^ 
From the Guardian of September Mlh. 1884. 
At the early age of forty two, while attending the meeting oftheBritish 
Association at Montreal, has heen cut off one who had already done 
good service in the defence of religious truth, and from whom yet 
greater services were reasonably expected. Walter It. Browne, was a 
younger son of Canon Murray Browne, so well known by the last 
generation in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. He was 
distinguished at Cambridge as a high Wrangler and Fellow of Trinity, 
and well known afterwards in the scientific world as one who had 
successfully appliedhigh mathematical attainment to the solution of 
engineering problems. This led to his appointment as secretary to the 
Society of Mechanical Engineers. But among those who knew him 
intimately it wasnothis devotion to science,butmuch more his unswerving, 
almost austere, loyalty to the religious beliefs of his childhood that 
distinguished him. And when, some nine years ago, the religious 
world were asking, ’’MTioisthis Walter Browne who has accepted Mr 
Bradlaugh’s challenge to discuss the possibility of nnracles? his friends 
knew well that the sacred cause was in good hands, though the 
disparity in age and experience may have made them anxious 
about the result; and few of them, I think, were prepared for the 
admirable temper and eloquence which he displayed. For two nights, 
in a crowded lecture hall at Leeds, the disputation was maintained; 
and those who read it (for the debate has been published by the 
Christian Evidence Society) will see in the perfect temper and courtesy 
that distinguished Mr. Bradlaugh’s side of the argument as well as Mr. 
Browne’s, a proof that in intellectual ability the two were not unequally 
matched. A few years later Mr. Browne published The Inspiration of 
the New lestament, with a brief preface by Archdeacon Norris; some 
remarks on John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography for the Christian 
Evidence Society; and a paper, read at Derby before the Church 
Congress, on the ‘‘ Limits of Authority and Free Thought.” ^ ooaDiomi l 
papers of this kind ^l 1 fi^lnTr^phlatn on scientific "iihj""t" irn nil thut he 
has left behind him. But far beyond any written argument is the 
value of a consistent layman’s life who thus bears testimony to the 
truths of Eevelation. Nor is the value of such evidence confined to his 
own generation; it has, as Milton expresses it, “a life beyond, life,” 
swelling that stream of influence which makes nations as well as 
