SCIENCE & CHRISTIAN TRADITION 193 



and in which the sole prospect of a life of labour may not be an 

 old age of penury." 



The address was a marked success, and in writing to 

 Sir Michael Foster (on December l) Huxley says : — 



" Manchester has gone solid for technical education, and if the 

 idiotic London papers, instead of giving half a dozen lines of my 

 speech, had mentioned the solid contributions to the work 

 announced at the meeting, they would have enabled you to under- 

 stand its importance" (Life, ii, p. i8i). 



This year too we have further controversial matters 

 with which to deal. Canon Liddon preached a sermon 

 in which he endeavoured to explain miracles as ex- 

 emplifying the suspension of lower natural laws by the 

 intervention of higher ones. This called forth the article on 

 "Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Realism" (Nineteenth 

 Century, February 1887. Coll. Essays, v, p. 59). This 

 is the first of a series of essays afterwards collected 

 together in the volume on Science and Christian Tradi- 

 tion. Before dealing with it, a few quotations from the 

 Preface (dated December 4, 1893) ™^y ^^ given to make 

 Huxley's general position clear. 



After quoting one of Strauss's later utterances, in 

 which he justifies the work of his life, Huxley enters a 

 vigorous protest against the belief expressed in orthodox 

 quarters that his own attitude was actively anti- 

 Christian : — 



" I too have reached the term at which the still, small voice, 

 more audible than any other to the dulled ear of age, makes its 

 demand ; and I have found that it is of no sort of use to try to 

 cook the accounts rendered. Nevertheless, I distinctly decline 

 to admit some of the items charged ; more particularly that of 

 having ' gone out of my way ' to attack the Bible ; and I as stead- 

 fastly deny that ' hatred of Christianity ' is a feeling with which 

 I have any acquaintance. There are very few things which I 

 N 



