In 1868 several excellent churchmen in Prussia thought it their duty to meet for the denunciation of "science falsely so called." Two results followed: upon the great majority of these really self-sacrificing men--whose first utterances showed complete ignorance of the theories they attacked--there came quiet and widespread contempt; upon Pastor Knak, who stood forth and proclaimed views of the universe which he thought scriptural, but which most schoolboys knew to be childish, came a burst of good-natured derision from every quarter of the German nation.( 287) (287) See the Berlin newspapers for the summer of 1868, especially Kladderdatsch.
But in all the greater modern nations warfare of this kind, after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, became more and more futile.
While conscientious Roman bishops, and no less conscientious Protestant clergymen in Europe and America continued to insist that advanced education, not only in literature but in science, should be kept under careful control in their own sectarian universities and colleges, wretchedly one-sided in organization and inadequate in equipment; while Catholic clerical authorities in Spain were rejecting all professors holding the Newtonian theory, and in Austria and Italy all holding unsafe views regarding the Immaculate Conception, and while Protestant clerical authorities in Great Britain and America were keeping out of professorships men holding unsatisfactory views regarding the Incarnation, or Infant Baptism, or the Apostolic Succession, or Ordination by Elders, or the Perseverance of the Saints; and while both Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastics were openly or secretly weeding out of university faculties all who showed willingness to consider fairly the ideas of Darwin, a movement was quietly in progress destined to take instruction, and especially instruction in the physical and natural sciences, out of its old subordination to theology and ecclesiasticism.( 288) (288) Whatever may be thought of the system of philosophy advocated by President McCosh at Princeton, every thinking man must honor him for the large way in which he, at least, broke away from the traditions of that centre of thought; prevented, so far as he was able, persecution of scholars for holding to the Darwinian view; and paved the way for the highest researches in physical science in that university.

For a most eloquent statement of the opposition of modern physical science to mediaeval theological views, as shown in the case of Sir Isaac Newton, see Dr.Thomas Chalmers, cited in Gore, Art of Scientific Discovery, London, 1878, p.

247.
The most striking beginnings of this movement had been seen when, in the darkest period of the French Revolution, there was founded at Paris the great Conservatory of Arts and Trades, and when, in the early years of the nineteenth century, scientific and technical education spread quietly upon the Continent.

By the middle of the century France and Germany were dotted with well-equipped technical and scientific schools, each having chemical and physical laboratories.
The English-speaking lands lagged behind.

In England, Oxford and Cambridge showed few if any signs of this movement, and in the United States, down to 1850, evidences of it were few and feeble.