7 3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the reasons were purely economic ; the banished scholar was 

 heaped with official compliments, evidently in hope that he would 

 keep silence. 



Such was not Dr. Wincheirs view. In a frank letter to the 

 leading journal of the university town he stated the whole mat- 

 ter. The intolerance-hating press of the country, religious and 

 secular, did not hold its peace. In vain the authorities of the 

 university waited for the storm to blow over. It was evident, at 

 last, that a defense must be made, and a local organ of the sect, 

 which, under the editorship of a fellow-professor, had always 

 treated Dr. Wincheirs views with the luminous inaccuracy which 

 usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a rival's teachings, 

 assumed the task. In the articles which followed, the usual sci- 

 entific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be " absurd," 

 " vague and unintelligible," " preposterous and gratuitous." This 

 new champion stated that " the objections drawn from fossilifer- 

 ous strata and the like are met by reference to the analogy of 

 Adam and Eve, who presented the phenomena of adults when 

 they were but a day old, and by the flood of Noah and other cata- 

 clysms, which, with the constant change of nature, are sufficient 

 to account for the phenomena in question " ! 



Under inspiration of this sort, the Tennessee Conference of the 

 religious body in control of the university had already in October, 

 1878, given utterance to its opinion of unsanctified science as fol- 

 lows : " This is an age in which scientific atheism, having divested 

 itself of the habiliments that most adorn and dignify humanity, 

 walks abroad in shameless denudation. The arrogant and im- 

 pertinent claims of this science, ' falsely so called/ have been so 

 boisterous and persistent, that the unthinking mass have been 

 sadly deluded ; but our university alone has had the courage to 

 lay its young but vigorous hand upon the mane of untamed 

 Speculation and say, ' We will have no more of this/ " 



It is a consolation to know how the result, thus devoutly 

 sought, has been achieved, for in the " ode " sung at the laying of 

 the corner-stone of a new theological building of the same uni- 

 versity, in May, 1880, we read : 



" Science and Eevelation here 

 In perfect harmony appear, 

 Guiding young feet along the road 

 Through grace and nature up to God. 



It is also pleasing to know that while an institution calling 

 itself a university thus violated the fundamental principles on 

 which any institution worthy of the name must be based, another 

 institution which has the glory of being the first in the entire 

 North to- begin something like a university organization — the 

 State University of Michigan — recalled Dr. Winchell at once to 



