778 HUXLEY AND HIS WOEK. 



would have none of it. He gave expression to his convictions in the 

 following words : 



"For more than a thousand years, the great majority of the most 

 highly civilized and instructed nations in the world have confidently 

 believed and passionately maintained that certain writings, which they 

 entitle sacred, occupy a unique position in literature, in that they pos- 

 sess an authority, different in kind, and immeasurably superior in weight, 

 to that of all other books. Age after age, they have held it to be an 

 indisputable truth that, whoever may be ostensible writers of the 

 Jewish, Christian, and Mohomedan Scriptures, God Himself is their 

 real author; and, since one of the attributes of the Deity excludes the 

 possibility of error and — at least in relation to this particular matter — 

 of willful deception, they have drawn the logical conclusion that the 

 denier of the accuracy of any statement, the questioner of the binding 

 force of any command, to be found in these documents is not merely a 

 fool, but a blasphemer. From the point of view of mere reason he 

 grossly blunders; from that of religion he grievously sins. 



"But if this dogma of Rabbinical invention is well founded; if, for 

 example, every word in our Bible has been dictated by the Deity, or 

 even if it be held to be the Divine purpose that every proposition 

 should be understood by the hearer or reader in the plain sense of the 

 words employed (and it seems impossible to reconcile the Divine attri- 

 bute of truthfulness with any other intention), a serious strain upon 

 faith must arise. Moreover, experience has proved that the severity of 

 this strain tends to increase, and in an even more rapid ratio, with the 

 growth in intelligence of mankind and with the enlargement of the 

 sphere of assured knowledge among them. 



"It is becoming, if it has not become, impossible for men of clear 

 intellect and adequate instruction to believe, and it has ceased, or is* 

 ceasing, to be possible for such men honestly to say they believe that 

 the universe came into being in the fashion described in the first chap- 

 ter of Genesis; or to accept, as a literal truth, the story of the making 

 of woman with the account of the catastrophe which followed hard upon 

 it, in the second chapter ; or to admit that the earth was repeopled with 

 terrestrial inhabitants by migration from Armenia to Kurdistan, little 

 more than four thousand years ago, which is implied in the eighth chap- 

 ter; or, finally, to shape their conduct in accordance with the conviction 

 that the world is haunted by innumerable demons, who take possession 

 of men and maybe driven out of them by exorcistic adjurations, which 

 pervades the Gospels." 



So far even Huxley was not in disagreement with some of the most 

 eminent and learned of theologians. Those of you who are interested 

 will be able to recall utterances of enlightened clergymen which would 

 differ from Huxley's only in the absence of the leaven of sarcasm that 

 permeates his lines. At a late congress of the Church of England, 

 held at Norwich, the reverend Canon and Professor Bonney gave voice 

 to words that convey the same ideas as Huxley's. 



