THE CONTROVERSIALIST I95 



and that its utterances on other matters are mere 

 obiter dicta : it is also a specious suggestion that in- 

 spiration, filtering through human brains, must 

 undergo a kind of fallibility contamination ; and that 

 this human impurity is responsible for any errors, the 

 existence of which has to be admitted, however un- 

 willingly. 



But how does the apologist know what the Biblical 

 writers intended to teach, and what they did not in- 

 tend to teach ? And even if their authority is re- 

 stricted to matters of faith and morals, who is pre- 

 pared to deny that the story of the fabrication of Eve, 

 that of the lapse of innocence effected by a talking 

 snake, that of the Deluge and demonological legends, 

 have exercised, and still exercise, a profound influence 

 on Christian theology and Christian ethics ? l 



Here Huxley again reaches the core of the matter. 

 There was a consistency in the old theory of verbal 

 inspiration ; there is none in the theory of a divine 

 and human element in the Scriptures, since there is 

 no possible test by which the one can be distinguished 

 from the other. And the decision as to what is, and 

 as to what is not, revelation, would hardly have been 

 left by the Holy Spirit to the creed-makers and the 

 critics. When Canon Driver speaks of the " spirit 

 of the legend of the Creation being changed in the 

 light of revelation," and of the Israelite writer as 

 "gifted by the Holy Spirit"; when Professor Sayce 

 says that " the language of Genesis rises to the height 



1 Coll. Essays % iv. p. viii. 



