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[…] Yesterday, it was the turn of the mathematicians, astronomers, and men of pure and applied science, who crowded around the grave of Sir J. Herschel, in Westminster Abbey. The pall-bearers were a distinguished band of brothers of science. […]

Among the congregation were the venerable Professor Owen, his head covered by a black velvet cap (also worn by Dean Stanley, the Archdeacon, and Prebendary Prothero, of Whippingham Church); Professors Tyndall, Adams, Stokes, and Sylvester; Mr. Charles Darwin, Mr. Huxley, […]

Many wistful eyes were, as I thought, turned upon Mr. C. Darwin and Mr. Huxley as they stood round the grave yesterday. Some would have liked to ask them whether they really thought a Simian ape could have been developed into a Newton or a Herschel. Others would fain perhaps have interrogated them as to the exact moment when the ape, in its process of development, was able to vindicate for itself Immortality. Possibly Mr. Darwin would have replied,

"I am a scientific man, and not a theologian. I tell you what I read in the Book of Nature, and am far from believing that I know the Highest Being, as it is."

He may hold, with Goethe, that it is inscrutable, of which men can only have approximating perceptions and feelings. Poor Giordano Bruno, who was burned as a heretic at Rome, in 1600, would not have been afraid of Darwin or Huxley, for he saw God everywhere, realised that He alone is, and that all else is but a perishable phenomenon, or passing illusion […]