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THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
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implicitly denied the force of this challenge. Theologians have assimilated evolution, even in the Darwinian form, and accepted the results of a criticism once supposed to be destructive without admitting the destructiveness. The final result remains to be seen, and I will only suggest that Huxley's challenge requires a plain answer. To accept the criteria of historical inquiry essentially implied in your methods, is to abandon the results of the old methods. To make the narrative thoroughly historical, must you not in consistency get rid of the supernatural? If you admit that the evidence is at second-hand, or given by credulous, superstitious, and uncritical writers, and is therefore worthless for scientific law, can it be sufficient for religious purposes? I merely wish to emphasise Huxley's position. He was not simply attacking mere outworks—excrescences which might be removed without damage to the structure; but arguing that to abandon them was to admit the invalidity of the whole system of orthodoxy. He was surely not trespassing beyond his province. The truth of religious belief cannot be a question for critical experts. If a man of science, or even of simple common-sense, is required to believe, he is entitled to inquire into