lyell, the most eminent of living
geologists, a man of deeply Christian feeling and of exceedingly
cautious temper, who had opposed the evolution theory of Lamarck
and declared his adherence to the idea of successive creations,
then published his work on the _Antiquity of Man_, and in this and
other utterances showed himself a complete though unwilling convert
to the fundamental ideas of Darwin. The blow was serious in many
ways, and especially so in two--first, as withdrawing all
foundation in fact from the scriptural chronology, and secondly, as
discrediting the creation theory. The blow was not unexpected; in
various review articles against the Darwinian theory there had been
appeals to Lyell, at times almost piteous, "not to flinch from the
truths he had formerly proclaimed." But Lyell, like the honest man
he was, yielded unreservedly to the mass of new proofs arrayed on
the side of evolution against that of creation.

At the same time came Huxley's _Man's Place in Nature_, giving new
and most cogent arguments in favour of evolution by natural selection.

In 1871 was published Darwin's _Descent of Man_. Its doctrine had
been anticipated by critics of his previous books, but it made,
none the less, a great stir; again the opposing army trooped forth,
though evidently with much less heart than before. A few were very
violent. _The Dublin University Magazine_, after the traditional
Hibernian fashion, charged Mr. Darwin with seeking "to displace
God by the unerring action of vagary," and with being "resolved to
hunt God out of the world." But most notable from the side of the
older Church was the elaborate answer to Darwin's book by the
eminent French Catholic physician, Dr. Constantin James. In his
work, _On Darwinism, or the Man-Ape_, published at Paris in 1877, Dr.
James not only refuted Darwin scientifically but poured contempt
on his book, calling it "a fairy tale," and insisted that a work
"so fantastic and so burlesque" was, doubtless, only a huge joke,
like Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_, or Montesquieu's _Persian Letters_.
The princes of the Church were delighted. The Cardinal Archbishop
of Paris assured the author that the book had become his
"spiritual reading," and begged him to send a copy to the Pope
himself. His Holiness, Pope Pius IX, acknowledged the gift in a
remarkable letter. He thanked his dear son, the writer, for the
book in which he "refutes so well the aberrations of Darwinism."
"A system," His Holiness adds, "which is repugnant at once to
history, to the tradition of all peoples, to exact science, to
observed facts, and even to Reason herself, would seem to need no
refutation, did not alienation from God and the leaning toward
materialism, due to depravity, eagerly seek a support in all this
tissue of fables.... And, in fact, pride, after rejecting the
Creator of all things and proclaiming man independent, wishing him
to be his own king, his own priest, and his own God--pride goes so
far as to degrade man himself to the level of the unreasoning
brutes, perhaps even of lifeless matter, thus unconsciously
confirming the Divine declaration, _When pride cometh, then cometh
shame_. But the corruption of this age, the machinations of the
perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that such fancies,
altogether absurd though they are, should--since they borrow the
mask of science--be refuted by true science." Wherefore the Pope
thanked Dr. James for his book, "so opportune and so perfectly
appropriate to the exigencies of our time," and bestowed on him the
apostolic benediction. Nor was this brief all. With it there came
a second, creating the author an officer of the Papal Order of St.
Sylvester. The cardinal archbishop assured the delighted physician
that such a double honour of brief and brevet was perhaps
unprecedented, and suggested only that in a new edition of his book
he should "insist a little more on the relation existing between
the narratives of Genesis and the discoveries of modern science, in
such fashion as to convince the most incredulous of their perfect
agreement." The prelate urged also a more dignified title. The
proofs of this new edition were accordingly all submitted to His
Eminence, and in 1882 it appeared as _Moses and Darwin: the Man of
Genesis compared with the Man-Ape, or Religious Education opposed
to Atheistic_. No wonder the cardinal embraced the author, thanking
him in the name of science and religion. " We have at last," he
declared, "a handbook which we can safely put into the hands of youth."

