CANON GARLAND AND HUXLEY.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14760, 2 September 1913, Page 5

CANON GARLAND AND HUXLEY.

Wo give below those extracts from tho "Lifo and Letters of . Thomas, Huxley > which Canon Garlarui sent as an appendix to tho letter printed in "The Press" yesterday. These extracts we had to hold over until to-day for reasons of space: — Pago &3 (from a letter in "The Times" of April 29th, 1893):—"Sir,— In a leading article of your issue of today you state, with perfect accuracy, that I supported tho arrangement respecting religious instruction agreed to by tho London School Board in 1871, and hitherto undisturbed. But you go on to say that 'the person who framed the rule' intended it to include definite ' teaching of such theological dogmas as the Incarnation. "I cannot say what may have been in the minds of the framers of the rule; but, assuredly, if I had dreamed that any such interpretation could fairly be put upon it, 1 should have opposed the arrangement to the be3t of my ability. "In fact, a year before tha rule was framed I wrote, an article in the - ' Contemporary Review,' entitled; 'The School Boards :+What they can do and. what they may'do, , in which I argued that tho terms of' the Education Act excluded such teaching as it is now proposed to include. And I support my contention by the following citation from a speech delivered by Mr Forster at tho Birkbcck Institution in 1870: — 'I have the, fullest: confidence that in tho reading'and explaining of the B'ble what the children will be taught will be the great truths of Christian life and conduct, which nil of us desire they should know, and that no efforts will Go made to cram into their poor little minds theological dogmas which their tender age prevents them from Understanding. "I am, Sir, your obedient servant, "T. H. HUXLEY. Hodeslea, Eastbourne, April.2Bth." **Page 26: —"In the third section' (Huxley's article, 'The School Boards: What they can do, and what they may do') are also to be found his arguments for the retention of Bible-reading in the elementary schools. He reproached extremists of either party for confounding science, theology, with the affection, religion, and either.crying for more theology tinder the name of religion, or demanding the abolition of 'religious' teaching in order to get rid of theology, a step which he likens to your ship to get .rid of the .cockroaches.'" Pages 31 and 32:—Dr. Gladstone said:—"Mr W. H. Smith, the wellknown member of Parliament proposed, and Mr Samuel Morley, M.P., seconded, a. resolution in favour of religious teaching—'That,, in the schools provided by the Board, the Bible shall Ikj read, and there shall be given therefrom such explanations and such instruction in the principles of religion and morality as are suited to the capacities of children, , with certain provisos. Several antagonistic amendments were proposed; but Professor Hnxley gave his support to Mr Smith's resolutions,' which, however, he thought might be trimmed nnd amended in a way that the Rev. Dr. Angus had suggested. . . . Huxley voted against all the proposed amendments, and in favour of Mr Smith's motion.. There were only three who voted against it; while three Roman Catholic members refrained from voting. »This basis of religious instruction, practically ttnnltered, has remainod the law of the Bonrd ever since. There was a controversy in the papers, be f we>n Professor Huxley and the Rev. W. H. Fremantle, as to the nature of the explanation of the Bible lessons. Hux'ey maintained that it should be purely grammatical, gecr graphical, and historical in its nature; Fremantle that it sjionlc? include some species of distinct religious tendinis, but not of a.denominational character.* Paso 273:—Extract from letter to Mr Edward Clodd.on receiving his book "Jesus of Nazareth":—"lt is the book I have been lonsrinp: to see; in spirit, matter, and form it appears to mc to be exactly what peop'o. like myself have been wanting. For thouah for the last quarter of a century I have done all that lav in my power to oppose and fle'trov the idolatrous " accretions of Judaj«m and Christianity, I have never had the slightest sympathy for those who. as the Germans say. would 'throw the child aw.ay alone: with the bath'— and when I was a momber of the London School Board T foueht for the retention of tho Bible, to the frreat scandal of some of my Liberal friends, who cannot make out to this day, whether I was a hvpoerife. or simply a fonT on that occasion."—(December 21st. 1870.} Paso 37:—"He was unsuccessful in his proposal that a selection be mnde of passaees for readins from the Bible: the Board refused to become censors." Professor Ffuxlev. in -"The rVintomoorary Review." December, 1870, pp. II to-15, writes: — "We are divided into two parties—. the advocates of so-called 'relisrfous' teachinz on the one.hand, and those of so-called 'secular' teaching on the other. And both parties seem to mc to be not only hopelessly. wrons;, but in such a position that if either succeeded com-

