I98 HUXLEY 



Destroy the foundation of most forms of dogmatic 

 Christianity contained in the second chapter of Gen- 

 esis, if you will ; the new ecclesiasticism undertakes 

 to underpin the structure, and make it, at any rate to 

 the eye, as firm as ever; but let him be anathema who 

 applies exactly the same canons of criticism to the 

 opening chapters of "Matthew" or of "Luke." 

 School children may be told that the world was by no 

 means made in six days, and that implicit belief in 

 the story of Noah's Ark is permissible only, as a mat- 

 ter of business, to their toymakers ; but they are to 

 hold for the certaintest of truths, to be doubted only 

 at peril of their salvation, that their Galilean fellow- 

 child Jesus, nineteen centuries ago, had no human 

 father. 1 



In treating the Old Testament " like any other 

 book," Huxley chose as a test case the interview of 

 Saul with the ghost of Samuel through the medium 

 of a witch. In treating the New Testament " like 

 any other book," he chose as a test case the story of 

 Jesus exorcising demons from a man and permitting 

 them to enter into two thousand swine, " to the great 

 loss and damage of the innocent Gadarene owners." 

 In both cases, therefore, the question of the existence 

 of spirits is raised. His reason for the selection was 

 that in the course of discussions in the years 1889— 

 1 89 1 "it had been maintained by the defenders of 

 ecclesiastical Christianity that the demonology of the 

 books of the New Testament is an essential and in- 



1 ColL Essays, v. p. xi. 



