90 THE LIGHT OF DAT 



rigid tests, but for all that the power and value of 

 his writings are beyond question. The same may 

 be said of some of the fathers of the church, weak 

 in reason, but strong in the spirit. Professor Hux- 

 ley is strong in reason ; his logic is a chain hard to 

 break ; but highly spiritual and imaginative natures 

 would perhaps find little satisfaction in his writ- 

 ings. He is occupied with objective truth, not with 

 subjective impressions. His mind is strictly scien- 

 tific, and the results of his method of inquiry are 

 hard to controvert. 



He does not deny the moral sense, or the aesthetic 

 sense, or the religious sense, as Dr. Abbott would 

 seem to imply ; he is not discussing questions that 

 lie in either of these realms, but questions that 

 come within the scope of reason and are matters of 

 evidence. The questions of right and wrong in 

 human conduct, of lying, of stealing, of murder, 

 etc., which Dr. Abbott introduces, belong to quite 

 a different sphere from the question of the author- 

 ship of the Gospels or of the credibility of the mira- 

 cles. 



There is the appeal to conscience, the appeal to 

 taste, the appeal to our sense of the fitness of things, 

 and there is also the appeal to reason, to the judg- 

 ment, to our power to weigh and sift evidence. It 

 seems to me that Dr. Abbott confounds these things, 

 and in his reply to Huxley sets up a man of straw. 

 If the great scientist had said that all truth and cer- 

 tainty come through the logical faculties, he would 

 have laid himself open to the doctor's criticism. 



