b'monarchies. In his enormously popular bookHuxley (18251895), along with the American The Age of Reason (1794), Paine railed againstpromoters of science and secular education,the continual persecution carried on by theJohn W. Draper (18111882) and Andrew Church, for several hundred years, against theDickson White (18321918). Huxley, who sciences and against the professors of science.resented the infl uence of the Anglican Paine contended that Christianity placedestablishment within the scientifi c culture shackles on the mind and that no scientifi callyof his day, embellished a vision of Western progressive person could ever embrace thehistory where extinguished theologians central doctrines of the Christian faith. Whatlie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside the cradle of Paine sought through his literary eff orts,Hercules. 8Coining the term agnostic to however, was not to end religion but to replacedescribe his own position on religion, Huxley the Christian religion with a secularizedenlisted Darwins scientifi c theory to champion rational religion based on science. 6 the cause of religious skepticism. He had no In the 1800s, the rhetorical torch of thepatience with scientifi c colleagues, such as anti-religious Enlightenment thinkersRoman Catholic biologist St. George Mivart, was taken up by the freethinkers of thewho accepted evolution and insisted that Victorian Age who sought to stage a socialDarwinism was perfectly compatible with revolution in the scientifi c establishment,historic Christian teaching. Huxley, infuriated which at that time was dominated byby Mivarts position, insisted that Mivart religiously devout practitioners. 7 Foremostchoose whether he wanted to be a true son among the freethinkers were Darwinsof the Church or a loyal soldier of science. 9Bulldog, British naturalist Thomas HenryIf Huxley was to create a proper war between 32 AspireVolume 1//Fall 2019 Joshua Earle from unsplash'