146 MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS v 



I need hardly add that they are as absolutely 

 denied and repudiated by Scientific Authority, as 

 represented by Reason and Fact. The question 

 whether the earth and the immediate progenitors 

 of its present living population were made in six 

 natural days or not is no longer one upon which 

 two opinions can be held. 



The fact that it did not so come into being 

 stands upon as sound a basis as any fact of 

 history whatever. It is not true that existing 

 plants and animals came into being within three 

 days of the creation of the earth out of nothing, for 

 it is certain that innumerable generations of other 

 plants and animals lived upon the earth before 

 its present population. And when, Sunday after 

 Sunday, men who profess to be our instructors in 

 righteousness read out the statement, "In six 

 days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, 

 and all that in them is," in innumerable churches, 

 they are either propagating what they may easily 

 know, and, therefore, are bound to know, to be 

 falsities ; or, if they use the words in some non- 

 natural sense, they fall below the moral standard of 

 the much-abused Jesuit. 



Thus far the contradiction between Catholic 

 verity and Scientific verity is complete and 

 absolute, quite independently of the truth or false- 

 hood of the doctrine of evolution. But, for those 

 who hold the doctrine of evolution, all the Catholic 

 verities about the creation of living beings must 



