370 



LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxiv 



The second is to a correspondent who wrote to ask him 

 whether adhesion to the compromise had not rendered non- 

 sensical the teaching given in a certain lesson upon the 

 finding of the youthful Jesus in the temple, when, after they 

 had read the verse, " How is it that ye sought me ? Wist ye 

 not that I must be about my Father's business ? " the teacher 

 asked the children the name of Jesus' father and mother, 

 and accepted the simple answer, Joseph and Mary. Thus 

 the point of the story, whether regarded as reality or myth, 

 is slurred over, the result is perplexity, the teaching, in 

 short, is bad, apart from all theory as to the value of the 

 Bible. 



In a letter to the Chronicle, which he forwarded, this 

 correspondent suggested a continuation of the " incrimi- 

 nated lesson " : — 



Suppose, then, that an intelligent child of seven, who has 

 just heard it read out that Jesus excused Himself to His parents 

 for disappearing for three days, on the ground that He was about 

 His Father's business, and has then learned that His father's 

 name was Joseph, had said " Please, teacher, was this the Jesus 

 that gave us the Lord's Prayer? " The teacher answers " Yes." 

 And suppose the child rejoins, " And is it to His father Joseph 

 that he bids us pray when we say Our Father ? " But there 

 are boys of nine, ten, eleven years in Board schools, and many 

 such boys are intelligent enough to take up the subject of the 

 lesson where the instructor left it. " Please, teacher," asks one 

 of these, " what business was it that Jesus had to do for His 

 father Joseph? Had he stopped behind to get a few orders? 

 Was it true that He had been about Joseph's business? And, 

 if it was not true, did He not deserve to be punished ? " 



Huxley replied on October i6, 1894: — 



Dear Sir — I am one with you in hating " hush up " as I do 

 all other forms of lying; but I venture to submit that the compro- 

 mise of 1871 was not a " hush-up." If I had taken it to be such 

 I should have refused to have anything to do with it. Arid more 

 specifically, I said in a letter to the Times (see Times, 29th 

 April 1893) at the beginning of the present controversy, that 

 if I had thought the compromise involved the obligatory teach- 

 ing of such dogmas as the Incarnation I should have opposed it. 



There has never been the slightest ambiguity about my posi- 



