130 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



questions regarding creation the six-day period of divine activity, 

 the destruction of the world by a flood, the building of an ark, the 

 placing of ci'eatures in it by pairs, and the descent from this ancestry 

 of all living things^ " men and women, birds and beasts." He asks 

 his friend, " Do you, without any mental reservation^ believe these 

 things ? " " If you <:?o," he continues, " then I can only say that the 

 accumulated and accepted knowledge of mankind, including the en- 

 tire sciences of astronomy, geology, philology, and history, are [as 

 far as you are concerned] naught and mistaken. If you do not be- 

 lieve tliose events to have so happened, or do so with some mental 

 reservation, which destroys the whole sense and meaning of the narra- 

 tive, why do you not say so from your pulpits ? " 



The friend merely parries and evades the question. According to 

 Mr. Martineau, the clergy speak very differently indeed from their 

 pulpits. After showing how the Mosaic picture of the genetic order 

 of things has been not only altered but inverted by scientific research, 

 be says : " Notwithstanding the deplorable condition to w^hich the 

 picture has been reduced, it is exhibited fresh every week to millions 

 taught to believe it as divine." It cannot be said that error here 

 does no practical harm, or that it does not act to the detriment of 

 honest men. It was for openly avowing doubts which, it is said, 

 others discreetly entertain, that the Bishop of Natal suffered persecu- 

 tion ; it was for his public fidelity to scientific truth, as far as his 

 lights extended, that he was branded, even during his recent visit to 

 this counti-y, as an " excommunicated heretic." The courage of Dean 

 Stanley and of the Master of Balliol, in reference to this question, 

 disarmed indignation, and caused the public to overlook a wrong 

 which might not otherwise have been endured. 



The liberal and intelligent portion of Cliristendom must, I take it, 

 differentiate itself more and more, in word and act, from the fanatical, 

 foolish, and more purely sacerdotal portion. Enlightened Roman 

 Catholics are more specially bound to take action hei-e; for the trav- 

 esty of heaven and earth is grosser, and the attempt to impose it on 

 the world is more serious, in their community than elsewhere. That 

 they are more or less aliA^e to this state of things, and that they show 

 an increasing courage and independence in their demands for educa- 

 tion, will be plain to the reader of the '' Aj^ology for the Belfast 

 Address." The " Memorial " there referred to was the impatient pro- 

 test of barristers, physicians, surgeons, solicitors, and scholars, among 

 the Catholics themselves. They must not relax their pressure nor 

 relinquish their demands. For their spiritual giiides live so exclu- 

 sively in the prescientific past, that even the really strong intellects 

 among them are reduced to atrophy as regards scientific truth. Eyes 

 they have, and see not ; ears they have, and hear not ; for both eyes 

 and ears are taken possession of by the sights and sounds of another 

 age. In relation to science, the ultramontane brain, through lack of 



