iSOg THE METArilYSICAL SOCIETY 337 



established orthodoxy. But whereas Luther displaced 

 Erasmus, and the earlier reformers fought out the quarrel 

 with the weapons of the theologian rather than those of the 

 Humanist, the latter-day reformation was based upon the 

 extension of the domain of positive science, upon the force 

 of historical criticism, and the sudden reorganisation of ac- 

 cumulated knowledge in the light of a ph3sical theory 

 adequate to explain it. 



These new facts and the new or re-vivified theories based 

 upon them, remained to be reckoned with after the first 

 storm of denunciation had passed by, and the meeting at 

 Sion House in 1867 * showed that some at least of the 

 English clergy besides Colenso and Stanley wished to under- 

 stand the real meaning of the new movement. Although 

 the wider effect of the scientific revival in modifying theo- 

 logical doctrine was not yet fully apparent, the irreconcila- 

 bles grew fewer and less noisy, while the injustice of their 

 attempts to stifle the new doctrine and to ostracise its sup- 

 porters became more glaring. 



Thus among the supporters of the old order of thought, 

 there was one section more or less ready to learn of the 

 new. Another, seeing that the doctrines of which they were 

 firmly convinced were thrust aside by the rapid advance 

 of the new school, thought, as men not unnaturally think 

 in the like situation, that the latter did not duly weigh what 

 was said on their side. Hence this section eagerly entered 

 into the proposal to found a society which should bring to- 

 gether men of diverse views, and effect, as they hoped, by 

 personal discussion of the great questtions at issue, in the 

 manner and with the machinery of the learned societies, a 

 rapprochement unattainable by written debate. 



The scheme was first propounded by Mr. James Knowles, 

 then editor of the Contemporary Review, now of the Nine- 

 teenth Century, in conversation with Tennyson and Profess- 

 or Pritchard (Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford). 



Thus the Society came to be composed of men of the 

 most opposite ways of thinking and of very various occupa- 



* See p. 33g. 



