CHARLES DARAVIN. 121 



Others ap:ain, but let us hope very few, look upon Dai'win as a 

 man who lias done his best to subvert the Cliristian reliijion and 

 destroy our belief in God. Xothiug could have been furtlicr from 

 his intention ; no such imputation more repugnant to his feelings. 

 Never by a single word has he attacked our faith, and although 

 doubts arose in his own mind as to the probability of supernatural 

 interference with the laws of nature, and of divine revelation 

 to man, he never expressed them in any of his published books 

 or papers, nor can the inference be justly drawn from them 

 that he held unorthodox views. He believed that he had dis- 

 covered a great truth, and he honestly gave expression to his 

 convictions, without any other motive than that of advancing our 

 knowledge of nature and enabling us to penetrate some of her 

 secrets. His religion did not consist in "faith in things unseen," 

 or blind belief in the miraculous, but it was that " pure religion 

 and undefiled" which leads a man "to visit the fatherless and 

 widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the 

 world." AYTiile undoubtedly the greatest naturalist, if not the 

 greatest scientist who ever lived, he was one of the most humble, 

 kind-hearted, and lovable of men. His aflPection for his friends 

 was "of the warmest possible kind," and he had, "to an unusual 

 degree, the power of attaching his friends to him." At Down he 

 was most courteous to all the village people, and took an interest 

 in everything relating to their welfare. He helped to found a 

 Friendly Club, and served as treasurer for thirty years ; and for 

 the last thirty-six years of his life he was on the most friendly and 

 indeed affectionate terms with the Vicar of Down, the Rev. Brodie 

 Inues, who speaks of him as an active assistant in all parish 

 matters, and ever ready with liberal contributions. Owing to the 

 retired life which his ill-health necessitated, his friends were not 

 numerous, but all who knew him seem to have been even more 

 impressed with the beauty of his character than with the greatness 

 of his attainments, vast as they were. 



Professor Huxley says that " the more one knew of him, the 

 more he seemed the incorporated ideal of a man of science. Acute 

 as were his reasoning powers, vast as was his knowledge, marvellous 

 as was his tenacious industry, under physical difficulties which 

 would have converted nine men out of ten into aimless invalids ; it 

 was not these qualities, great as they were, which impressed those 

 who were admitted to his intimacy with involuntary veneration, 

 but a certain intense and almost passionate honesty by which all 

 his thoughts and actions were irradiated, as by a central fire. . . . 

 He found a great truth trodden under foot, reviled by bigots, and 



