From all sides came evidences of desire
to compromise with the theory. Strict adherents of the biblical
text pointed significantly to the verses in Genesis in which the
earth and sea were made to bring forth birds and fishes, and man
was created out of the dust of the ground. Men of larger mind like
Kingsley and Farrar, with English and American broad churchmen
generally, took ground directly in Darwin's favour. Even Whewell took
pains to show that there might be such a thing as a Darwinian argument
for design in Nature; and the Rev. Samuel Houghton, of the Royal
Society, gave interesting suggestions of a divine design in evolution.
Both the great English universities received the new teaching as a
leaven: at Oxford, in the very front of the High Church party at
Keble College, was elaborated a statement that the evolution
doctrine is "an advance in our theological thinking." And Temple,
Bishop of London, perhaps the most influential thinker then in the
Anglican episcopate, accepted the new revelation in the following
words: "It seems something more majestic, more befitting him to
whom a thousand years are as one day, thus to impress his will
once for all on his creation, and provide for all the countless
varieties by this one original impress, than by special acts of
creation to be perpetually modifying what he had previously made.
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