The Sunday Lecture Society was founded by T.H. Huxley and others. He, a self-styled "scientific Calvinist," emerged in November 1869 to chair the Society, which was a broad coalition offering weekly uplift to London's working classes in St. George's Hall, Langham Place, London.
However then within months a Christian Evidence Society was formed under the chairmanship of the second Earl of Harrowby. The society swiftly mobilized a phalanx of prelates to give apologetic lectures at the same venue, beginning with a deliverance by the Lord Archbishop of York on "design in nature." To no avail. The Sunday Lecture Society flourished under Huxley: within ten years John Tyndall, Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin were all vice-presidents.
Others who addressed the society included: