Dr.Westermeyer goes on to insist that "whole generations called into existence by God succumbed to the corruption of the devil, and for that reason had to be destroyed"; and that "in the work of the six days God caused the devil to feel his power in all earnest, and made Satan's enterprise appear miserable and vain."(178) (178) See Shields's Final Philosophy, pp.

340 et seq., and Reusch's Nature and the Bible (English translation, 1886), vol.i, pp.

318-320.
Such was the last important assault upon the strongholds of geological science in Germany; and, in view of this and others of the same kind, it is little to be wondered at that when, in 1870, Johann Silberschlag made an attempt to again base geology upon the Deluge of Noah, he found such difficulties that, in a touching passage, he expressed a desire to get back to the theory that fossils were "sports of Nature."(179) (179) See Reusch, vol.i, p.

264.
But the most noted among efforts to keep geology well within the letter of Scripture is of still more recent date.

In the year 1885 Mr.
Gladstone found time, amid all his labours and cares as the greatest parliamentary leader in England, to take the field in the struggle for the letter of Genesis against geology.
On the face of it his effort seemed Quixotic, for he confessed at the outset that in science he was "utterly destitute of that kind of knowledge which carries authority," and his argument soon showed that this confession was entirely true.
But he had some other qualities of which much might be expected: great skill in phrase-making, great shrewdness in adapting the meanings of single words to conflicting necessities in discussion, wonderful power in erecting showy structures of argument upon the smallest basis of fact, and a facility almost preternatural in "explaining away" troublesome realities.