234 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



be deprived of the one great literature which is 

 open to them, nor shut out from tfj * yception 

 of its place in the whole past history u ^ c/iHsed 

 mankind.' He lamented, as every t^ug-Ti^il 

 person must lament, the decay of Bible reading 

 in this generation, while, at the same time, he 

 advocated the more strenuously its detachment from 

 the glosses and theological inferences which do irre- 

 parable injury to a literature whose value cannot be 

 overrated. 



For Huxley was well read in history, and there- 

 fore he would not trust the clergy as interpreters of 

 the Bible. After repeating in the Prologue to his 

 Essays on Controverted Questions what he had said 

 about the book in his article on the School Boards 

 in Critiques and Addresses , he adds, ' I laid stress on 

 the necessity of placing such instruction in lay 

 hands ; in the hope and belief that it would thus 

 gradually accommodate itself to the coming changes 

 of opinion ; that the theology and the legend would 

 drop more and more out of sight, while the perenni- 

 ally interesting historical, literary, and ethical contents 

 would come more and more into view.' 



Subsequent events have justified neither the hope 

 nor the belief. Had Huxley lived to see that all the 

 sectaries, while quarrelling as to the particular dogmas 

 which may be deduced from the Bible, agree in re- 

 fusing to use it other than as an instrument for the 

 teaching of dogma, he would probably have become 

 convinced that the only solution in the interests of the 

 young, is its exclusion from the schools. (In a Report 

 on State Education in New Zealand, 1895, drawn 

 up by Mr. R. Laishly, the writer says : ' Professor 



