ecially if it is
scientific, cannot, I imagine, like actors, go on repeating or feigning
the same emotion. It must leave for the moment as apparently completed
one branch of knowledge to which it may return again after developing
some less mature branch on which the attention of the most learned
investigators is for a time wholly concentrated. The tree of knowledge
is an evergreen, and in science, no more than in arts, is there any
decay. When Darwin published his great _Origin of Species_ which was
hailed as a revelation, not only by scientific men, but by intelligent
laymen, religious people became very much alarmed. They talked about the
decay of faith, and ascribed any falling off in the offertories to the
shillings spent on visiting the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens.
Younger sons and less gifted members of clever families were no longer
destined for Holy Orders; as we were descended from apes it would have
seemed impious. They were sent to Cambridge to pursue a so-called
scientific career, which was crowned by the usual aegrotat in botany
instead of a pass in history. The falling off in candidates for Holy
Orders seriously alarmed some of our Bishops; and Darwin--the gentle,
delightful Darwin--became what the Pope had been to our ancestors. I
need not point out how groundless these fears happily proved to be. The
younger intellects of the country simply became more interested for the
moment in the cross-breeding of squirrels, than in the internecine
difficulties of the Protestant church on Apostolic succession, the number
of candles on the altar, and the legality of incense. Now, I rejoice to
say, there is a healthy revival of interest and a healthy difference of
opinion on all these important religious questions. We must never pay
serious attention to the alarmists who tell us that the churches and
sects are seeing their last days. Macaulay has warned us never to be too
sanguine about the Church of Rome. The moments of her greatest trials
produced some of her greatest men--Ignatius Loyola, Philip Neri, and
Francis Xavier. Do you think the Church is decaying because the
congregations are banished from France, and the Concordat has come to an
end? I tell you it will only stimulate her to further conquests; it is
the beginning of a new life for the Catholic Church in France. If the
Anglican Church were to be disestablished to-morrow, I would regard it as
a Sandow exercise for the hardworking, sp