4 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
preachers of the day testified to the pure and earnest love of truth 
which characterized the life and labours of Mr. Darwin. Canon 
Prothero described him as “ the greatest man of science of his day, 
but so entirely a stranger to intellectual pride and arrogance that 
he stated with the utmost modesty opinions of the truth of which 
he was himself convinced, but which he was aware could not be 
universally agreeable or acceptable.” Canon Barry referred to 
Mr. Darwin as a leader of scientific thought, showing that the 
fruitful doctrine of evolution, with which his name would always 
be associated, lent itself as readily to the old promise of God as 
to more modern but less complete explanations of the universe. 
Canon Liddon observed that, when Darwin’s books on the « Origin 
of Species” and on the “Descent of Man’ first appeared, they were 
largely regarded by religious men as containing a theory neces- 
sarily hostile to religion, but a closer study had greatly modified 
any such impression. “Tt is seen,” he said, “that whether the 
creative activity of God is manifested through catastrophes—as 
the phrase goes—or in progressive evolution, it is still his creative 
activity, and the really great questions beyond remain untouched.” 
During forty years past, living in comparative retirement at his 
country residence in Kent, Mr. Darwin steadfastly pursued his 
experimental researches, and from time to time published their 
results, with those of his profound and comprehensive speculations, 
till he has gradually won the assent of all well-informed persons to 
a few grand principles concerning the development of specific forms 
of organic life. His theory of the origin of species, vegetable and 
animal, referred them to the operation of a general law of nature 
in the universal struggle of living organisms for subsistence, and 
in the competition for opportunities of reproducing their kind 
tending to the survival of the fittest types, and to the modification 
of their progeny in the course of successive generations by more 
and more distinctive peculiarities growing up in those organs or 
features which aided most effectually in the preservation of the 
race. Individual types of exceptional vigour, and with particular 
adaptation to surrounding circumstances, would thus become the 
progenitors of distinct species, 
