Note 25 — Professor Huxley.

Contemporary Review, vol. xviii. 1871, p. 444. In this same article Mr. Huxley says: "Elijah's great question, Will ye serve God or Baal? Choose ye, is uttered audibly enough in the ears of every one of us as we come to manhood. Let every man who tries to answer it seriously ask himself whether he can be satisfied with the Baal of authority, and with all the good things his worshippers are promised in this world and the next. If he can, let him, if he be so inclined, amuse himself with such scientific implements as authority tells him are safe and will not cut his fingers; but let him not imagine that he is, or can be, both a true son of the Church and a loyal soldier of science." "And, on the other hand, if the blind acceptance of authority appear to him in its true colors, as mere private judgment in excelsis, and if he have courage to stand alone face to face with the abyss of the Eternal and Unknowable, let him be content, once for all, not only to renounce the good things promised by 'Infallibility,' but even to bear the bad things which it prophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and honesty of purpose, wherever they may lead, in the sure faith that a hell of honest men will to him be more endurable than a paradise full of angelic shams." There can be no doubt that the Apostle Paul believed in the infallibility of the Scriptures. Imagine Professor Huxley calling St. Paul to his face, a sham! What are all the Huxleys who have ever lived or ever can live, to that one Paul in power for good over human thought, character, and destiny!

Professor Huxley goes on in the next paragraph to say: "Mr. Mivart asserts that 'without belief in a personal God there is no religion worthy of the name.' This is a matter of opinion. But it may be asserted, with less reason to fear contradiction, that the worship of a personal God, who, on Mr. Mivart's hypothesis, must have used words studiously calculated to deceive his creatures and worshippers, is 'no religion worthy of the name.' 'Incredibile est, Deum illis verbis ad populum fuisse locutum quibis deciperetur,' is a verdict in which for once Jesuit casuistry concurs with the healthy moral sense of all mankind." (p. 458). Mr. Huxley calls believers in the Scriptures, and (apparently) believers in a personal God, bigots, old ladies of both sexes, bibliolators, fools, etc., etc.