Scarcely less vigorous were the champions of English Protestant
orthodoxy. In an address at Liverpool, Mr. Gladstone remarked:
"Upon the grounds of what is termed evolution God is relieved of
the labour of creation; in the name of unchangeable laws he is
discharged from governing the world"; and, when Herbert Spencer
called his attention to the fact that Newton with the doctrine of
gravitation and with the science of physical astronomy is open to
the same charge, Mr. Gladstone retreated in the _Contemporary Review_
under one of his characteristic clouds of words. The Rev. Dr.
Coles, in the _British and Foreign Evangelical Review_, declared that
the God of evolution is not the Christian's God. Burgon, Dean of
Chichester, in a sermon preached before the University of Oxford,
pathetically warned the students that "those who refuse to accept
the history of the creation of our first parents according to its
obvious literal intention, and are for substituting the modern
dream of evolution in its place, cause the entire scheme of man's
salvation to collapse." Dr. Pusey also came into the fray with most
earnest appeals against the new doctrine, and the Rev. Gavin
Carlyle was perfervid on the same side. The Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge published a book by the Rev. Mr. Birks, in
which the evolution doctrine was declared to be "flatly opposed
to the fundamental doctrine of creation." Even the _London Times_
admitted a review stigmatizing Darwin's _Descent of Man_ as an
"utterly unsupported hypothesis," full of "unsubstantiated
premises, cursory investigations, and disintegrating speculations,"
and Darwin himself as "reckless and unscientific."[77]

But it was noted that this second series of attacks, on the _Descent
of Man_, differed in one remarkable respect--so far as England was
concerned--from those which had been made over ten years before on
the _Origin of Species_. While everything was done to discredit
Darwin, to pour contempt upon him, and even, of all things in the
world, to make him--the gentlest of mankind, only occupied with
the scientific side of the problem--"a persecutor of Christianity,"
while his followers were represented more and more as charlatans
or dupes, there began to be in the most influential quarters
careful avoidance of the old argument that evolution--even by
natural selection--contradicts Scripture. It began to be felt that
this was dangerous ground. The defection of Lyell had, perhaps,
more than anything else, started the question among theologians who
had preserved some equanimity, "_What if, after all, the Darwinian
theory should prove to be true?_" Recollections of the position in
which the Roman Church found itself after the establishment of the
doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo naturally came into the minds
of the more thoughtful. In Germany this consideration does not seem
to have occurred at quite so early a day. One eminent Lutheran
clergyman at Magdeburg called on his hearers to choose between
Darwin and religion; Delitszch, in his new commentary on Genesis,
attempted to bring science back to recognise human sin as an
important factor in creation; Prof. Heinrich Ewald, while carefully
avoiding any sharp conflict between the scriptural doctrine and
evolution, comforted himself by covering Darwin and his followers
with contempt; Christlieb, in his address before the Evangelical
Alliance at New York in 1873, simply took the view that the
tendencies of the Darwinian theory were "toward infidelity," but
declined to make any serious battle on biblical grounds; the
Jesuit, Father Pesch, in Holland, drew up in Latin, after the old
scholastic manner, a sort of general indictment of evolution, of
which one may say that it was interesting--as interesting as the
display of a troop in chain armour and with cross-bows on a
nineteenth-century battlefield.

From America there came new echoes. Among the myriad attacks on the
Darwinian theory by Protestants and Catholics two should be
especially mentioned. The first of these was by Dr. Noah Porter,
President of Yale College, an excellent scholar, an interesting
writer, a noble man, broadly tolerant, combining in his thinking a
curious mixture of radicalism and conservatism. While giving great
latitude to the evolutionary teaching in the university under his
care, he felt it his duty upon one occasion to avow his disbelief
in it; but he was too wise a man to suggest any necessary
antagonism between it and the Scriptures. He confined himself
mainly to pointing out the tendency of the evolution doctrine in
this form toward agnosticism and pantheism. To those who knew and
loved him, and had noted the genial way in which by wise neglect he
had allowed scientific studies to flourish at Yale, there was an
amusing side to all this. Within a stone's throw of his college
rooms was the Museum of Paleontology, in which Prof. Marsh had laid
side by side, among other evidences of the new truth, that
wonderful series of specimens showing the evolution of the horse
from the earliest form of the animal, "not larger than a fox, with
five toes," through the whole series up to his present form and
size--that series which Huxley declared an absolute proof of the
existence of natural selection as an agent in evolution. In spite
of the veneration and love which all Yale men felt for President
Porter, it was hardly to be expected that these particular
arguments of his would have much permanent effect upon them when
there was constantly before their eyes so convincing a refutation.

