and at the same time believe in the Darwinian theory. There appeared, indeed, here and there, curious discrepancies; thus in 1873 the Monthly Religious Magazine of Boston congratulated its readers that the Rev. Mr. Burr had "demolished the evolution theory, knocking the breath of life out of it and throwing it to the dogs." This amazing performance by "the Rev. Mr. Burr" was repeated in a different form and in a very striking way by Bishop Keener before the Œcumenical Council of Methodism at Washington in 1891. In what is described in the newspapers as an "admirable speech," he refuted evolution doctrines by saying that evolutionists had only to make a journey of twelve hours from the place in which he was then standing and find together the bones of the muskrat, the opossum, the coprolite, and the ichthyosaurus. He asserted that Agassiz—whom the good bishop, like so many others, seemed to think an evolutionist—when he visited these beds near Charleston, declared: "These old beds have set me crazy; they have destroyed the work of a lifetime"; and the Methodist prelate ended by saying: "Now, gentlemen, brethren, take these facts home with you; get down and look at them. This is the watch that was under the steam hammer—the doctrine of evolution; and this steam hammer is the wonderful deposit of the Ashley beds."
Exhibitions like these availed little. While the good bishop amid vociferous applause thus made comically evident his belief that Agassiz was a Darwinian and a coprolite an animal, scientific men were recording in all parts of the world facts confirming the dreaded theory of an evolution by natural selection. While the Rev. Mr. Burr was so loudly praised for "chopping up Darwinism and throwing it to the dogs," Marsh was completing his series leading from the five-toed ungulates to the horse; while Dr. Tayler Lewis at Union, and Drs. Hodge and Duffield at Princeton, were showing that if evolution is true the biblical accounts are false, the indefatigable Yale professor was showing his cretaceous birds, and among them Hesperornis and Ichthyornis with teeth; while in Germany Luthardt, Schund, and their compeers were demonstrating that Scripture requires a belief in special and separate creations, the Archæopteryx, showing a most remarkable connection between birds and reptiles, was discovered; while in France Monseigneur Ségur and others were indulging in diatribes against "a certain Darwin," Gaudry and Filhol were discovering a striking series of "missing links" among the carnivora.
In view of the proofs accumulating in favor of the new evolutionary hypothesis, the change in the tone of controlling theologians was now rapid. From all sides came evidences of desire to compromise with the theory. The strict adherents of the biblical text pointed significantly to the texts in Genesis in which the
