return again after developing some less mature branch on which the attention of the most learned investigators is for a time wholly concentrated.  The tree of knowledge is an evergreen, and in science, no more than in arts, is there any decay.  When Darwin published his great Origin of Species which was hailed as a revelation, not only by scientific men, but by intelligent laymen, religious people became very much alarmed.  They talked about the decay of faith, and ascribed any falling off in the offertories to the shillings spent on visiting the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens.  Younger sons and less gifted members of clever families were no longer destined for Holy Orders; as we were descended from apes it would have seemed impious.  They were sent to Cambridge to pursue a so-called scientific career, which was crowned by the usual aegrotat in botany instead of a pass in history.  The falling off in candidates for Holy Orders seriously alarmed some of our Bishops; and Darwin—­the gentle, delightful Darwin—­became what the Pope had been to our ancestors.  I need not point out how groundless these fears happily proved to be.  The younger intellects of the country simply became more interested for the moment in the cross-breeding of squirrels, than in the internecine difficulties of the Protestant church on Apostolic succession, the number of candles on the altar, and the legality of incense.  Now, I rejoice to say, there is a healthy revival of interest and a healthy difference of opinion on all these important religious questions.  We must never pay serious attention to the alarmists who tell us that the churches and sects are seeing their last days.  Macaulay has warned us never to be too sanguine about the Church of Rome.  The moments of her greatest trials produced some of her greatest men—­Ignatius Loyola, Philip Neri, and Francis Xavier.  Do you think the Church is decaying because the congregations are banished from France, and the Concordat has come to an end?  I tell you it will only stimulate her to further conquests; it is the beginning of a new life for the Catholic Church in France.  If the Anglican Church were to be disestablished to-morrow, I would regard it as a Sandow exercise for the hardworking, splendid intellects of the Establishment.  The Nonconformists—­well, they never talk about their own decline; of all the divisions of Christianity they always seem to me heartily to enjoy persecution; and like myself, I never knew them to admit the word decadence into their vocabulary, at least about themselves.  I hold them up to you as examples.  Let us all be Nonconformists in that respect.