The two hundredth anniversary of Darwin's birth will not go unnoticed here, where two members of the community at least will be quietly acknowledging a great man who has had an impact on both of them. For the St Andrews-trained biochemist, Darwin is the man who blew open the narrow constrictions of scientific enquiry and established new ways of looking at the evidence before our eyes. (This is the woman whose contemplation of the periodic table brought her to a keen sense of God's beauty and majesty and who sees a wonderful symmetry between scientific truth and divine truth.) For the Cantab, whose first introduction to Darwin came via "The Voyage of the Beagle", popular science at its most engaging, and Gwen Raverat's enchanting autobiography "A Period Piece", the admiration is less informed but still genuine. We celebrate Darwin's science, and rightly so; but we should not forget the charm of the man himself and the honesty and humility that characterised his work. Nor should we forget Alfred Russel Wallace who worked on similar lines to Darwin and whose own essay led in 1858 to the joint publication of both their theories on natural selection. Let us pray today for all scientists, for a better understanding of the contribution scientists make to the life of the Church, and for greater reverence for the life-forms of the world in which we live.