THE FJKST CHAPTER OK GKNESIS. 



157 



translated "moving creature" in Genesis i, 20, which records the 

 first appearance of animal life on our planet. Huxley was thus 

 " hoist with his own petard " ! Instead of trampling on his 

 challenger, Mr. Gladstone's "old world courtesy" led him to 

 suggest a reference to some authority that both could recognise. 

 Mr. Huxley expressed his readiness to appeal to " his eminent 

 friend, Professor Dana " : and Professor Dana's decision was : "I 

 agree in all essential points with Mr. Gladstone, and believe that 

 the first chapter of Genesis and science are in accord." 



But the matter did not rest there. This was in 1886, and in 

 December, 1891, I brought up the question again in a letter to The 

 Times, and put Mr. Huxley on his defence. He tried to shirk the 

 question, but the late Duke of Argyll intervened to hold him to it ; 

 and after a correspondence, to which each of us contributed several 

 letters, Huxley retired discomfited and left the field to his 

 opponents. 



I need not emphasise the bearing of all this on Mr. Maunder's 

 paper. The tournament between Gladstone and Huxley in the 

 Xiiieteenth Century appealed to the scientists of the world ; and 

 as the result, Gladstone's thesis stands : It is " a demonstrated con- 

 clusion and established fact " that Genesis and science are in accord. 

 And the fact is wholly unaffected by the refusal of the so-called 

 " Higher Criticism " to accept it. For with the dull tenacity of 

 unreasoning unbelief, the " critics " ignore everything that conflicts 

 with their "assured results." 



The following sentence from one of Mr. Gladstone's letters to me 

 in the first of Genesis controversy is worth reproducing here : "As 

 to the chapter itself, I do not regard it merely as a defensible point 

 in a circle of fortifications, but as a great foundation of the entire 

 fabric of the Holy Scri^^tures." 



The Rev. John Tugkwell, M.K.A.S. : I much regret my 

 inalnlity to be present at the reading of this excellent paper. I 

 should like to have expressed more adequately my high appreciation 

 of it than I can do in writing. The facts so frankly recognised are 

 of great importance and as the facts of revelation rightly understood 

 can never be contrary to the facts of nature rightly understood, 

 there can be no contradiction of the one by the other. In the 

 following Table I have expressed very briefly the results of many 

 years' study of this wonderful chapter : — 



