With regard to the attitude of the more liberal representatives of the Church, the following letter from Charles Kingsley is of interest:
_C. Kingsley to C. Darwin._ Eversley Rectory, Winchfield, November 18th, 1859.
DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for the unexpected honour of your book. That the Naturalist whom, of all naturalists living, I most wish to know and to learn from, should have sent a scientist like me his book, encourages me at least to observe more carefully, and think more slowly.
I am so poorly (in brain), that I fear I cannot read your book just now as I ought. All I have seen of it _awes_ me; both with the heap of facts and the prestige of your name, and also with the clear intuition, that if you be right, I must give up much that I have believed and written.
In that I care little. Let God be true, and every man a liar! Let us know what is, and, as old Socrates has it, [Greek: hepesthai tô logô]--follow up the villainous shifty fox of an argument, into whatsoever unexpected bogs and brakes he may lead us, if we do but run into him at last.
From two common superstitious, at least, I shall be free while judging of your book:--
(1.) I have long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species.
(2.) I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal forms capable of self-development into all forms needful _pro tempore_ and _pro loco_, as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the _lacunas_ which He Himself had made. I question whether the former be not the loftier thought.
Be it as it may, I shall prize your book, both for itself, and as a proof that you are aware of the existence of such a person as
My father's old friend, the Rev. J. Brodie Innes, of Milton Brodie, who was for many years Vicar of Down, in some reminiscences of my father which he was so good as to give me, writes in the same spirit:
"We never attacked each other. Before I knew Mr. Darwin I had adopted, and publicly expressed, the principle that the study of natural history, geology, and science in general, should be pursued without reference to the Bible. That the Book of Nature and Scripture came from the same Divine source, ran in parallel lines, and when properly understood would never cross....