ussion was maintained about these points for many years and with
much dark heat. It ranged over many particular topics and engaged
minds different in tone, in quality, and in accomplishment. There was
at most times a degree of misconception. Some naturalists attributed
to theologians in general a poverty of thought which belonged really
to men of a particular temper or training. The "timid theism"
discerned in Darwin by so cautious a theologian as Liddon[225] was
supposed by many biologists to be the necessary foundation of an
honest Christianity. It was really more characteristic of devout
_naturalists_ like Philip Henry Gosse, than of religious believers as
such.[226] The study of theologians more considerable and even more
typically conservative than Liddon does not confirm the description of
religious intolerance given in good faith, but in serious ignorance,
by a disputant so acute, so observant and so candid as Huxley.
Something hid from each other's knowledge the devoted pilgrims in two
great ways of thought. The truth may be, that naturalists took their
view of what creation was from Christian men of science who naturally
looked in their own special studies for the supports and illustrations
of their religious belief. Of almost every labourious student it may
be said: "_Hic ab arte sua non recessit_." And both the believing and
the denying naturalists, confining habitual attention to a part of
experience, are apt to affirm and deny with trenchant vigour and
something of a narrow clearness "_Qui respiciunt ad pauca, de facili
pronunciant_."[227]

Newman says of some secular teachers that "they persuade the world of
what is false by urging upon it what is true." Of some early opponents
of Darwin it might be said by a candid friend that, in all sincerity
of devotion to truth, they tried to persuade the world of what is true
by urging upon it what is false. If naturalists took their version of
orthodoxy from amateurs in theology, some conservative Christians,
instead of learning what evolution meant to its regular exponents,
took their view of it from celebrated persons, not of the front rank
in theology or in thought, but eager to take account of public
movements and able to arrest public attention.

Cleverness and eloquence on both sides certainly had their share in
producing the very great and general disturbance of men's minds in the
early days of Darwinian teaching. But by far the greater part of that
disturb