MODERN EVOLUTION. 



253 



He lamented, as every thoughtful person must la- 

 ment, the decay of Bible reading in this generation, 

 while, at the same time, he advocated the more 

 strenuously its detachment from the glosses and 

 theological inferences which do irreparable injury 

 to a literature whose value cannot be overrated. 



For Huxley was well read in history, and there- 

 fore he would not trust the clergy as interpreters of 

 the Bible. After repeating in the Prologue to his 

 Essays on Controverted Questions what he had said 

 about the book in his article on the School Boards 

 in Critiques and Addresses, he adds, " I laid stress 

 on the necessity of placing such instruction in lay 

 hands; in the hope and belief that it would thus 

 gradually accommodate itself to the coming changes 

 of opinion; that the theology and the legend would 

 drop more and more out of sight, while the peren- 

 nially interesting historical, literary, and ethical con- 

 tents would come more and more into view." 



Subsequent events have justified neither the hope 

 nor the belief. Had Huxley lived to see that all 

 the sectaries, while quarrelling as to the particular 

 dogmas which may be deduced from the Bible, agree 

 in refusing to use it other than as an instrument for 

 the teaching of dogma, he would probably have come 

 to see that the only solution in the interests of the 

 young, is its exclusion from the schools. Never 

 has any collection of writings, whose miscellaneous, 

 unequal, and often disconnected character is obscured 

 by the common title " Bible " which covers them, 



