I am unfeignedly astonished to find that the Duke of Argyll, who professes to intervene on behalf of the preacher, does really, like another Balaam, bless me altogether in respect of the main issue.

I denied the justice of the preacher’s ascription to men of science of the doctrine that miracles are incredible, because they are violations of natural law; and the Duke of Argyll says that he believes my “denial to be well-founded.  The preacher was answering an objection which has now been generally abandoned.”  Either the preacher knew this or he did not know it.  It seems to me, as a mere lay teacher, to be a pity that the “great dome of St. Paul’s” should have been made to “echo” (if so be that such stentorian effects were really produced) a statement which, admitting the first alternative, was unfair, and, admitting the second, was ignorant.[21]

Having thus sacrified one half of the preacher’s arguments, the Duke of Argyll proceeds to make equally short work with the other half.  It appears that he fully accepts my position that the occurrence of those events, which the preacher speaks of as catastrophes, is no evidence of disorder, inasmuch as such catastrophes may be necessary occasional consequences of uniform changes.  Whence I conclude, his Grace agrees with me, that the talk about royal laws “wrecking” ordinary laws may be eloquent metaphor, but is also nonsense.

And now comes a further surprise.  After having given these superfluous stabs to the slain body of the preacher’s argument, my good ally remarks, with magnificent calmness:  “So far, then, the preacher and the professor are at one.”  “Let them smoke the calumet.”  By all means:  smoke would be the most appropriate symbol of this wonderful attempt to cover a retreat.  After all, the Duke has come to bury the preacher, not to praise him; only he makes the funeral obsequies look as much like a triumphal procession as possible.

So far as the questions between the preacher and myself are concerned, then, I may feel happy.  The authority of the Duke of Argyll is ranged on my side.  But the Duke has raised a number of other questions, with respect to which I fear I shall have to dispense with his support—­nay, even be compelled to differ from him as much, or more, than I have done about his Grace’s new rendering of the “benefit of clergy.”

In discussing catastrophes, the Duke indulges in statements, partly scientific, partly anecdotic, which appear to me to be somewhat misleading.  We are told, to begin with, that Sir Charles Lyell’s doctrine respecting the proper mode of interpreting the facts of geology (which is commonly called uniformitarianism) “does not hold its head quite so high as it once did.”  That is great news indeed.  But is it true?  All I can say is that I am aware of nothing that has happened of late that can in any way justify it; and my opinion is, that the body of Lyell’s doctrine, as laid down in that great work, “The Principles of Geology,” whatever may have happened to its head, is a chief and permanent constituent of the foundations of geological science.