Robert Stout (left), Dunedin lawyer and politician, and John Macmillan Brown (right), professor of classics and English at Canterbury College, were both brought up as Scottish Presbyterians. Both lost their faith under the influence of Darwinism. Brown described Darwin's ideas as 'spiritual dynamite' and condemned religion to the faculty of the imagination as opposed to secular religion. Stout became even more vehemently secular and saw Darwinism as implying that progress was the major law of evolution.
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Macmillan Brown Library, University of Canterbury, University of Canterbury research photograph collection
Reference: MB 1448
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