In the year
1885 Mr. Gladstone found time, amid all his labours and cares as
the greatest parliamentary leader in England, to take the field
in the struggle for the letter of Genesis against geology.
On the face of it his effort seemed Quixotic, for he confessed
at the outset that in science he was "utterly destitute of that
kind of knowledge which carries authority," and his argument
soon showed that this confession was entirely true.
But he had some other qualities of which much might be expected:
great skill in phrase-making, great shrewdness in adapting the
meanings of single words to conflicting necessities in
discussion, wonderful power in erecting showy structures of
argument upon the smallest basis of fact, and a facility almost
preternatural in "explaining away" troublesome realities. So
striking was his power in this last respect, that a humorous
London chronicler once advised a bigamist, as his only hope, to
induce Mr. Gladstone to explain away one of his wives.
At the basis of this theologico-geological structure Mr.
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