That’s precisely what Wallace did. The devil and his chaplain now stand watch in God’s sanctuary, giving unsettling immediacy to the old caution against “the foxes guarding the hen house.” Ovem lupo committere! Even less to his credit, he was quite willing to use those who held to a theistic account of evolution, such as, for example, the Reverend Charles Kingsley as shields against the charge of atheism. Like Sambourne's cartoon, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies parodies much of the discourse surrounding the origins debate. One wonders how Kingsley could make such a mistake. “Firsts” are always interesting: the first to discover X-rays (Wilhelm Conrad R�ntgen), the first to discover radioactivity (Marie Curie), the first to vaccinate against smallpox (Edward Jenner), etc. In America, Asa Gray had done much the same, but as a botanist he might be forgiven for not reading the theory with too close a theological eye. Tom (a human child who has become an amphibian with gills and now lives in the water) approaches Mother Carey, a synonym for Mother Nature, and says, ‘I heard, ma’am, that you were always busy making new beasts out of old.’ What would Kingsley have thought of The World of Life? Had Darwin’s “celebrate cleric” deserted him? Charles Kingsley died of pneumonia on January 23, 1875. But we cannot assume responsibility for, nor be taken as endorsing in any way, any other content or links on any such site. That the Naturalist whom, of all naturalists living, I most wish to know and learn from, should have sent a scientist like me his book, encourages me at least to observe more carefully, and think more slowly. His collaboration with Darwin and Huxley helped them in their task of undermining the faith of multitudes concerning the accuracy and authority of the Word of God. Kingsley had misunderstood that the main point of Darwin’s book was to remove the Creator from nature” (Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, p. 95). This desire for anonymity did not last long. evolution of Charles Kingsley to the spirituality of Arabella Buckley, I contend that these writers coupled fantasy with science and natural history to invest nature again with the wonder and mystery that modernity had taken away. He was made Canon of Westminster Abbey in 1873 and, after his death in 1875, a marble bust was placed on a window sill there, a short distance from where Darwin was interred in 1882. The series lays a vital foundation for understanding both the world around us, and the Gospel itself. Charles Kingsley’s Water Baby Discovers the Truth about Darwin’s Controversial Evolutionary Theory Kingsley, in his letter of thanks, was fulsome in his praise. Freeman has suggested that most, if not all, of the first edition was bought up at the dealer’s auction before the official publication date, by an agent of Lyell and Hooker, and that these copies were then sent free to sympathisers and other prominent people whom the principals wished to influence. . Kingsley has the fairy say: ‘Folks say now that I can make beasts into men, by circumstance, and selection, and competition, and so forth … if I can turn beasts into men, I can, by the same laws of circumstance, and selection, and competition, turn men into beasts.’8, Kingsley was eager to side with the proponents of evolution. It’s doubtful. The very first to attempt this was Charles Kingsley. The didactic children’s fantasy The Water-Babies (1863) combines Kingsley’s concern for sanitary reform with his interest in natural history and the theory of evolution. He was buried in St. Mary’s Churchyard at Eversley, but a bust of Kingsley rests proximate to Darwin’s body in Westminster Abbey. If so, would you donate so it can continue? Check your email! Kingsley had publicly declared the simian ancestry of humans four years before Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) and Kingsley’s adulatory quotations remained in every subsequent edition of Origin up to the sixth and last published in 1872. Kingsley’s thesis would find fullest expression in Wallace’s World of Life (1910). In that I care little. 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. Doing so was a difficult challenge, but if religious belief withered a bit and lost some of its radiance they didn’t seem to care much; it was more important to get on the correct side of Darwin. From two common superstitions, at least, I shall be free while judging of your books: Also, as Gertrude Himmelfarb has observed, “The points [in Origin] were so intricately argued that to follow them at all required considerable patience and concentration — an expenditure of effort which was itself conducive to acquiescence” (Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, p. 350). Charles Kingsley. Can I count on your support? Like theistic evolutionists to this day, the inconsistent Kingsley had a serious problem with coherence. He was a founding member of the Christian Socialist movement; he was becoming known as a writer of novels that promoted the cause of the poor, and even better known for his historical novels, e.g. Creation Ministries International (CMI) exists to support the effective proclamation of the Gospel by providing credible answers that affirm the reliability of the Bible, in particular its Genesis history. So they eagerly sought a prominent clergyman who knew something of science to promote their cause. He was appointed a chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1859. Kingsley had publicly declared the simian ancestry of humans four years before Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) and Kingsley’s adulatory quotations remained in every subsequent edition of Origin up to the sixth and last published in 1872. But the credit for seeing evolution’s far-reaching implications for the origin and nature of life may be further divided under the religious and philosophical headings. A third group — and a sizeable one — were those eager to embrace Darwin’s “one long argument” without losing their Christianity. Like theistic evolutionists to this day, the inconsistent Kingsley had a serious problem with coherence. Some important firsts have to be shared. In a book of sermons, Kingsley wrote: ‘The Black People of Australia, exactly the same race as the African Negro, cannot take in the Gospel … All attempts to bring them to a knowledge of the true God have as yet failed utterly … Poor brutes in human shape … they must perish off the face of the earth like brute beasts.’11,12. As Jay Richards cautions, “Behind the phrase ‘theistic evolution’ lurks a lot of mischief and confusion.” (For a thorough examination see God and Evolution.) ‘All I have seen of it awes me,’ he wrote, ‘both from 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.’2 This apparently posed no problem to him, for he went on to say that he was now free from the ‘superstition’ that God needed a fresh act of creation for each type of creature.