But a far more determined opponent was the Rev. Dr. Hodge, of
Princeton; his anger toward the evolution doctrine was bitter: he
denounced it as thoroughly "atheistic"; he insisted that Christians
"have a right to protest against the arraying of probabilities
against the clear evidence of the Scriptures"; he even censured
so orthodox a writer as the Duke of Argyll, and declared that the
Darwinian theory of natural selection is "utterly inconsistent
with the Scriptures," and that "an absent God, who does nothing,
is to us no God"; that "to ignore design as manifested in God's
creation is to dethrone God"; that "a denial of design in Nature
is virtually a denial of God"; and that "no teleologist can be a
Darwinian." Even more uncompromising was another of the leading
authorities at the same university--the Rev. Dr. Duffield. He
declared war not only against Darwin but even against men like Asa
Gray, Le Conte, and others, who had attempted to reconcile the new
theory with the Bible: he insisted that "evolutionism and the
scriptural account of the origin of man are irreconcilable"--that
the Darwinian theory is "in direct conflict with the teaching of
the apostle, `All scripture is given by inspiration of God'"; he
pointed out, in his opposition to Darwin's _Descent of Man_ and
Lyell's _Antiquity of Man_, that in the Bible "the genealogical
links which connect the Israelites in Egypt with Adam and Eve in
Eden are explicitly given." These utterances of Prof. Duffield
culminated in a declaration which deserves to be cited as showing
that a Presbyterian minister can "deal damnation round the land"
_ex cathedra_ in a fashion quite equal to that of popes and bishops.
It is as follows: "If the development theory of the origin of man,"
wrote Dr. Duffield in the _Princeton Review_, "shall in a little
while take its place--as doubtless it will--with other exploded
scientific speculations, then they who accept it with its proper
logical consequences will in the life to come have their portion
with those who in this life `know not God and obey not the gospel
of his Son.'"

Fortunately, at about the time when Darwin's _Descent of Man_ was
published, there had come into Princeton University "_deus ex
machina_" in the person of Dr. James McCosh. Called to the
presidency, he at once took his stand against teachings so
dangerous to Christianity as those of Drs. Hodge, Duffield, and
their associates. In one of his personal confidences he has let us
into the secret of this matter. With that hard Scotch sense which
Thackeray had applauded in his well-known verses, he saw that the
most dangerous thing which could be done to Christianity at
Princeton was to reiterate in the university pulpit, week after
week, solemn declarations that if evolution by natural selection,
or indeed evolution at all, be true, the Scriptures are false. He
tells us that he saw that this was the certain way to make the
students unbelievers; he therefore not only checked this dangerous
preaching but preached an opposite doctrine. With him began the
inevitable compromise, and, in spite of mutterings against him as
a Darwinian, he carried the day. Whatever may be thought of his
general system of philosophy, no one can deny his great service in
neutralizing the teachings of his predecessors and colleagues--so
dangerous to all that is essential in Christianity.

Other divines of strong sense in other parts of the country began
to take similar ground--namely, that men could be Christians and at
the same time Darwinians. There appeared, indeed, here and there,
curious discrepancies: thus in 1873 the _Monthly Religious Magazine_
of Boston congratulated its readers that the Rev. Mr. Burr had
"demolished the evolution theory, knocking the breath of life out of
it and throwing it to the dogs." This amazing performance by the
Rev. Mr. Burr was repeated in a very striking way by Bishop Keener
before the OEcumenical Council of Methodism at Washington in 1891.
In what the newspapers described as an "admirable speech," he
refuted evolution doctrines by saying that evolutionists had "only
to make a journey of twelve hours from the place where he was then
standing to find together the bones of the muskrat, the opossum,
the coprolite, and the ichthyosaurus." He asserted that
Agassiz--whom the good bishop, like so many others, seemed to think
an evolutionist--when he visited these beds near Charleston,
declared: "These old beds have set me crazy; they have destroyed
the work of a lifetime." And the Methodist prelate ended by
saying: "Now, gentlemen, brethren, take these facts home with
you; get down and look at them. This is the watch that was under
the steam hammer--the doctrine of evolution; and this steam hammer
is the wonderful deposit of the Ashley beds." Exhibitions like
these availed little. While the good bishop amid vociferous
applause thus made comically evident his belief that Agassiz was a
Darwinian and a coprolite an animal, scientific men were recording
in all parts of the world facts confirming the dreaded theory of an
evolution by natural selection. While the Rev. Mr. Burr was so
loudly praised for "throwing Darwinism to the dogs," Marsh was
completing his series leading from the five-toed ungulates to the
horse. While Dr. Tayler Lewis at Union, and Drs. Hodge and Duffield
at Princeton, were showing that if evolution be true the biblical
accounts must be false, the indefatigable Yale professor was
showing his cretaceous birds, and among them _Hesperornis_ and
_Ichthyornis_ with teeth. While in Germany Luthardt, Schund, and
their compeers were demonstrating that Scripture requires a belief
in special and separate creations, the Archaepteryx, showing a
most remarkable connection between birds and reptiles, was
discovered. While in France Monseigneur Segur and others were
indulging in diatribes against "a certain Darwin," Gaudry and
Filhol were discovering a striking series of "missing links" among
the carnivora.

