Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/861

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SKETCH OF ALEXANDER WINCHELL.
841

was soon found to believe that there had been men earlier than the period of Adam, and even that all the human race are not descended from Adam. His effort in this was to reconcile science and Scripture, and he was now treated by a Methodist Episcopal bishop in Tennessee just as, two centuries before, La Peyrère had been treated for a similar offense by a Roman Catholic vicar-general in Belgium. The publication of a series of articles on the subject, contributed by the professor to a Northern religious newspaper at its own request, brought matters to a climax, for, the articles having fallen under the notice of the leading Southwestern organ of the denomination controlling the Vanderbilt University, the result was a most bitter denunciation of Prof. Winchell and of his views. Shortly afterward the professor was told by Bishop McTyeire that 'our people believe that such views are contrary to the plan of redemption,' and was requested by the bishop to quietly resign his chair. To this the professor made the fitting reply: 'If the Board of Trustees have the manliness to dismiss me for cause, and declare the cause, I prefer that they should do it; no power on earth could persuade me to decline.' 'We do not propose,' said the bishop, with gratuitous suggestiveness, 'to treat you as the Inquisition treated Galileo.' 'But what you propose is the same thing,' rejoined Dr. Winchell. 'It is ecclesiastical proscription for an opinion which must be settled by scientific evidence.' Twenty-four hours later Dr. Winchell was informed that his chair had been abolished, and its duties, with its salary, added to those of a colleague; the public were given to understand that the reasons were purely economic; the banished scholar was heaped with official compliments, evidently in hope that he would keep silence. Such was not Dr. Winchell's view. In a frank letter to the leading journal of the university town, he stated the whole matter. The intolerance-hating press of the country, religious and secular, did not hold its peace. In vain the authorities of the university waited for the storm to blow over. It was evident, at last, that a defense must be made, and a local organ of the sect, which, under the editorship of a fellow-professor, had always treated Dr. Winchell's views with the luminous inaccuracy which usually characterizes a professor's ideas of a rival's teachings, assumed the task. In the articles which followed, the usual scientific hypotheses as to the creation were declared to be 'absurd,' 'vague and unintelligible,' 'preposterous and gratuitous.'" While in Nashville Prof. Winchell constructed some pieces of microscopic apparatus and a small working steam-engine of one fifth horse-power, and completed a survey of the sanitary geology of that city.

In June, 1879, Prof. Winchell was unanimously recalled by the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan—a body that