The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-02-12
GEORGE HENRY ROMANES
VITID DESCRIPTION OF THE ENG-
 LISH N1TURILIST.
Dr. Sturges' Address Before tho Mems Club ofthe United Church-Romu ligiosu Experience.

l Friendship for Darwin and His Re
 ligiosu Experience.
 Before the Mems club of Unite,
 church last evening Dr. William C
 Sturgis read an exceedingly interesting
 paper on George Henry Romanes, tn
 English naturalist. Dr. Sturgis' lectur
 dealt with the character and religious
 experience o2 Prof. Romanes, and hi
 vivid and earnest treatment of the sub
 ject held the undivided attention of hi:
 audience. In part he spoke aa follows
 "On May 20, 1S4S, John Romanes was
 born at Kingston, Canada, He diet
 at Oxford on May 23, 1894 In the brie1
 period of forty-six years, with much o1
 his lfe-work unfinished and with his intellectual powers still lacking the
 completing influence of age 1t is safe
 to say that the impress which this re-
 markable man has left upon the purely
 scientific thought of the world, has been
 excelled by that of only two or three
 of his generation, while in the domain
 of constructive religious philosophy he
 stands pre-eminent.
 Tt is my primary purpose in this pa-
 per to trace the development of Ro-
 maneT mind from the pronounced
 Christian position of his early years,
 through the sudden and total eclipse of
 faith which marked his first introduce
 tion to scientific research, to the final | position of assured belief won through the long struggle of years and held on
 the basis of absolute reasonableness.
 The speaker here gave in brief an outline of Romanes' life, gathered as he said largely from his Life and Let ters" written by his wife. He spoke of the inheritance Romanes received from his parents in the way of character. and the lack of order and discipline seen in his early religious training. By the time Romanes was ready for col lege," he continued, he had fully de- cided to study for orders and for the first, second or third year of his course at Cambridge kept this object in view. In his third year a seemingly slight chance led him to read for the natural science tripos, in which the following year he received a second class From this time he gradually relinquished his plaN of studying for orders, and began feeling his way in new directions. Medicine interested him for time, then philosophy but Darwin's books, read then for the first time, exercised the most extraordinary affect upon him. They opened up to him a new and vast world of thought hitherto undreamed of. They gave him sense of power and capacity"
 The speaker told of Romanes' first meeting with Darwin in 1874 Tt was" he said, "an epoch in Romanes' life. MT. Darwin met him with outstretched hands and a bright smiling How glad l am that you are so young Thence forward MT. Darwin became the ob- l ject of hero worship. As time went | on Romanes found that the great mas ter was as much to be admired for his | personal character as for his wonderful | gifts, and to the youth who never in | the darkest days of skepticism parted 1 with the love of goodness for beauty of character, this was an overwhelming ioy."
 In speaking of Romanes' development l on the religious side Dr. Sturges said: 'Romanes whole nature was one pecu- iarlX sensitive to religious influence. Ills mind had an extraordinary capac- ty for holding In solution facts, how sver fragmentary, isolated, unpondera- )le, until patience and loyalty should ,e rewarded and single further addi- ion cause the whole to crystalline.
 Tt will be remembered that in 1874 2omanes while student at Cambridge von the Burney prize with an essay Ipon the relation of Christian prayer to he fact that God governs the universe " general and fixed laws. It will be for me to dwell upon the rguments by which he sought to prove he efficacy of Christian prayer. They we're largely of a philosophical charac- CT and were based upon the fact that he sphere within which scientific in- uiry can be made is limited one and hat it is quite conceivable that special l ivine acts of response to prayer may ! ccur and still not proclaim any phe- C omenon such as science must take cog izance of and regard as contrary to the nown order. "Romanes' Burney essay rested upon . 1eistic hypothesis. But this hypothe- = s itself shortly after the publication, a Q was led to repudiate. In 1876 he pub = shed a work entitled A Candid Exam :, ation of Theism,' which reaches 4 holly sceptical conclusion. Rapidly I, Id sharply his mind had moved into ', 0sition of reasoned skepticism about ~ le existence of God at all. Upon sci- h ltific grounds as well as upon the basis Y,
 purely formal considerations it is ;e town that the origin of things admits <, being explained by the theory of the h m in no further degree than by the f, cory of atheism; that the beauty and lrmony of nature followed as inevita- o, y from the persistence of force and o e primary qualities of matter as it is te rtainly true that force is persistence ,t Id that matter is extended and unpen- ~ ral.
 But in his arguments, forceful as he t them to be, Romanes felt a sorrow. A } said in the conclusion of one of his oks that he fully realized the ruin lich the book would bring to many oo