"[244]
Such was the skeleton of the structure; it was abundantly
decorated with the rhetoric in which Mr. Gladstone is so skilful
an artificer, and it towered above "the average man" as a
structure beautiful and invincible--like some Chinese fortress
in the nineteenth century, faced with porcelain and defended
with crossbows.
Its strength was soon seen to be unreal. In an essay admirable
in its temper, overwhelming in its facts, and absolutely
convincing in its argument, Prof. Huxley, late President of the
Royal Society, and doubtless the most eminent contemporary
authority on the scientific questions concerned, took up the matter.
Mr. Gladstone's first proposition, that the sacred writings give
us a great "fourfold division" created "in an orderly
succession of times," Prof. Huxley did not presume to gainsay.
As to Mr. Gladstone's second proposition, that "this great
fourfold division... created in an orderly succession of
times... has been so affirmed in our own time by natural science
that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and
established fact," Prof.
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