86 WALTER AUBREY KIDD^ M.D._, M.R.C.S._, F.Z.S.^ ON 



The time, the subject, and the writer of the Bamijion Lectures 

 for 1884 were alike noteworthy. The "Origin of Species" had cele- 

 brated its coming of age four years before, and Darwin's greatest 

 champion and swordsman in many an encounter liad proclaimed 

 " Evolution is no longer an hypothesis but an historical fact." 

 The challenge of Huxley, for it was no less than a challenge, 

 was couched in his customary trenchant terms, but the saying 

 if it did not then echo the united voice of Science of 1880 fairly 

 well anticipated that of 1903. The year 1884 was one in which 

 it had been recently declared orthodox from the side of Science 

 to hold the general truth of the doctrine of evolution. But for 

 a Bishop of the Established Church to hold this doctrine so 

 publicly announced, still required not less knowledge of the two 

 great subjects of Eeligion and Science, than of courage. Even 

 so late as 1894 at Oxford, Lord Salisbury, as President of the 

 British Association of Science, made a very powerful attack on 

 natural selection. Here it may be allowable again to state 

 that evolution as now conceived is not Darwinism, or natural 

 selection, though the latter is reckoned as one of its great 

 factors. To the end of his life even Huxley was cautious and 

 slower than many to acknowledge the paramount power of 

 natural selection in organic evolution ; too slow for what are 

 called by Weismann " the Hotspurs of biol(»gy." So much so 

 that Lord Kelvin, on the occasion of presenting to Huxley in 

 1894 a medal of the Eoyal Society, was justified in saying how 

 great was the pleasure all present must feel to have among 

 them the advocate of " the origin of species by natural selec- 

 tion," who once bore down its foes " ready if needs be to save 

 it from its friends." The year 1884 was a critical time for a 

 Bishop to choose for a declaration of his adherence to evolu- 

 tionary doctrines. To-day such a thing would be received as a 

 matter of course, and probably the accepted views of evolution 

 iipproach much more closely than ever before the teaching of 

 Scripture as to the origin of the world and the things that are 

 therein. 



If the time was critical the writer was noteworthy as the 

 protagonist on the E]3iscopal Bench of the present friendly and 

 candid claims of Science to be attended to by religious and 

 educated men. Here was the contributor to Essays and Revicirs 

 of an earlier date, in which he foreshadowed the line of his 

 Bariij)ton Lectures, again speaking in advance of his times ! 

 When first he came to the See of Exeter he brought with him 

 a certain cloud of suspicion as a churchman too broad to be safe 

 and sound. But suspicion was slowly disarmed by his wise. 



