Reviews, sermons, books light and heavy, came flying at
the new thinker from all sides.
The keynote was struck at once in the _Quarterly Review_ by
Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He declared that Darwin was guilty
of "a tendency to limit God's glory in creation"; that "the
principle of natural selection is absolutely incompatible with the
word of God"; that it "contradicts the revealed relations of
creation to its Creator"; that it is "inconsistent with the fulness
of his glory"; that it is "a dishonouring view of Nature"; and that
there is "a simpler explanation of the presence of these strange
forms among the works of God": that explanation being--"the fall of
Adam." Nor did the bishop's efforts end here; at the meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science he again
disported himself in the tide of popular applause. Referring to the
ideas of Darwin, who was absent on account of illness, he
congratulated himself in a public speech that he was not descended
from a monkey.
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