Article November 13, 1902 Issue

Professor Huxley on the Bible

Exchange

Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, the famous agnostic scientist, was a member of the London School Board. In the discussions that came up respecting the reading of the Bible in the schools, he expressed himself in favor of the measure very vigorously, as was his wont. Friends and opponents were alike surprised by his position. He explained himself thus: "Greatly to the surprise of many of my friends, I have always advocated the reading of the Bible, and the diffusion of the study of that most remarkable collection of books among the people. Its teachings are so infinitely superior to those of the sects, who are just as busy now as the Pharisees were eighteen hundred years ago in smothering them under 'the precepts of men,' it is so certain, to my mind, that the Bible contains within itself the refutation of nine tenths of the mixture of sophistical metaphysics and Old World superstition which has been piled round it by the so-called Christians of later times; it is so clear that the only immediate and ready antidote to the poison which has been mixed with Christianity, to the intoxication and delusion of mankind, lies in copious draughts from the undefiled spring, that I exercise the right and duty of free judgment on the part of any man, mainly for the purpose of inducing other laymen to follow my example. If the New Testament is translated into Zulu by Protestant missionaries, it must be assumed that a Zulu convert is competent to draw from its contents all the truths which it is necessary for him to believe. I trust that I may, without immodesty, claim to be put on the same footing as a Zulu."—Exchange.

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