40 HUXLEY 



sion fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in 

 the interval between two eternities ; and earns the 

 blessings or the curses of all time, according to its 

 effort to do good and hate evil, even as they also are 

 earning their payment for their work ? 



On the whole, then, I am in favour of reading the 

 Bible, with such grammatical, geographical, and his- 

 torical explanations by a lay-teacher as may be need- 

 ful, with rigid exclusion of any further theological 

 teaching than that contained in the Bible itself. And 

 in stating what this is, the teacher would do well not 

 to go beyond the precise words of the Bible ; for if 

 he does, he will, in the first place, undertake a task 

 beyond his strength, seeing that all the Jewish and 

 Christian sects have been at work upon that subject 

 for more than two thousand years, and have not yet 

 arrived, and are not in the least likely to arrive, at an 

 agreement ; and, in the second place, he will certainly 

 begin to teach something distinctively denominational, 

 and thereby come into violent collision with the Act 

 of Parliament. 1 



As is well known, the so-called Cowper-Temple 

 clause in the Act, which is itself an unsatisfactory 

 compromise, prescribes that " no religious catechism 

 or religious formulary which is distinctive of any 

 particular denomination shall be taught in the 

 school "; and Huxley believed that, in the words of 

 W. E. Forster, no attempt would be made to cram 

 into the children's " poor little minds theological 

 dogmas which their tender age prevents them from 

 understanding." 2 He mistrusted the clergy ; but he 



1 Coll. Essays, Hi. pp. 397-399. 2 I. 344. 



