THE MAN 41 



had faith that, in lay hands, " the teaching of that 

 6 venerable record of ancient life, miscalled a book,' 1 

 would be gradually modified into harmony with com- 

 mon-sense." But in his belief that his opponents 

 would abide by the compact, he assumed that their 

 standard of honour and integrity was not lower than 

 his own. He was mistaken. The bargain has not 

 been kept by the clerical party, and attempt after at- 

 tempt has been, and is being, made to reduce the 

 Cowper-Temple clause to a nullity. Theological 

 bias, or fear of retarded promotion, have made many 

 of the teachers puppets in the hands of the parsons. 

 The Bible is not interpreted, as Jowett said it should 

 be, " like any other book," and this to the grievous 

 impairment of its value, since appreciation of it is 

 deepened in the degree that it is freed from the 

 shackles of theories of inspiration. Its miscellaneous 

 contents, many of them of uncertain authorship and 

 of disputed meaning, are presented as constituting one 

 harmonious supernatural document; its myths are still 

 taught as history ; and the Ten Commandments are 

 put on the same high ethical plane as the Beatitudes. 

 Not very long before his death Huxley was asked 

 to take part in opposing the tactics known as " Riley- 

 ism." To this he replied : — 



I feel very strongly about the attempt to capture 



»IL 123. 