In view of the proofs accumulating in favour of the new
evolutionary hypothesis, the change in the tone of controlling
theologians was now rapid. From all sides came evidences of desire
to compromise with the theory. Strict adherents of the biblical
text pointed significantly to the verses in Genesis in which the
earth and sea were made to bring forth birds and fishes, and man
was created out of the dust of the ground. Men of larger mind like
Kingsley and Farrar, with English and American broad churchmen
generally, took ground directly in Darwin's favour. Even Whewell took
pains to show that there might be such a thing as a Darwinian argument
for design in Nature; and the Rev. Samuel Houghton, of the Royal
Society, gave interesting suggestions of a divine design in evolution.

Both the great English universities received the new teaching as a
leaven: at Oxford, in the very front of the High Church party at
Keble College, was elaborated a statement that the evolution
doctrine is "an advance in our theological thinking." And Temple,
Bishop of London, perhaps the most influential thinker then in the
Anglican episcopate, accepted the new revelation in the following
words: "It seems something more majestic, more befitting him to
whom a thousand years are as one day, thus to impress his will
once for all on his creation, and provide for all the countless
varieties by this one original impress, than by special acts of
creation to be perpetually modifying what he had previously made."

In Scotland the Duke of Argyll, head and front of the orthodox
party, dissenting in many respects from Darwin's full conclusions,
made concessions which badly shook the old position.

Curiously enough, from the Roman Catholic Church, bitter as some of
its writers had been, now came argument to prove that the Catholic
faith does not prevent any one from holding the Darwinian theory,
and especially a declaration from an authority eminent among
American Catholics--a declaration which has a very curious sound,
but which it would be ungracious to find fault with--that "the
doctrine of evolution is no more in opposition to the doctrine of the
Catholic Church than is the Copernican theory or that of Galileo."

Here and there, indeed, men of science like Dawson, Mivart, and
Wigand, in view of theological considerations, sought to make
conditions; but the current was too strong, and eminent
theologians in every country accepted natural selection as at least
a very important part in the mechanism of evolution.

At the death of Darwin it was felt that there was but one place in
England where his body should be laid, and that this place was next
the grave of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. The noble
address of Canon Farrar at his funeral was echoed from many pulpits
in Europe and America, and theological opposition as such was ended.
Occasionally appeared, it is true, a survival of the old feeling:
the Rev. Dr. Laing referred to the burial of Darwin in Westminster
Abbey as "a proof that England is no longer a Christian country,"
and added that this burial was a desecration--that this honour
was given him because he had been "the chief promoter of the mock
doctrrne of evolution of the species and the ape descent of man."

Still another of these belated prophets was, of all men, Thomas
Carlyle. Soured and embittered, in the same spirit which led him to
find more heroism in a marauding Viking or in one of Frederick the
Great's generals than in Washington, or Lincoln, or Grant, and
which caused him to see in the American civil war only the burning
out of a foul chimney, he, with the petulance natural to a
dyspeptic eunuch, railed at Darwin as an "apostle of dirt worship."

The last echoes of these utterances reverberated between Scotland
and America. In the former country, in 1885, the Rev. Dr. Lee
issued a volume declaring that, if the Darwinian view be true,
"there is no place for God"; that "by no method of interpretation
can the language of Holy Scripture be made wide enough to re-echo
the orang-outang theory of man's natural history"; that "Darwinism
reverses the revelation of God" and "implies utter blasphemy
against the divine and human character of our Incarnate Lord"; and
he was pleased to call Darwin and his followers "gospellers of the
gutter." In one of the intellectual centres of America the editor
of a periodical called _The Christian_ urged frantically that "the
battle be set in array, and that men find out who is on the Lord's
side and who is on the side of the devil and the monkeys."

