Creation and Evolution 4sf> 



inconsistent with Creation ; natural selection with Providence and 

 Divine design. 



Discussion was maintained about these points for many years and 

 with much dark heat. It ranged over many particular topics and 

 engaged minds different in tone, in quality, and in accomplishment 

 There was at most times a degree of misconception. Some naturalists 

 attributed to theologians in general a poverty of thought which 

 belonged really to men of a particular temper or training. The 

 "timid theism" discerned in Darwin by so cautious a theologian as 

 Liddon 1 was supposed by many biologists to be the necessary 

 foundation of an honest Christianity. It was really more character- 

 istic of devout naturalists like Philip Henry Gosse, than of religious 

 believers as such 2 . The study of theologians more considerable and 

 even more typically conservative than Liddon does not confirm the 

 description of religious intolerance given in good faith, but in serious 

 ignorance, by a disputant so acute, so observant and so candid as 

 Huxley. Something hid from each other's knowledge the devoted 

 pilgrims in two great ways of thought. The truth may be, that 

 naturalists took their view of what creation was from Christian 

 men of science who naturally looked in their own special studies for 

 the supports and illustrations of their religious belief. Of almost 

 every laborious student it may be said "Hie ab arte sua nan recessit" 

 And both the believing and the denying naturalists, confining habitual 

 attention to a part of experience, are apt to affirm and deny with 

 trenchant vigour and something of a narrow clearness "Qui re- 

 spiciunt adpauca, de facili pronunciant 3 ." 



Newman says of some secular teachers that "they persuade the 

 world of what is false by urging upon it what is true." Of some 

 early opponents of Darwin it might be said by a candid friend that, 

 in all sincerity of devotion to truth, they tried to persuade the world 

 of what is true by urging upon it what is false. If naturalists took 

 their version of orthodoxy from amateurs in theology, some con- 

 servative Christians, instead of learning what evolution meant to 

 its regular exponents, took their view of it from celebrated persons, 

 not of the front rank in theology or in thought, but eager to take 

 account of public movements and able to arrest public attention. 



1 H. P. Liddon, The Recovery of S. Thomas ; a sermon preached in St Paul's, London, 

 on April 23rd, 1882 (the Sunday after Darwin's death). 



2 Dr Pusey (Unscience not Science adverse to Faith, 1878) writes : " The questions as 

 to ' species,' of what variations the animal world is capable, whether the species be more 



or fewer, whether accidental variations may become hereditary and the like, naturally 



fall under the province of science. In all these questions Mr Darwin's careful observa- 

 tions gained for him a deserved approbation and confidence." 



3 Aristotle, in Bacon, quoted by Newman in his Idea of a University, p. 78. London, 

 1873. 



