248 Thomas Henry Huxley 



a very wide range of opinion as to the inspiration of 

 the Scriptures, the Biblical account of the Creation, 

 the miraculous events of the Old Testament and the 

 recorded miracles of the New. Within the last few 

 months, Dr. St. George Mivart, a distinguished Catho- 

 lic zoologist and long an opponent of Huxlej^ has de- 

 clared that within the Catholic Church itself a number 

 of educated persons are prepared to accept most of Hux- 

 ley's positions, as well as views more extremely icono- 

 clastic than any advanced by Huxle3^ Although Dr. 

 Mivart' s outspoken words have called down on him 

 the official thunders of Rome, it is an open secret that 

 many good Catholics think this attempted exclusion of 

 modern knowledge to be fraught with grave danger to 

 the Church. In these matters the Protestant churches 

 have advanced much farther. 



It was very different when Huxley wrote. The first 

 and gravest difficulty placed in the way of science was 

 the asserted infallibility of the Scriptures. In Catholic 

 theology, at least until late in this century, the general 

 tendency has been to regard the Bible rather as a quarry 

 for doctrine than as a direct means of grace. The the- 

 ory of religion rested on two pillars : the inspired 

 Scriptures containing the necessary information and the 

 inspired Church to interpret the Scriptures. Protestant 

 theology had rejected the infallible inspiration of the 

 Church, and, in consequence, had thrown a greater 

 burden on the Scriptures. The Scriptures became the 

 Word of God, verbally and literally true ; in its extreme 

 form this doctrine reverted almost to the ancient Rab- 

 binical maxim that even the vowel points and accents 

 were of divine origin. In practice, if not in theory, the 

 halo was extended to cover even the marginal chrono- 

 logy, then a familiar feature in the editions of the 



