Religious Instruction 195 



matter at all, and all those who accepted current ideas 

 without reflection, accepted the Bible as an inspired, 

 direct, and simple authorit}^ on all great matters of 

 faith and morality. Therefore, when Huxley, as by 

 far the most important man among those who advo- 

 cated a secular education, was an advocate and not in 

 the least an opponent of Bible teaching, they were well 

 content to let the matter rest. There were, it is true, a 

 certain number of zealots who entered the boards with 

 the avowed purpose, on the one hand, of getting as 

 much dogmatic teaching and interpretation added as it 

 might be possible to smuggle in, and, on the other, to 

 reduce the simplest Bible teaching to a minimum. 

 But the vast majority of persons were out of sympa- 

 thy with these fanaticisms. Since 1870, however, a 

 gradual change has occurred in the attitude of the ma- 

 jority to the Bible in England. The growth of the 

 new criticism and of knowledge of it has produced the 

 result that now only a small minorit}' of reflecting peo- 

 ple in England accept the Bible in the old simple way ; 

 the majority thinks that it requires interpretation and 

 explanation by the authority of the Church. And so 

 a new battle over dogma has begun ; moderate Church 

 people no longer accept the compromise of Huxley, 

 but strive for an interpretation which must be dog- 

 matic, and there is a new dispute as to what may be 

 regarded as undenominational religion. When a ma- 

 jority of reasonable persons accepted Huxley's suggest- 

 ions of simple Bible teaching they did so not because 

 they believed, as he did, that the Bible was simply 

 great literature, great tradition, and great morality, but 

 because they believed it to be direct, inspired author- 

 it3\ It is a curious coincidence that Huxlej^ himself 

 did so much to spread knowledge of the new criticism, 



