ogical
road, and evolved "The Tyndall Prayer Test."

Tyndall proposed that one hundred clergymen be delegated to pray for the
patients in any certain ward of Bellevue Hospital. If, after a year's
trial, there was a marked decrease in mortality in that ward, as
compared with previous records, we might then conclude that prayer was
efficacious, otherwise not.

One good clergyman in Pittsburgh offered publicly to debate "Darwinism"
with Tyndall, but beyond a little scattered shrapnel of this sort, the
lecture-tour was a great success. It netted just thirteen thousand
dollars, the whole amount of which Tyndall generously donated as a fund
to be used for the advancement of natural science in America.

In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-five, this fund had increased to thirty-two
thousand dollars, and was divided into three equal parts and presented
to Columbia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. The fund was
still further increased by others who followed Professor Tyndall's
example, and Columbia, from her share of the Tyndall fund, I am told now
supports two foreign scholarships for the benefit of students who show a
special aptitude in scientific research. Professor James of Harvard once
said: "The impetus to popular scientific study caused by Professor
Tyndall's lectures in the United States was most helpful and fortunate.
Speaking but for myself, I know I am a different man and a better man,
for having heard and known John Tyndall."

* * * * *

When John Tyndall died, in the year Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three,
Spencer wrote:

"It never occurred to Tyndall to ask what it was politic to say, but
simply to ask what was true. The like has of late years been shown in
his utterances concerning political matters--shown, it may be, with too
great frankness. This extreme frankness was displayed also in private,
and sometimes, perhaps, too much displayed; but every one must have the
defects of his qualities. Where absolute sincerity exists, it is certain
now and then to cause an expression of a feeling or opinion not
adequately restrained.

"But the contrast in genuineness between him and the average citizen was
very conspicuous. In a community of Tyndalls (to make a rather wild
supposition), there would be none of that flabbiness characterizing
current thought and action--no throwing overboard of principles
elaborated by painful experience in the past, and adoption of a
hand-to-mouth policy