THEOPHOBIA: ITS NEMESIS 45 



Then he says the calm was broken by the publica- 

 tion of three books : Essays and Reviews, The 

 Origin of Species, Criticisms on the Pentateuch 

 by Colenso. Few persons probably now remember 

 the first and the last of these books ; the fame 

 of the second is likely to last long. 



Whether again Butler is right in his idea as to 

 the causes or not, as to the fact there can be no 

 doubt. We have arrived at a period when the 

 prevalent opinion amongst the intellectual classes 

 was that religion belief in anything which could 

 not be fully understood was impossible once 

 one began to think seriously about it. Those 

 who did not really look into such questions might 

 go on considering themselves to believe in revela- 

 tion, but the moment that a man seriously tackled 

 the subject, his religion was bound to go, just as 

 that of Ernest Pontifex did at the end of five 

 minutes' conversation with an atheistic shoe- 

 maker. 1 Agnosticism and materialism were in 

 the air, and remained the dominant features for 

 quite a number of years. There were those who 

 deplored the loss of their faith such as it had been. 

 Huxley obviously did ; and Romanes, who after- 

 wards returned to the Church of England, con- 



1 An excellent example may be found in Butler's own career. 

 Destined for the ministry of the Church of England (with his 

 own full consent), he was set to teach a class in a Sunday school. 

 Finding that some of his pupils were unbaptized, yet no worse- 

 behaved than the others, and obviously quite ignorant of 

 what baptism meant, he abandoned all belief. His biographer, 

 equally ignorant, in narrating, with approval, this change of 

 opinion, says, " Paley had produced evidence of Christianity, 

 but none so unmistakable as this to the contrary." 



