The bitterness of the Abbe Hamard in France has
been carried to similar and even greater extremes among sundry
Protestant bodies in Europe and America. The simple truth of
history mates it a necessity, unpleasant though it be, to
chronicle two typical examples in the United States.
In the year 1875 a leader in American industrial enterprise
endowed at the capital of a Southern State a university which
bore his name. It was given into the hands of one of the
religious sects most powerful in that region, and a bishop of
that sect became its president. To its chair of Geology was
called Alexander Winchell, a scholar who had already won
eminence as a teacher and writer in that field, a professor
greatly beloved and respected in the two universities with which
he had been connected, and a member of the sect which the
institution of learning above referred to represented.
But his relations to this Southern institution were destined to
be brief. That his lectures at the Vanderbilt University were
learned, attractive, and stimulating, even his enemies were
forced to admit; but he was soon found to believe that there had
been men earlier than the period as signed to Adam, and even
that all the human race are not descended from Adam.
Pages:
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576