champions of Evolution were fabricated by Darwin; and the 'Origin
of Species' has enlisted a formidable body of combatants, trained
in the severe school of Physical Science, whose ears might have
long remained deaf to the speculations of a priori philosophers.

I do not think any candid or instructed person will deny the
truth of that which has just been asserted. He may hate the very
name of Evolution, and may deny its pretensions as vehemently as
a Jacobite denied those of George the Second. But there it is--
not only as solidly seated as the Hanoverian dynasty, but happily
independent of Parliamentary sanction--and the dullest
antagonists have come to see that they have to deal with an
adversary whose bones are to be broken by no amount of bad words.

Even the theologians have almost ceased to pit the plain meaning
of Genesis against the no less plain meaning of Nature. Their
more candid, or more cautious, representatives have given up
dealing with Evolution as if it were a damnable heresy, and have
taken refuge in one of two courses. Either they deny that
Genesis was meant to teach scientific truth, and thus save the
veracity of the record at the expense of its authority; or they
expend their energies in devising the cruel ingenuities of the
reconciler, and torture texts in the vain hope of making them
confess the creed of Science. But when the peine forte et dure
is over, the antique sincerity of the venerable sufferer always
reasserts itself. Genesis is honest to the core, and professes
to be no more than it is, a repository of venerable traditions of
unknown origin, claiming no scientific authority and possessing
none.