ABSTRACT
New Biblical criticism, much of it originating in Germany and France, had raised serious questions as to how the Bible should be interpreted. It took note of scientific, philological, archaeological and historical work that together threw doubt on biblical history and on long-held theological positions. Many scientists had rallied behind the Essayists and Colenso in their legal fights. Herbert McLeod made a neat and corrected copy which reads as follows: The Declaration of Students of the Natural and Physical Sciences. The idea that scientific and biblical truths were to be consistent challenged the view that science, independent of religion, was the route to truths about the natural world. It prompted some to act quickly to ridicule the Declaration and its protagonists. Augustus De Morgan points out that 'the "natural sciences" as in the full title of the Royal Society includes everything', and that the inclusion of physical science was a redundancy, one that the protagonists were too ignorant to recognize.
