i870 LAY SERMONS 347 



terrible example of intellectual pravity beyond redemption, a 

 man with opinions such as cannot be held " without grave 

 personal sin on his part " (as was once said of Mill by W. 

 G. Ward, see p. 451), the representative in his single person 

 of rationalism, materialism, atheism, or if there be any more 

 abhorrent " ism " — in token of which as late as 1892 an 

 absurd zealot at the headquarters of the Salvation Army 

 crowned an abusive letter to him at Eastbourne by the 

 statement, " I hear you have a local reputation as a Brad- 

 laughite." 



But now official life began to lay closer hold upon him. 

 He came forward also as a leader in the struggle for edu- 

 cational reform, seeking not only to perfect his own bio- 

 logical teaching, but to show, in theory and practice, how 

 scientific training might be introduced into the general sys- 

 tem 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 ex- 

 pressing 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 



