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Nineteenth-Century British Sermons on Evolution and the Origin of Species: the Dog That Didn’T Bark?

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Nineteenth-Century British Sermons on Evolution and the Origin of Species: the Dog That Didn’T Bark? NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH SERMONS ON EVOLUTION AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES: THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK? Keith A. Francis Writing at the end of the 19th century, George Henslow (1835–1925), the son of Charles Darwin’s mentor John Stevens Henslow (1796–1861), noted: Since Darwin published his work, Th e Origin of Species, in 1859, and brought to the front the old doctrine of the evolution of living things, but on a new basis, this principle has been taken up and applied elsewhere than in the physical world … It was soon thought by some that the time had come to apply it to religions; and Christianity was … tacitly assumed, among other forms of religion, to have been evolved by some natural process out of Judaism or elsewhere; without any great, if any, break in the continuity of moral thought or interference whatever.1 By 1896, the year Henslow’s comment was published, the theory of evolution had gained suffi cient acceptance among British scientists and lit erati that the next task for the intelligentsia was to apply evolutionary theory to other areas of knowledge – history, politics, art, and even religion.2 Henslow’s more famous contemporary Th omas H. Huxley (1825– 95) had noted in the 1880s that the journey to the point in time at which evolution was just another scientifi c theory with applications outside of science had not been smooth. Commenting on the signifi cance of Darwin’s achievement, Huxley drew attention to what he considered was a major shift in attitude: Th e contrast between the present condition of public opinion on the Darwinian question; between the estimation in which Darwin’s views are 1 George Henslow, Christ No Product of Evolution (London, 1896), p. 3. 2 See, for example, Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics; or, Th oughts on the Application of the Principles of “Natural Selection” and “Inheritance” to Political Society (London, 1872); Edward Caird, Th e Evolution of Religion, 2 vols. (Glasgow, 1893); Anna Swanwick, Evolution and the Religion of the Future (London, 1894); and C. Hubert H. Parry, Th e Evolution of the Art of Music (London, 1896). 270 keith a. francis now held in the scientifi c world; between the acquiescence, or at least quiescence, of the theologians of the self-respecting order at the present day and the outburst of antagonism on all sides in 1858–9,3 when the new theory respecting the origin of species fi rst became known to the older generation to which I belong, is so startling that, except for docu- mentary evidence, I should be sometimes inclined to think my memories dreams.4 Huxley’s description fi ts into what James Moore has characterized as the “military metaphor” of the reception of Th e Origin of Species.5 Th e theory of evolution had been “bound hand and foot and cast into utter darkness during the millennium of theological scholasticism”; “Darwin poured new life-blood into the ancient frame” of the philosophy of evolution”; Darwin’s ideas were opposed by the “dullest antagonists”, including men such as Bishop Samuel Wilberforce who was “a shallow pretender to a Master in Science”;6 “years had to pass away before mis- representation, ridicule, and denunciation, ceased to be the most nota- ble constituents of the majority of the multitudinous criticisms of his work which poured from the press”; but, in the end, “even theologians have almost ceased to pit the plain meaning of Genesis against the no less plain meaning of Nature”.7 Th e picture Huxley drew was, to con- tinue his graphic imagery, of dark and malevolent, but ignorant, forces allied against scientifi c truth and the seekers of scientifi c truth, particu- larly Darwin. 3 Huxley’s use of these dates is interesting and surprising. Th e Origin of Species was not published until 24 November 1859. Th e joint-paper of Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) on their evolutionary theory of descent by modifi cation through natural selection, “On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection”, was presented to the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858; there was no “outburst of antagonism” in the ensuing days and weeks. 4 Th omas H. Huxley, “On the Reception of the ‘Origin of Species,’ ” in Th e Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an Autobiographical Chapter, ed. Francis Darwin (London, 1887), p. 2: 181. 5 James R. Moore, Th e Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 19–49. Th e title of the book was On the Origin of Species until the sixth edition which was published in 1872. As the book is more commonly known as Th e Origin of Species, that nomenclature will be used throughout this chapter. 6 Samuel Wilberforce (1805–73) was the son of the English abolitionist William Wilberforce; he became the Bishop of Oxford (1845–69) and the Bishop of Winchester (1869–73). 7 Huxley, “On the Reception of the ‘Origin of Species,’ ” pp. 181, 182, 183..
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