Now this same fourfold order is understood to have been so
affirmed in our time by natural science, that it may be taken as
a demonstrated conclusion and established fact."

The defence itself shewed that already a large part of the original
position had been abandoned. The literal meaning and belief in
detailed accuracy were given up and Mr. Gladstone sought to establish
only a general correspondence between the Biblical narrative and the
results of science. But even in that form Huxley shewed the defence to
be untenable.

"I can meet the statement in the last paragraph of the above
citation," he replied, "with nothing but a direct negative. If I
know anything at all about the results attained by the natural
science of our time, it is a 'demonstrated conclusion and
established fact' that the fourfold order given by Mr. Gladstone
is not that in which the evidence at our disposal tends to shew
that the water, air, and land populations of our globe made their
appearance."

With the most voluminous detail, he proceeds to shew that there is no
possible relation between the order implied by the narrative and the
order as revealed by science. Let us sum up, by two quotations, the
result of the whole controversy. First, the literal meaning is
untenable.

"The question whether the earth and the immediate progenitors of
its present living population were made in six natural days or
not is no longer one on which two opinions can be held. The fact
that it did not come so into being stands upon as sound a basis
as any fact of history whatever. It is not true that existing
plants and animals came into being within three days of the
creation of the earth out of nothing, for it is certain that
innumerable generations of other plants and animals lived upon
the earth before its present population. And when, Sunday after
Sunday, men who profess to be our instructors in righteousness
read out the statement, 'In six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, the sea, and all that in them is,' in innumerable
churches, they are either propagating what they may easily know,
and, therefore, are bound to know, to be falsities; or, if they
use the words in some non-natural sense, they fall below the
moral standard of the much abused Jesuit."

The attenuated meaning equally must be given up.

"Even if t