THE CREATION OF FALSE WITNESS 11 



expressed the objection felt by the Christian when 

 he wrote that he could not ' believe that God had 

 written on the rocks one enormous and super- 

 fluous lie'. 1 



About twenty years ago I was present when 

 precisely the same conclusion was advanced by 

 a high dignitary of the English Church. He 

 argued that even if the history of the Universe 

 were carried back to a single element such as 

 hydrogen, the human mind would remain unsatis- 

 fied and would inquire whence the hydrogen came, 

 and that any and every underlying form of mat- 

 ter must leave the inexorable question ' whence ? ' 

 still unanswered. Therefore if in the end the 

 question must be given up, we may as well, 

 he argued, admit the mystery of creation in the 

 later stages as in the earlier. Thus he arrived at 

 the belief in a world formed instantaneously, 

 ready-made and complete, with its fossils, marks 

 of denudation, and evidences of evolution a going 

 concern. Aubrey Moore, the clergyman who 

 more than any other man was responsible for 

 breaking down the antagonism towards evolution 

 then widely felt in the English Church, replied 

 very much as Kingsley had done, that he was 

 unwilling to believe that the Creator had de- 

 liberately cheated the intellectual powers He had 



1 Ibid. It is possible that Darwin was referring to Omphalos 

 when he wrote, Sept. 2, 1859, to Lyell, ' our posterity will marvel 

 as much about the current belief as we do about fossil shells 

 having been thought to have been created as we now see them.' 

 Life and Letters, ii. 1 65. 



