Nearly two centuries ago, in 1841, Sir Robert Peel argued that scientific understanding of the universe suggested “that the material and the moral world are connected… bespeaking the uniformity and completeness of a system of divine contrivance, the centre of which is man.”
He was speaking at the opening of the Tamworth Library and Reading Room. It was to be a place where books on “religious controversy”, or anything on the subject of religious doctrine, would not be kept. Members would instead pursue what had been dubbed “rational recreation”.
