Professor Huxley on Canon Liddon, March 1887, Duke of Argyll[/i]

[i]...Professor Huxley, again, does well to remind us that ‘catastrophe’ [324] is a relative conception,' and that it may mean and often does mean some change which, however terrible to us, and of however great apparent magnitude to us, may count in the universe, and even on our own globe, as nothing more than a change on a molecular, or even on an atomic, scale. A subsidence of our dry lands sufficient to submerge the whole habitable portions of them under the ocean would be a change absolutely imperceptible in the outline of our planet even to a very near observer standing on some other body. It is, perhaps, one of the most certain conclusions of Geology that the mountains of Wales and of Scotland have all been under the sea in very recent times–in times so recent that zoologically they belong to the same epoch as that in which we are now living. It seems to have been only one among many changes of level; and science is as yet quite helpless to explain the process, or to specify the cause. We do not know whether it extended beyond the British Islands, although there is strong evidence that it was vastly wider. Neither do we know how suddenly or how slowly it came, nor how suddenly or slowly it passed away. Yet we have evidence that it was very transitory, inasmuch as it clearly passed away before there was time for a marine fauna to establish itself and flourish on the deluged areas. All this would belong essentially to the category of catastrophes if it happened in our time, or even if it only began to happen with a very considerable degree of slowness. So far, therefore, the Preacher was strictly justified when he spoke of a Flood as a catastrophe ‘not violently contrary to our present experience, but only an extension of present (recent) facts.' I do not think the same words could with accuracy be applied to such a catastrophe as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. That was more strictly miraculous in its character, because we do not know of any like physical causes operating to the same effect, although they are quite possible and conceivable, as connected with the phenomena of volcanic outbursts.2 However this may be, Professor Huxley disclaims the doctrine that catastrophes of any kind, whether called miraculous or not, are discredited by science merely because they involve a breach of the present order of nature. Science, he declares, ‘has never dreamed dreams of this sort.' On the contrary, he reminds us that science distinctly contemplates as more than possible the close of the existing order on which all life depends. He points out, moreover, and indicates in some detail, the recognised existence and continuous operation of physical causes which make it quite ‘conceivable that man and his works and all the higher forms of animal life should be utterly destroyed, and the earth [325] become a scene of horror which even the lurid fancy of the writer of the Apocalypse would fail to portray.'