The theory of Darwin contradicted all their ideas on the subject, vague as they were. He showed that man had not appeared at first as man, that he had not fallen from perfection, but had slowly risen through many ages from lower forms. He took food, climate, and all conditions into consideration, and accounted for difference of form, function, instinct, and reason, by natural causes. He dispensed with the supernatural. He did away with Jehovah the potter.
Of course the theologians denounced him as a blasphemer, as a dethroner of God. They even went so far as to smile at his ignorance. They said: "If the theory of Darwin is true the Bible is false, our God is a myth, and our religion a fable."
In that they were right.
Against Darwin they rained texts of Scripture like shot and shell. They believed that they were victorious and their congregations were delighted. Poor little frightened professors in religious colleges sided with the clergy. Hundreds of backboneless "scientists" ranged themselves with the enemies of Darwin. It began to look as though the church was victorious.
Slowly, steadily, the ideas of Darwin gained ground. He began to be understood. Men of sense were reading what he said. Men of genius were on his side. In a little while the really great in all departments of human thought declared in his favor. The tide began to turn. The smile on the face of the theologian became a frozen grin. The preachers began to hedge, to dodge. They admitted that the Bible was not inspired for the purpose of teaching science—only inspired about religion, about the spiritual, about the divine. The fortifications of faith were crumbling, the old guns had been spiked, and the armies of the "living God" were in retreat.
Great questions were being discussed, and freely discussed. People were not afraid to give their opinions, and they did give their honest thoughts. Draper had shown in his "Intellectual Development of Europe" that Catholicism had been the relentless enemy of progress, the bitter foe of all that is really useful. The Protestants were delighted with this book.
Buckle had shown in his "History of Civilization in England" that Protestantism had also enslaved the mind, had also persecuted to the extent of its power, and that Protestantism in its last analysis was substantially the same as the creed of Rome.
This book satisfied the thoughtful.
Hegel in his first book had done a great work and it did great good in spite of the fact that his second book was almost a surrender. Lecky in his first volume of "The History of Rationalism" shed a flood of light on the meanness, the cruelty, and the malevolence of "revealed religion," and this did good in spite of the fact that he almost apologizes in the second volume for what he had said in the first.
The Universalists had done good. They had civilized a great many Christians. They declared that eternal punishment was infinite revenge, and that the God of hell was an infinite savage.