220 HUXLEY 



God" j 1 or even since 1891, when another group, 

 who had not bowed the knee to the Baal of modern 

 scholarship, affirmed their belief that " the canonical 

 scriptures of the Old and New Testaments declare 

 incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all rec- 

 ords, both of past events and of the delivery of pre- 

 dictions to be thereafter fulfilled." 2 In fact, the 

 abrasion of incredible and inhuman dogmas has gone 

 on at so rapid a rate that belief in them might be 

 thought to be limited to the vulgar and illiterate, 

 were it not for restatements of the following order, 

 which is quoted from the widely circulated worldly 

 and other-worldly British Weekly. In commenting 

 on certain articles in the Encyclopedia Biblica the 

 reader is advised to " take the Gospels, the Acts, and 

 the Epistles, and erase from them as incredible every- 

 thing that does not affirm miracle. He will find that 

 the narrative of miracle is so welded with facts and 

 words and inferences, that to cut it out is to reduce 

 the whole to a rag-heap." But these strident voices 

 are softened in the atmosphere of the new knowledge. 

 Dogmas are dying — very slowly — as other supersti- 

 tions have died, because they cannot adapt themselves 

 to changed conditions. They are explained, and their 

 explanation is their doom. 



1 Life and Letters of Dean Stanley ', ii. p. 158. 

 * Coll. JSssays, v. p. 23. 



