Gavin
Carlyle was perfervid on the same side. The Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge published a book by the Rev. Mr. Birks, in
which the evolution doctrine was declared to be "flatly opposed
to the fundamental doctrine of creation." Even the _London Times_
admitted a review stigmatizing Darwin's _Descent of Man_ as an
"utterly unsupported hypothesis," full of "unsubstantiated
premises, cursory investigations, and disintegrating speculations,"
and Darwin himself as "reckless and unscientific."[77]
But it was noted that this second series of attacks, on the _Descent
of Man_, differed in one remarkable respect--so far as England was
concerned--from those which had been made over ten years before on
the _Origin of Species_. While everything was done to discredit
Darwin, to pour contempt upon him, and even, of all things in the
world, to make him--the gentlest of mankind, only occupied with
the scientific side of the problem--"a persecutor of Christianity,"
while his followers were represented more and more as charlatans
or dupes, there began to be in the most influential quarters
careful avoidance of the old argument that evolution--even by
natural selection--contradicts Scripture.
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