speak did not know it was loaded: and so his earnest LITTLE 

 words in praise of Darwin and the doctrine of evolu- JOURNEYS 

 tion, occasionally came like unto a rumble of his own 

 artificial thunder. " I speak what I think is truth, but 

 of course, when I express ungracious facts I try to do 

 so in what will be regarded as not a nasty manner," 

 said Tyndall, thus using that pet English word in a 

 rather pleasing way. 



In his statement that the prayer of persistent effort is 

 the only prayer that is ever answered, he met with a 

 direct challenge at Oberlin. This gave rise to what, at 

 the time, created quite a dust in the theological road, 

 and evolved, " The Tyndall Prayer Test." 

 Tyndall proposed that one hundred clergymen be del- 

 egated to pray for the patients in any certain ward of 

 Bellevue Hospital. If after a year's trial there was a 

 marked decrease in mortality in that ward, as com- 

 pared with previous records, we might then conclude 

 that prayer was efficacious, otherwise not. 

 One good clergyman in Pittsburg offered to publicly 

 debate " Darwinism" with Tyndall, but beyond a 

 little scattered shrapnel of this sort, the lecture tour 

 was a great success. It netted just thirteen thousand 

 dollars, the whole amount of which Tyndall gener- 

 ously donated as a fund to be used for the advance- 

 ment of natural science in America. In 1885, this fund 

 had increased to thirty-two thousand dollars, and was 

 divided into three equal parts and presented to Colum- 

 bia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. The 

 fund was still further increased by others who followed 



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