n PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 69 



quite in accordance with science by many excel- 

 lent, instructed, and intelligent people. 



The preacher further contended that it was yet more difficult 

 to realise that our earthly home would become the scene of a 

 vast physical catastrophe. Imagination recoils from the idea 

 that the course of nature the phrase helps to disguise the truth 

 so unvarying and regular, the ordered sequence of movement 

 and life, should suddenly cease. Imagination looks more reason- 

 able when it assumes the air of scientific reason. Physical law, 

 it says, will prevent the occurrence of catastrophes only antici- 

 pated by an apostle in an unscientific age. Might not there, 

 however, be a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of 

 a higher ? Thus every time we lifted our arms we defied the 

 laws of gravitation, and in railways and steamboats powerful 

 laws were held in check by others. The flood and the destruc- 

 tion of Sodom and Gomorrah were brought about by the opera- 

 tions of existing laws, and may it not be that in His illimitable 

 universe there are more important laws than those which sur- 

 round our puny life moral and not merely physical forces ? 

 Is it inconceivable that the day will come when these royal and 

 ultimate laws shall wreck the natural order of things which 

 seems so stable and so fair ? Earthquakes were not things of 

 remote antiquity, as an island off Italy, the Eastern Archipelago, 

 Greece, and Chicago bore witness. ... In presence of a great 

 earthquake men feel how powerless they are, and their very 

 knowledge adds to their weakness. The end of human proba- 

 tion, the final dissolution of organised society, and the destruc- 

 tion of man's home on the surface of the globe, were none of 

 them violently contrary to our present experience, but only the 

 extension of present facts. The presentiment of death was com- 

 mon ; there were felt to be many things which threatened the 

 existence of society ; and as our globe was a ball of fire, at any 

 moment the pent-up forces which surge and boil beneath our 

 feet might be poured out ("Pall Mall Gazette," December 6, 

 1886). 



The preacher appears to entertain the notion 



