THE NOACHIAN FLOOD. 151 



inherit their wisdom ; and that ' a man's a man for a' 

 that,' although his great-grandfather should prove to 

 have been a lob-worm or a toad-stool. 



Too much injury to religion has been done already by 

 confounding false science with Scriptural truth, to make 

 it either ' fair or reverent ' to hold back from protesting, 

 whenever occasion offers, against the mischief. Persons 

 accustomed with presumptuous or careless ignorance 

 to denounce geology and Darwinism, and the results 

 connected with them, may have had their consciences 

 soothed and encouraged by your correspondent. My 

 charitable object is to make those consciences uneasy 

 again 1 . 



March 23rd, 1870. 



1 This and the three following letters were originally addressed to 

 the Editor of the Torquay Directory, in answer to a gentleman who, 

 in company with large multitudes of his fellow-Britons, both male and 

 female, holds and upon occasion upholds a mass of opinions on Science 

 and Religion, any one of which opinions individually may be right or 

 may be wrong, but which, when held collectively, seem to my humble 

 understanding to be logically incoherent. 