To the honour of the Church of England it should be recorded that
a considerable number of her truest men opposed such utterances
as these, and that one of them--Farrar, Archdeacon of
Westminster--made a protest worthy to be held in perpetual
remembrance. While confessing his own inability to accept fully the
new scientific belief, he said: "We should consider it disgraceful
and humiliating to try to shake it by an _ad captandum_ argument, or
by a clap-trap platform appeal to the unfathomable ignorance and
unlimited arrogance of a prejudiced assembly. We should blush to
meet it with an anathema or a sneer."

All opposition had availed nothing; Darwin's work and fame were
secure. As men looked back over his beautiful life--simple, honest,
tolerant, kindly--and thought upon his great labours in the search
for truth, all the attacks faded into nothingness.

There were indeed some dark spots, which as time goes on appear
darker. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Whewell, the "omniscient,"
author of the _History of the Inductive Sciences_, refused to allow
a copy of the _Origin of Species_ to be placed in the library. At
multitudes of institutions under theological control--Protestant as
well as Catholic--attempts were made to stamp out or to stifle
evolutionary teaching. Especially was this true for a time in
America, and the case of the American College at Beyrout, where
nearly all the younger professors were dismissed for adhering to
Darwin's views, is worthy of remembrance. The treatment of Dr.
Winchell at the Vanderbilt University in Tennessee showed the same
spirit; one of the truest of men, devoted to science but of deeply
Christian feeling, he was driven forth for views which centred in
the Darwinian theory.

Still more striking was the case of Dr. Woodrow. He had, about
1857, been appointed to a professorship of Natural Science as
connected with Revealed Religion, in the Presbyterian Seminary at
Columbia, South Carolina. He was a devoted Christian man, and his
training had led him to accept the Presbyterian standards of faith.
With great gifts for scientific study he visited Europe, made a
most conscientious examination of the main questions under
discussion, and adopted the chief points in the doctrine of
evolution by natural selection. A struggle soon began. A movement
hostile to him grew more and more determined, and at last, in spite
of the efforts made in his behalf by the directors of the seminary
and by a large and broad-minded minority in the representative
bodies controlling it, an orthodox storm, raised by the delegates
from various Presbyterian bodies, drove him from his post.
Fortunately, he was received into a professorship at the University
of South Carolina, where he has since taught with more power than
ever before.

This testimony to the faith by American provincial Protestantism
was very properly echoed from Spanish provincial Catholicism. In
the year 1878 a Spanish colonial man of science, Dr. Chil y
Marango, published a work on the Canary Islands. But Dr. Chil had
the imprudence to sketch, in his introduction, the modern
hypothesis of evolution, and to exhibit some proofs, found in the
Canary Islands, of the barbarism of primitive man. The
ecclesiastical authorities, under the lead of Bishop Urquinaona y
Bidot, at once grappled with this new idea. By a solemn act they
declared it "_falsa, impia, scandalosa_"; all persons possessing
copies of the work were ordered to surrender them at once to the
proper ecclesiastics, and the author was placed under the major
excommunication.

But all this opposition may be reckoned among the last expiring
convulsions of the old theologic theory. Even from the new Catholic
University at Washington has come an utterance in favour of the new
doctrine, and in other universities in the Old World and in the New
the doctrine of evolution by natural selection has asserted its
right to full and honest consideration. More than this, it is
clearly evident that the stronger men in the Church have, in these
latter days, not only relinquished the struggle against science in
this field, but have determined frankly and manfully to make an
alliance with it. In two very remarkable lectures given in 1892 at
the parish church of Rochdale, Wilson, Archdeacon of Manchester,
not only accepted Darwinism as true, but wrought it with great
argumentative power into a higher view of Christianity; and what
is of great significance, these sermons were published by the same
Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge which only a few
years before had published the most bitter attacks against the
Darwinian theory. So, too, during the year 1893, Prof. Henry
Drummond, whose praise is in all the dissenting churches, developed
a similar view most brilliantly in a series of lectures delivered
before the American Chautauqua schools, and published in one of the
most widespread of English orthodox newspapers.

