1870 LAY SERMONS 3 



introduced into the general system of education. 

 He was more than once asked to stand for Parliament, 

 but refused, thinking he could do more useful work 

 for his country outside. 



The publication in 1870 of Lay Sermons, the first 

 of a series of similar volumes, served, by concentrating 

 his moral and intellectual philosophy, to make his 

 influence as a teacher of men more widely felt. The 

 "active scepticism," whose conclusions many feared, 

 was yet acknowledged as the quality of mind which 

 had made him one of the clearest thinkers and safest 

 scientific guides of his time, while his keen sense of 

 right and wrong made the more reflective of those 

 who opposed his conclusions hesitate long before 

 expressing a doubt as to the good influence of his 

 writings. This view is very clearly expressed in a 

 review of the book in the Nation (New York, 1870, 

 xi. 407). 



And as another review of the Lay Sermons puts 

 it (Nature, iii. 22), he began to be made a kind of 

 popular oracle, yet refused to prophesy smooth 

 things. 



During the earlier period, with more public 

 demands made upon him than upon most men of 

 science of his age and standing, with the burden of 

 four Royal Commissions and increasing work in 

 learned societies in addition to his regular lecturing 

 and official paleontological work, and the many 

 addresses and discourses in which he spread abroad 

 in the popular mind the leaven of new ideas upon 



