74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



say that they are not to be trusted as revealing a real relation be- 

 tween the Saviour and God. In spite of all doubts as to the accu- 

 racy of the Gospels, Jesus Christ — I trust I may be forgiven, under 

 the stress of controversy, for mentioning his sacred name in this 

 too familiar manner — is a tender and sacred figure to all thought- 

 ful minds, and it is, it ought to be, and it always will be, a very 

 painful thing, to say that he lived and died under a mistake in re- 

 spect to the words which were first and last on his lips. I think, 

 as I have admitted, that it should be unpleasant for a man who 

 has as much appreciation of Christianity, and of its work in the 

 world, as Prof. Huxley sometimes shows, to have to say that its 

 belief was founded on no objective reality. The unpleasantness, 

 however, of denying one system of thought may be balanced by 

 the pleasantness, as Prof. Huxley suggests, of asserting another 

 and a better one. But nothing, to all time, can do away with the 

 unpleasantness, not only of repudiating sympathy with the most 

 sacred figure of humanity in his deepest beliefs and feelings, but 

 of pronouncing him under an illusion in his last agony. If it be 

 the truth, let it by all means be said ; but if we are to talk of " im- 

 morality " in such matters, I think there must be a lack of moral 

 sensibility in any man who could say it without pain. 



The plain fact is that this misquotation would have been as 

 impossible as a good deal else of Prof. Huxley's argument, had 

 he, in any degree, appreciated the real strength of the hold which 

 Christianity has over men's hearts and minds. The strength of 

 the Christian Church, in spite of its faults, errors, and omissions, 

 is not in its creed, but in its Lord and Master. In spite of all the 

 critics, the Gospels have conveyed to the minds of millions of men 

 a living image of Christ. They see him there; they hear his 

 voice ; they listen, and they believe him. It is not so much that 

 they accept certain doctrines as taught by him, as that they ac- 

 cept him, himself, as their Lord and their God. The sacred fire of 

 trust in him descended upon the apostles, and has from them been 

 handed on from generation to generation. It is with that living 

 personal figure that agnosticism has to deal ; and as long as the 

 Gospels practically produce the effect of making that figure a 

 reality to human hearts, so long will the Christian faith, and the 

 Christian Church, in their main characteristics, be vital and per- 

 manent forces in the world. Prof. Huxley tells us, in a melan- 

 choly passage, that he can not define " the grand figure of Jesus." 

 Who shall dare to " define " it ? But saints have both written 

 and lived an imitatio Christi, and men and women can feel and 

 know what they can not define. Prof. Huxley, it would seem, 

 would have*us all wait coolly until we have solved all critical 

 difficulties, before acting on such a belief. "Because," he says, 

 " we are often obliged, by the pressure of events, to act on very 