Whatever additional factors may be added to natural selection--and
Darwin himself fully admitted that there might be others--the theory
of an evolution process in the formation of the universe and of
animated nature is established, and the old theory of direct creation
is gone forever. In place of it science has given us conceptions far
more noble, and opened the way to an argument for design infinitely
more beautiful than any ever developed by theology.[86]


                           CHAPTER II.

                           GEOGRAPHY.
                    I. THE FORM OF THE EARTH.

AMONG various rude tribes we find survivals of a primitive idea
that the earth is a flat table or disk, ceiled, domed, or canopied
by the sky, and that the sky rests upon the mountains as pillars. Such
a belief is entirely natural; it conforms to the appearance of things,
and hence at a very early period entered into various theologies.

In the civilizations of Chaldea and Egypt it was very fully
developed. The Assyrian inscriptions deciphered in these latter
years represent the god Marduk as in the beginning creating the
heavens and the earth: the earth rests upon the waters; within it
is the realm of the dead; above it is spread "the firmament"--a
solid dome coming down to the horizon on all sides and resting upon
foundations laid in the "great waters" which extend around the earth.

On the east and west sides of this domed firmament are doors, through
which the sun enters in the morning and departs at night; above it
extends another ocean, which goes down to the ocean surrounding
the earth at the horizon on all sides, and which is supported and
kept away from the earth by the firmament. Above the firmament and
the upper ocean which it supports is the interior of heaven.

The Egyptians considered the earth as a table, flat and oblong, the
sky being its ceiling--a huge "firmament" of metal. At the four
corners of the earth were the pillars supporting this firmament,
and on this solid sky were the "waters above the heavens." They
believed that, when chaos was taking form, one of the gods by main
force raised the waters on high and spread them out over the
firmament; that on the under side of this solid vault, or ceiling,
or firmament, the stars were suspended to light the earth, and that
the rains were caused by the letting down of the waters through its
windows. This idea and others connected with it seem to have taken
strong hold of the Egyptian priestly caste, entering into their
theology and sacred science: ceilings of great temples, with
stars, constellations, planets, and signs of the zodiac figured
upon them, remain to-day as striking evidences of this.

In Persia we have theories of geography based upon similar
conceptions and embalmed in sacred texts.

From these and doubtless from earlier sources common to them all
came geographical legacies to the Hebrews. Various passages in
their sacred books, many of them noble in conception and beautiful
in form, regarding "the foundation of the earth upon the waters,"
"the fountains of the great deep," "the compass upon the face of
the depth," the "firmament," the "corners of the earth," the
"pillars of heaven," the "waters above the firmament," the
"windows of heaven," and "doors of heaven," point us back to both
these ancient springs of thought.[90]

But, as civilization was developed, there were evolved, especially
among the Greeks, ideas of the earth's sphericity. The
Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle especially cherished them. These
ideas were vague, they were mixed with absurdities, but they were
germ ideas, and even amid the luxuriant growth of theology in the
early Christian Church these germs began struggling into life in
the minds of a few thinking men, and these men renewed the
suggestion that the earth is a globe.[91]

A few of the larger-minded fathers of the Church, influenced
possibly by Pythagorean traditions, but certainly by Aristotle and
Plato, were willing to accept this view, but the majority of them
took fright at once. To them it seemed fraught with dangers to
Scripture, by which, of course, they meant their interpretation of
Scripture. Among the first who took up arms against it was
Eusebius. In view of the New Testament texts indicating the
immediately approaching, end of the world, he endeavoured to turn
off this idea by bringing scientific studies into contempt.
Speaking of investigators, he said, "It is not through ignorance
of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their
useless labour, that we think little of these matters, turning our
souls to better things." Basil of Caesarea declared it "a matter
of no interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or
a disk, or concave in the middle like a fan." Lactantius referred
to the ideas of those studying astronomy as "bad and senseless,"
and opposed the doctrine of the earth's sphericity both from
Scripture and reason. St. John Chrysostom also exerted his
influence against this scientific belief; and Ephraem Syrus, the
greatest man of the old Syrian Church, widely known as the "lute
of the Holy Ghost," opposed it no less earnestly.

