PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 69 



part, I believe in nothing " above " nature or outside of it, which 

 is not also in it, and visibly shining through it. It is so particu- 

 larly with predictive prophecy. There is nothing more thoroughly 

 in harmony with the system of things in which we live. The 

 conception that all future events are connected with the present 

 by the links of natural consequence, is a conception familiar to all 

 science and to all philosophy. That those links should be capable 

 of being followed, and their results foreseen by adjusted eyes, is 

 quite according to the natural constitution and course of things. 

 Prophetic prediction is implicit to an almost miraculous degree 

 in the mysterious instincts of many of the lowest animals. It 

 is explicit, more or less, in all the intuitions of human genius ; 

 and there is nothing difficult to conceive in this faculty being 

 strengthened, intensified, and glorified, in minds whose relations 

 with the spiritual world are close and special. In a more literal 

 sense we may say of the Hebrew prophet what Tennyson says of 



the ideal poet : 



"The marvel of the everlasting will, 

 An open scroll, 

 Before him lay." 



It is a comfort to observe that Prof. Huxley is not very san- 

 guine as to the early triumph of his own nonsense. There is no 

 ground, he says, "for much hope that the proportion of those 

 who cast aside these fictions and adopt the consequence of that 

 repudiation, are, for some generations, likely to constitute a ma- 

 jority." Certainly not. Prof. Huxley must know that the ranks 

 of science are crowded with men, quite as eminent as himself, 

 who are believers in Christianity. For more than " some genera- 

 tions " these men are likely to have successors. A few Christian 

 sects have lately been showing signs of a disposition to divorce 

 belief from facts, and from all definite conceptions of objective 

 truth. An authority among them has lately uttered a warning 

 voice. He has told them that they have in consequence been 

 losing ground. " The undogmatic churches have reaped the 

 scantiest harvest, while the dogmatic churches have hitherto 

 taken the multitude."* This is bad hearing for Prof. Huxley. 

 But it is good hearing for all who hold that morality itself can 

 not be maintained except in connection with definite beliefs. The 

 result, so disappointing to agnosticism, is the result of a great law 

 Nature abhors a vacuum. Men can not live on a diet of nega- 

 tions. Both our intellectual and our moral natures have digestive 

 apparatuses of their own. They require their appropriate food, 

 and Prof. Huxley has none to give them. The sect of the know- 

 nothings is not likely to be ever popular, still less to overspread 



* Address of the President of the Congregational Union at a late meeting. 



