ABSTRACT
This chapter describes about natural theology, the prevailing British tradition of apologetic thought, formed a bridge between science and religion. Societies rather than churchly agencies were likely to be better managed, and so the British and Foreign Bible Society and similar organisations became typical expressions of the Evangelical temper. The rank and file of Evangelicals was therefore affected by the steady dissemination of the main currents in Western civilisation over the last three centuries. There was no automatic antagonism between the intellectual temper of the age and the rising Evangelical movement. Evangelicalism was far from immune from the influence of Romanticism. The main effect of the Romantic mood in the Evangelical movement as a whole, however, was to push many of its adherents in a more theologically liberal direction. Premillennialism stiffened the backbone of Evangelicals in the Church of England, although the teachings did not spread too many people outside its ranks, apart from the Brethren.