But the strictly biblical men of science, such eminent fathers and
bishops as Theophilus of Antioch in the second century, and Clement
of Alexandria in the third, with others in centuries following,
were not content with merely opposing what they stigmatized as an
old heathen theory; they drew from their Bibles a new Christian
theory, to which one Church authority added one idea and another
another, until it was fully developed. Taking the survival of
various early traditions, given in the seventh verse of the first
chapter of Genesis, they insisted on the clear declarations of
Scripture that the earth was, at creation, arched over with a solid
vault, "a firmament," and to this they added the passages from
Isaiah and the Psalms, in which it declared that the heavens are
stretched out "like a curtain," and again "like a tent to dwell
in." The universe, then, is like a house: the earth is its ground
floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the Almighty hangs
out the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the
night. This ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above, and
in this is a cistern, shaped, as one of the authorities says,
"like a bathing-tank," and containing "the waters which are above
the firmament." These waters are let down upon the earth by the
Almighty and his angels through the "windows of heaven." As to the
movement of the sun, there was a citation of various passages in
Genesis, mixed with metaphysics in various proportions, and this
was thought to give ample proofs from the Bible that the earth
could not be a sphere.[92]

In the sixth century this development culminated in what was
nothing less than a complete and detailed system of the universe,
claiming to be based upon Scripture, its author being the Egyptian
monk Cosmas Indicopleustes. Egypt was a great treasure-house of
theologic thought to various religions of antiquity, and Cosmas
appears to have urged upon the early Church this Egyptian idea of
the construction of the world, just as another Egyptian
ecclesiastic, Athanasius, urged upon the Church the Egyptian idea
of a triune deity ruling the world. According to Cosmas, the earth
is a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas. It is four
hundred days' journey long and two hundred broad. At the outer
edges of these four seas arise massive walls closing in the whole
structure and supporting the firmament or vault of the heavens,
whose edges are cemented to the walls. These walls inclose the
earth and all the heavenly bodies.

The whole of this theologico-scientific structure was built most
carefully and, as was then thought, most scripturally. Starting
with the expression applied in the ninth chapter of Hebrews to the
tabernacle in the desert, Cosmas insists, with other interpreters
of his time, that it gives the key to the whole construction of the
world. The universe is, therefore, made on the plan of the Jewish
tabernacle--boxlike and oblong. Going into details, he quotes the
sublime words of Isaiah: "It is He that sitteth upon the circle of
the earth;... that stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain, and
spreadeth them out like a tent to dwell in"; and the passage in
Job which speaks of the "pillars of heaven." He works all this
into his system, and reveals, as he thinks, treasures of science.

This vast box is divided into two compartments, one above the
other. In the first of these, men live and stars move; and it
extends up to the first solid vault, or firmament, above which live
the angels, a main part of whose business it is to push and pull
the sun and planets to and fro. Next, he takes the text, "Let
there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide
the waters from the waters," and other texts from Genesis; to these
he adds the text from the Psalms, "Praise him, ye heaven of
heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens" then casts all,
and these growths of thought into his crucible together, finally
brings out the theory that over this first vault is a vast cistern
containing "the waters." He then takes the expression in Genesis
regarding the "windows of heaven" and establishes a doctrine
regarding the regulation of the rain, to the effect that the angels
not only push and pull the heavenly bodies to light the earth, but
also open and close the heavenly windows to water it.

To understand the surface of the earth, Cosmas, following the
methods of interpretation which Origen and other early fathers of
the Church had established, studies the table of shew-bread in the
Jewish tabernacle. The surface of this table proves to him that the
earth is flat, and its dimensions prove that the earth is twice as
long as broad; its four corners symbolize the four seasons; the
twelve loaves of bread, the twelve months; the hollow about the
table proves that the ocean surrounds the earth. To account for the
movement of the sun, Cosmas suggests that at the north of the earth
is a great mountain, and that at night the sun is carried behind
this; but some of the commentators ventured to express a doubt
here: they thought that the sun was pushed into a pit at night and
pulled out in the morning.

Nothing can be more touching in its simplicity than Cosmas's
summing up of his great argument, He declares, "We say therefore
with Isaiah that the heaven embracing the universe is a vault, with
Job that it is joined to the earth, and with Moses that the length
of the earth is greater than its breadth." The treatise closes with
rapturous assertions that not only Moses and the prophets, but also
angels and apostles, agree to the truth of his doctrine, and that


