rints and in placards posted in the
streets, was to show that science supports the theory of creation given
in the sacred books ascribed to Moses. A large audience assembled, and
a brilliant series of elementary experiments with oxygen, hydrogen,
and carbonic acid was concluded by the Plateau demonstration. It was
beautifully made. As the coloured globule of oil, representing the
earth, was revolved in a transparent medium of equal density, as it
became flattened at the poles, as rings then broke forth from it and
revolved about it, and, finally, as some of these rings broke into
satellites, which for a moment continued to circle about the central
mass, the audience, as well they might, rose and burst into rapturous
applause.

Thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the thanks of the
audience to the eminent professor for "this perfect demonstration of the
exact and literal conformity of the statements given in Holy Scripture
with the latest results of science." The motion was carried unanimously
and with applause, and the audience dispersed, feeling that a great
service had been rendered to orthodoxy. Sancta simplicitas!

What this incident exhibited on a small scale has been seen elsewhere
with more distinguished actors and on a broader stage. Scores of
theologians, chief among whom of late, in zeal if not in knowledge, has
been Mr. Gladstone, have endeavoured to "reconcile" the two accounts in
Genesis with each other and with the truths regarding the origin of
the universe gained by astronomy, geology, geography, physics, and
chemistry. The result has been recently stated by an eminent theologian,
the Hulsean Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
He declares, "No attempt at reconciling genesis with the exacting
requirements of modern sciences has ever been known to succeed without
entailing a degree of special pleading or forced interpretation to
which, in such a question, we should be wise to have no recourse."(9)

(9) For an interesting reference to the outcry against Newton, see
McCosh, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, New York, 1890, pp. 103,
104; for germs of an evolutionary view among the Babylonians, see George
Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 74, 75; for a
germ of the same thought in Lucretius, see his De Natura Rerum, lib.
v, pp.187-194, 447-454; for Bruno's conjecture (in 1591), see Jevons,
Principles of Science, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 36; for Kant'