turned into a sort of a clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me. But when the Materialists stray beyond the borders of their path, and talk about there being nothing else in the world but Matter and Forces and necessary laws, . . . . I decline to follow them."
Huxley was no enemy to the existence of an Established Church.
"I could conceive," he said, "the existence of an Established Church which should be a blessing to the community. A church in which, week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting before men's minds of an ideal of true, just and pure living; a place in which those who are weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible for all, though attained by so few; a place in which the man of strife and of business should have time to think how small, after all, are the rewards he covets compared with peace and charity. Depend upon it, if such a Church existed, no one would seek to disestablish it."
It seems to me that he has here very nearly described the Church of Stanley, of Jowett, and of Kingsley.
Sir W. Flower justly observed that "if the term 'religious' be limited to acceptance of the formularies of one of the current creeds of the world, it cannot be applied to Huxley; but no one could be intimate with him without feeling that he possessed a deep reverence for 'whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report,' and an abhorrence of all that is the reverse of these; and that, although he found difficulty in expressing it in definite words, he had a pervading sense of adoration of the infinite, very much akin to the highest religion."
Lord Shaftesbury records that "Professor Huxley has this definition of morality and religion: 'Teach a child what is wise, that is morality. Teach him what is wise and beautiful, that is religion!' Let no one henceforth despair of making things clear and of giving explanations!" ('Life and Works,' iii., 282).
I doubt, indeed, whether the debt which Religion owes to Science has yet been adequately acknowledged.
The real conflct—for conflict there has been and is—is not between Science and Religion, but between Science and Superstition. A disbelief in the goodness of God led to all the horrors of the Inquisition. Throughout the Middle Ages and down almost to our own times, as Lecky has so powerfully shown, the dread of witchcraft hung like a black pall over Christianity. Even so great and good a man as Wesley
