icult to
realise the strength of the forces against which Huxley and many
others had to fight. Huxley himself said with perfect justice: "I
hardly know of a great physical truth whose universal reception has
not been preceded by an epoch in which most estimable persons have
maintained that the phenomena investigated were directly dependent on
the Divine Will, and that the attempt to investigate them was not
only futile but blasphemous." As a particular instance of this he
cited some episodes in the history of geological science.

"At the present time, it is difficult to persuade serious
scientific enquirers to occupy themselves, in any way, with the
Noachian Deluge. They look at you with a smile and a shrug, and
say they have more important matters to attend to than mere
antiquarianism. But it was not so in my youth. At that time
geologists and biologists could hardly follow to the end any path
of enquiry without finding the way blocked by Noah and his ark,
or by the first chapter of Genesis; and it was a serious matter,
in this country at any rate, for a man to be suspected of
doubting the literal truth of the Diluvial or any other
Pentateuchal history. The fiftieth anniversary of the foundation
of the Geological Club (in 1824) was, if I remember rightly, the
last occasion on which the late Sir Charles Lyell spoke to even
so small a public as the members of that body. Our veteran leader
lighted up once more; and, referring to the difficulties which
beset his early efforts to create a rational science of geology,
spoke, with his wonted clearness and vigour, of the social
ostracism which pursued him after the publication of the
_Principles of Geology_, in 1830, on account of the obvious
tendency of that noble work to discredit the Pentateuchal
accounts of the Creation and the Deluge. If my younger
contemporaries find this hard to believe, I may refer them to a
grave book _On the Doctrine of the Deluge_, published eight years
later, and dedicated by the author to his father, the then
Archbishop of York. The first chapter refers to the treatment of
the 'Mosaic Deluge,' by Dr. Buckland and Mr. Lyell, in the
following terms: 'Their respect for revealed religion has
prevented them from arraying themselves openly against the
Scriptural account of it--much less do they deny its truth-