Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Societies, Religion, Religious Authority, Geology, Design, Heterodoxy, Unbelief, Controversy

    Announcing the formation of the Victoria Institute, under the presidency of Anthony A Cooper (7th Earl of Shaftesbury), the author suggests that, given its objects, it should be called 'an Anti-Geological Society' that seeks to 'sustain what are called orthodox views'. Congratulates the members of the society for showing that 'To write and publish candid and well weighed argument is the true way to make war for or against a faith', a course that Punch thinks is wiser than simply denouncing geologists as infidels and calling them other unsavoury names. Criticises the fact that the society has stuck a 'fragment of text into the first paragraph, because this is a bit of Claphamism' and that it appears to be repudiating the virtues of philosophy, but concludes by insisting that this is not a 'grave' objection to an otherwise 'welcome' society.