172 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS v 



consummated production of a fair and goodly, a furnished and 

 a peopled world. 



This "fact" can be regarded as of value only 

 by ignoring the fact demonstrated in my previous 

 paper, that natural science does not confirm the 

 order asserted so far as living things are con- 

 cerned; and by upsetting a fact to be brought 

 to light presently, to wit, that, in regard to the 

 rest of the pentateuchal cosmogony, prudent 

 science has very little to say one way or the 

 other. 



Thirdly, the fact that its cosmogony seems, in the light of the 

 nineteenth century, to draw more and more of countenance from 

 the best natural philosophy. 



I have already questioned the accuracy of this 

 statement, and I do not observe that mere re- 

 petition adds to its value. 



And, fourthly, that it has described the successive origins of 

 the five great categories of present life with which human ex- 

 perience was and is conversant, in that order which geological 

 authority confirms. 



By comparison with a sentence on page 14, 

 in which a fivefold order is substituted for the 

 " fourfold order," on which the " plea for reve- 

 lation " was originally founded, it appears that 

 these five categories are "plants, fishes, birds, 

 mammals, and man," which, Mr. Gladstone 

 affirms, " are given to us in Genesis in the 

 order of succession in which they are also given 

 by the latest geological authorities/' 



