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