1871 LETTERS ON BIBLE TEACHING 35 



Suppose, then, that an intelligent child of seven, who 

 has just heard it read out that Jesus excused Himself to 

 His parents for disappearing for three days, on the ground 

 that He was about His Father's business, and has then 

 learned that His father's name was Joseph, had said, 

 " Please, teacher, was this the Jesus that gave us the 

 Lord's Prayer ? " The teacher answers, " Yes." And 

 suppose the child rejoins, "And is it to His father Joseph 

 that he bids us pray when we say Our Father ? " But 

 there are boys of nine, ten, eleven years in Board Schools, 

 and many such boys are intelligent enough to take up 

 the subject of the lesson where the instructor left it. 

 " Please, teacher," asks one of these, " what business was 

 it that Jesus had to do for His father Joseph ? Had He 

 stopped behind to get a few orders ? Was it true that 

 He had been about Joseph's business ? And, if it was 

 not true, did He not deserve to be punished ? " 



Huxley replied on October 16, 1894 : 



DEAR SIR I am one with you in hating " hush up " 

 as I do all other forms of lying ; but I venture to submit 

 that the compromise of 1871 was not a "hush up." If 

 I had taken it to be such I should have refused to have 

 anything to do with it And more specifically, I said in 

 a letter to the Times (see Times, 29th April 1893) at the 

 beginning of the present controversy, that if I had thought 

 the compromise involved the obligatory teaching of such 

 dogmas as the Incarnation I should have opposed it 



There has never been the slightest ambiguity about 

 my position in this matter ; in fact, if you will turn to> 

 one paper on the School Board written by me before my 

 election in 1870, I think you will find that I anticipated 

 the pith of the present discussion. 



The persons who agreed to the compromise, did exactly 

 what all sincere men who agree to compromise, do. For 

 the sake of the enormous advantage of giving the 

 rudiments of a decent education to several generations of 



