THE THEOLOGY OF HUXLEY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1508, 24 January 1901, Page 59

THE THEOLOGY OF HUXLEY.

The “Life and Letters” of the late Thomas Huxley is a book which has recently attracted much attention. An interesting letter from the late Charles Kingsley is quoted, in which Kingsley endeavoured to change Huxley’s point of view on matters of religion. The reply was most pathetic. The following extract- will serve as a brief exposition of Huxley’s attitude towards religion : The absolute justice of the system of things is as clear to me as any scientific fact. The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as certain as that of the earth to the sun. and more so—for experimental proof of the fact is within reach of us all —nay, is before us all in our own lives, if we had but the eyes to ’see it. Not only, then, do I disbelieve in the need for compensation, but I believe the seeking for rewards and punishments out of this life leads men to a ruinous ignorance of the fact that their inevitable rewards and punishments are here. If the expectation of Tudl hereafter

can keep me from evil-doing, surely a fortiori the certainty of hell now will do so? If a man could be firmly impressed with the belief that stealing damaged him as much a/> swallowing arsenic would do (and it does), would not the dissuasive force of that belief be greater than that of any based on mere future expectations. And this leads me to my other point. As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, “If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.

Kicked into the world a boy without guide or training, or with worse than none, I confess to my shame that few men have drunk deeper of all kinds of sin than I. Happily, my course was arrested in time—before I had earned absolute destruction —and for long year's I have been slowly and painfully climbing, with many a fall, towards better things. And when 1 look 'back, what do I find to have been the agents of my redemption? The hope of immortality or of future reward? I can honestly say that for these fourteen years such a consideration has not entered my head. No, I can tell you exactly what has been at work. Sartor Resartus led me to know that a deep sense of religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology. Secondly, science and her methods gave me a resting-place independent of authority and tradition. Thirdly, love opened up to me a view of the sanctity of human nature, and impressed me with a deep sense of responsibility. If at this moment, I am not a wornout. debauched, useless carcass of a man, if it has been or will he my fate to ad_ vance the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when I looked down into my boy’s grave my sorrow was full of submission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have worked upon me, and not because I have ever eared whether my poor personality shall remain distinct for ever from the All from whence it came and whither it goes.