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 disintegra