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