pletely. it would discover, before many years were over, that it had made a ,ieat mistake and done serious evil to ho cause of education. "For, leaving aside the more fareeing minority on each side, what the religious' party is crying for is mere theology, under the name of religion; while the 'secularists' have unwisely and wrongly admitted the assumption of their opponents, and demand the abolition of all 'religious' teaching, when they only want to be' free of theology—bu ruins your ship to get rid of the cockroaches. "But my belief is, that no human being, and no society composed of human beings, ever did. or ever,will, come to much, unless their conduct was eflverned and guided by the love of some ethical ideal. Undoubtedly, your gutter child may bo converted by mere intellectual drill into 'the subtlest of all the boasts of the field,' but we k*now what has become of the original of that description, and there is no need to increase the number of those who imitate him successfully, without being aided by the rates. And if I were compelled to choose for one of my own children, between a school in which real religious instruction is given, and one- without it, 1 should prefer the former, even though the child might have to take a good deal of theology with it. Ninetenths of a dose of .bark is mere halfrotten wood: but one swallows it for the sake of the particles of quinine, the beneficial effect of which may be" weakened., but it is not destroyed;—by the wooden dilution, unless in* a few cases of exceptionally tender stomachs. "Hence, when the great mass of the English people declare that they want to have the children in the elementary, schools taught the Bible, and when it iV plain from the terms of tho Act, the debates in and out of Parliament, and especially the emphatic declarations of the vice-president of tho Council, that it was intended that such Bible reading should be permitted, unless good cause for prohibiting it could be shown, J. do not see what reason thero is for opposing that wish. Certainly, I, individually, could with no shadow of consistency, oppose the teaching of the children of other people to do which my own children are taught to do. And, even if tho reading of the Bible were not, as I think it is, consonant with political reason and justice, and with a desire to act in the snirit of the education measure, I am disposed to think that it might still bo well to read that book in the elementajy schools." "I have always beeto strongly in favour of secular education, in tho sense of education without theology,' but I must confess I have been no less seriously perplexed to know by what practical measures tho rclicrious feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, was to be kept up. in the present utterly chaotic state' of opinion on tbei-e matters, without the "use of tho Bible. The pagan moralists lack colour and life, and.even the noble stoic, Marcus Antoninus, is too hHi and refined for an ordinary child. • Take the Bible as a whole, make the severest deductions which fair criticism can' dictate for shortcomings ami positive errors, eliminate, as a sensible lay teacher would <to,_if left to himself, all that it is not desirable for children to occupy themselves with, arid there still remains in this old literature a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur. And then, consider the great historical fact that for three centuries this book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in Enalish history, that it has become ,the national epic of Britain, and is familiar to noble and simple from John'O'Groat's house to Land's End, as lOante and Tasso were once to the Italians; that it. is written. in the noblest and purest- English, and' abounds in the exquisite benuties of ..a merely literary form. and. finally, that it forbidsj,the" veriest hind who nev.er left his native village to be .ignorant'of the existence of other countries and other civilisations, and of .a great past, stretching back to the farthest limits of the oldest nations in the world. By the study of what other book could children be co much humanised, and made, to feel "that cash figure in'that , vast historical procession fills, -like themselves, but a momentary "space in the interval between two eternities, and earns the blessings or the curses of all, time, according to its efforts to do good and hate evil, even as they nlso are earning , their payment for their work? , I "And if Bible reading is not accompanied by constraint and solemnity, as if it were a sacramental operation, I .do not believe there is anything in which children take more pleasure. At least, T know that some of the pleasantest recollections ■of my childhood are connected with the voluntary study of an ancient Bible which belonged to my grandmother, There ' were splendid pictures in it to be cure, but I recollect little or nothing about them.' cave a portrait of the high priest in his vest-* ments: what comes vividly back on my mind are remembrances of my delisht in the histories of Joseph and David, ° find of my kern appreciation of the chivalrous kindness of Abraham in his dealings with Lot. Like a sudden flush there returns back upon mc my utter eeom of the pettifogging mevj-n----nesg of Jacob, "and my sympathetio crrief over the henrtb>-pnkin£f lamentation of the cheated Esnu. 'Hast,, thmi" not. a blessing for mc 'nlso my father? . And I see ns in' a cloud nurture of the "-rand nhnntasmogoria of the Book of Revelation. ' ..'■',■ "I numernte, ns tTiov isstre, the childish impressions which come crowdine out of the pipreon-holes in my brain, in which they nave lain almost .undisturbed for forty years. I nrirf them ns nn pvidmoe a oMid of fWp or six years old. left to. his own drvWs, mnv be deeply intore<Hr>d in the B'Kle, prir! drnw moral from it."— "rintemporary Review," December, 1870.