Sir,—One of your correspondents has pithily observed, that if he has denounced Darwinism, it is simply because he believes it to be untrue. Could you not, Sir, in the interests of science and Christian charity, prevail upon him to recall his denunciation, by showing him that intellectual error requires not to be denounced, but to be set right? The prejudice against Darwinism has undoubtedly arisen from a conflict—real or apparent—between its conclusions and certain passages of Scripture. Such a prejudice arose against the earlier advancement of astronomy and geology, and the new conclusions arrived at were ‘denounced in the interests of Christian orthodoxy,’ simply because those who denounced them believed them to be untrue. It is a little sad, though withal a little amusing, to observe how many persons, eminent at once for piety and Protestantism, inveigh against the Papal assumption of infallibility, while assuming an infallibility of their own. They know precisely what is Scripture doctrine and what is not. They know exactly what measure of inspiration God has been pleased to give to this writer or the other. At one time they are sure that a science is not true, because the Bible does not speak in accordance with the language of the science; at another time they discover that the science had all along been very clearly revealed in the Bible under a disguise. It unfortunately escapes their notice that by this means, while they are reverently denouncing the science ‘in the interests of Christian orthodoxy,’ they are under a disguise denouncing the Bible.

‘In my view,’ says your correspondent above referred to, ‘the Mosaic writers were divinely taught, and knew what they wrote about with a most perfect knowledge.’ In one sense, no doubt, they did know what they were writing about—they knew that it was religion, and, therefore, they never pretended to ‘enunciate’ science, whether false or true; but in any other sense to say that they knew what they wrote about with a most perfect knowledge, is to assert what is highly improbable, and cannot be proved. Either it makes every writer a kind of god, so far as the attribute of infallibility is concerned, or it destroys all independence of testimony. To claim for them a perfect knowledge of which they made no use, except to mislead the world for thousands of years, is surely to commit the capital offence of ‘inciting to hatred and contempt’ of their writings. How alien, moreover, is it to the spirit of the writers themselves—men who are constantly confessing their own errors, doubts, and perplexities; men whose path in moral, let alone intellectual excellence, was not always direct and straightforward, and who knew and owned their infirmity of nature. How contrary, too, to every analogy of life is this notion of a Book, written in perfect language by men of perfect knowledge in every subject that may be even incidentally referred to in its pages. For not only is man an imperfect being, but his language is an imperfect instrument of his imperfect thoughts. His conscience is fallible; his understanding is fallible; let the Book which guides him be as infallible as you please, he will still bring it back to the inherent imperfection of things human by misreading and misconceiving it. That the law of God is perfect, follows from the very thought of God; that any particular exposition of that law to finite minds either is or can be perfect, is almost, or altogether, a contradiction in terms. Far from knowing all about modern systems of Botany, Moses did not even know all about religion as the later prophets knew; nor did they know as we know. Their mission would probably have been hidden rather than forwarded, had they been able to ‘enunciate’ scientific truths in advance of their age. Their new views in religion were often roundly abused; their new views in science would hardly have escaped denouncing.

As a caution to the unwary, it should be remarked that the opposition supposed to exist between Mr. Darwin’s phrase ‘Natural Selection,’ and Mr. Herbert Spencer’s ‘Survival of the Fittest,’ is purely imaginary. The latter, no doubt, is the more philosophically accurate, the former is a convenient, popular, and telling metaphor. They both express the same conception of a large and wonderful group of facts. Perhaps it will be scarcely necessary to caution the unwary against taking for granted that ‘vestigiform structures are proofs of a typical formation;’ but if they are, they prove that in the typical formation of man a tail was included, which would be such a disgrace to the typical formation as would prevent all worthy and decorously-minded persons from believing in typical formations for a moment.