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 1) 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. 18 1). 



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) mav De gi yen t0 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 



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