242 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from which the following is an extract : "A 

 more significant farewell a visitor has never 

 received at our hands. Prof. Tyndall was 

 welcomed among us as a man of science. It 

 was known, indeed, that he claimed, in that 

 character, a warrant to question some popu- 

 lar religious faiths ; but we may safely say 

 that the professors of those faiths never 

 supposed that he would carry his assumed 

 warrant upon the platform and into his lect- 

 ures on 'Light.' Yet he did that very 

 thing, attacking, in those lectures, both our 

 religious faith and one large class of its pro- 

 fessors. Moreover, when the assaults thus 

 made were formally complained of, he ex- 

 pressed no regret for them. Indeed, lest 

 even so significant silence might fail to be 

 appreciated, he now took pains to emboss 

 upon his farewell speech the following re- 

 markable sentences : ' Were there any lin- 

 gering doubt as to my visit at the bottom 

 of my mind ; did I feel that I had blun- 

 dered and, with the best and purest inten- 

 tions, I might, through an error of judg- 

 ment, have blundered so as to cause you 

 discontent, I should now be wishing to 

 abolish the doubt, or to repair the blunder ; 

 but there is no drawback of this kind.' 

 After this unusual assertion of his perfect 

 satisfaction with his course, it would have 

 been unjust, both to him and to a very 

 large part of his American audiences, to 

 suffer him to depart without some weighty 

 reminder of his mistake." 



Of Dr. Hitchcock's address the writer re- 

 marks : " The few opening sentences which 

 have thus far been printed indicate the dig- 

 nified and manly tone in which American 

 Christians resented, through him, the effort 

 of one sort of science to disparage religion ; " 

 and he then says : " But Dr. Hitchcock did 

 not stand alone. He had sympathizers 

 enough among his hearers to indorse his 

 expressions with repeated applause; and, 

 what was even more significant, he found 

 the heartiest support in the speech of 

 Parke Godwin, who followed him, speaking 

 for the press. The fact that a clergyman 

 should vindicate the claims of religion, even 

 at a dinner given in compliment to one of 

 his assailants, might not seem in any way 

 remarkable or important. But the editor 

 of the Post had no professional zeal to rally 

 him to the same battle ; and when, after a 



detail of some of the most arrogant assump- 

 tions of irreligious scientists, he proceeded, 

 with indignant eloquence, to remand their 

 science to its own exact sphere, and to 

 claim for revelation the settlement of the 

 questions of 'primal origin and ultimate 

 destinies,' Mr. Tyndall must have had a 

 complacency quite impervious by ordinary 

 weapons, if he persisted in thinking he had 

 ' made no blunder,' and had ' caused no 

 discontent.' Did Mr. Godwin suppose that 

 the sentiments he was uttering were those 

 of his guest? Did not he and all the com- 

 pany know they were not ? Then, did he 

 in uttering them, and they in applauding 

 them, offer a gratuitous insult to the man 

 they pretended to honor ? No ; but they 

 did a loyal duty to the religion which he 

 had wantonly assailed. They set a stint to 

 their courtesy to the man, lest the excess 

 of it should make a betrayal of their faith." 

 Upon which, Prof. Tyndall remarks as 

 follows, in a letter to a friend : 



"I confess to reading with some amaze- 

 ment the article on the ' Tyndall Banquet,' 

 in the Intelligencer. I am there charged 

 with attacking, in my lec'tures, both the 

 Christian faith and one large class of its 

 professors. If the telling of the truth be 

 a necessary entry on the passport to ' the 

 better land,' then, assuming the maker of 

 this charge to be not in a state of invincible 

 ignorance, I would not exchange my chances 

 on the frontier of immortality for his. The 

 fact is that, though solicited to do so, I 

 steadily refused to quit the neutral ground 

 of the intellect during my visit to the Uni- 

 ted States. My audiences in Boston, Phila- 

 delphia, Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn, 

 and New Haven, can testify whether a single 

 word relating to religion was heard in any 

 lecture of mine delivered in those cities. 

 New York can answer whether, in five out 

 of the six lectures there delivered, a syllable 

 was uttered, pro or con, regarding religion. 

 And I confidently appeal to that heroic au- 

 dience which paid me the memorable com- 

 pliment of coming to hear me on the in- 

 clement night when the words were spoken 

 on which this charge is hung, whether, as 

 regards its substance or its tone, what I 

 then said could, with fairness, be construed 

 into an attack 'upon religious faith, and 

 one large class of its professors.' Put my 



