An editorial in the February number of the Expository Times brings out some very interesting facts in regard to the religious experience of Professor Romanes, who has been frequently mentioned, of late, as a convert, in his later years, from atheism to Christianity. It seems that belief in Darwinism led him, as it did Darwin himself, Tyndall and Huxley, into the unbelief for which they were noted. He published an anonymous work in 1876, entitled "A Candid Examination of Theism," the authorship of which was so successfully concealed that it did not become generally known until after his death in 1894. At the close of that book, in which he had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that there is no God, he was candid enough to express the feeling which oppressed his soul when this conclusion was reached. The passage reads like the wail of a lost soul:

      I am not ashamed to confess that, with this virtual negation of God, the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and, [140] although from henceforth the precept to "work while it is day" will doubtless gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words, "The night cometh when no man can work," yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which was once mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as I now find it--at such times I shall feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible.

      If other atheists would be equally candid, how many such wailings of despair would be appended to the lines of argument by which they drag themselves out into darkness. It was perhaps this very candor, however, that distinguished him from his fellows in scientific unbelief, and made it possible that he should be rescued from his despair before it became eternal. In his desperation he looked around for some source of relief, and his eye rested on the one only man of high attainments who accepted Darwinism, and yet held fast to faith in Christ. This man was John Gulick, then a missionary in Japan. He wrote to him, and his letter still further reveals the sadness and unrest of his soul. I copy the most significant part:

      The question which, for my own benefit alone, I want to ask is, How is it that you have retained your Christian belief? Looking to your life, I know that you must have done so conscientiously; and, looking to your logic, I equally know that you can not have done so without due consideration. On what lines of evidence, therefore, do you mainly rely? Years ago my own belief was shattered, and all the worth of life destroyed, by what has ever since appeared to me overpowering assaults from the side of rationality; and yours is the only mind I have met with which, while greatly superior to mine in the latter respect, appears to have reached in opposite conclusion. Therefore, I should like to know, in a general way, how you view the matter as a whole; but if you think the question is one that I ought not to have asked, I hope you will neither trouble to answer it, nor refuse to accept in advance my apology for putting it. [141]

      How piteous was this appeal, and how impossible that a man who was then a missionary to the heathen should not answer it to the best of his ability. A correspondence followed, and the final result was the restoration of the unhappy scientist to the faith of his childhood. This reminds me of a most touching passage in Froude's "Nemesis of Faith":

      Arthur, is it treason to the Power that has given us our reason, and willed that we should me it, if I say I would gladly give away all I am, and all I ever may become, all the years, every one of them, which may be given me to live, but for one week of my old childhood's faith, to go back to calm and peace again, and then to die in hope? Oh, for one look of the blue sky, as it looked then when we called it heaven! The old family prayers, which taught us to reverence prayer, however little we understood its meaning; the far dearer private prayers at our own bedside; the dear friends for whom we prayed; the still calm Sunday with its best clothes and tiresome services, which we little thought were going so deep into our hearts when we thought them so long and tedious; yes, it is among these so trifling seeming scenes, these, and a thousand more, that our faith has wound among our heartstrings; and it is the thought of these scenes now which threatens me with madness as I call them up again.

[SEBC 140-142]