Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Agnosticism; Miracles; Religion and science
"What made the Mahommedan world? Trust and faith in the declarations
and assurances of Mahommed. And what made the Christian world? Trust
and faith in the declarations and assurances of Jesus Christ and His
Apostles" (l.c. p. 253). The triumphant tone of this imaginary
catechism leads me to suspect that its author has hardly appreciated
its full import. Presumably, Dr. Wace regards Mahommed as an
unbeliever, or, to use the term which he prefers, infidel; and
considers that his assurances have given rise to a vast delusion which
has led, and is leading, millions of men straight to everlasting
punishment. And this being so, the "Trust and faith" which have "made
the Mahommedan world," in just the same sense as they have "made the
Christian world," must be trust and faith in falsehoods. No man who
has studied history, or even attended to the occurrences of everyday
life, can doubt the enormous practical value of trust and faith; but
as little will he be inclined to deny that this practical value has
not the least relation to the reality of the objects of that trust and
faith. In examples of patient constancy of faith and of unswerving
trust, the "Acta Martyrum" do not excel the annals of Babism.[54]
* * * * *
The discussion upon which we have now entered goes so thoroughly to
the root of the whole matter; the question of the day is so
completely, as the author of "Robert Elsmere" says, the value of
testimony, that I shall offer no apology for following it out somewhat
in detail; and, by way of giving substance to the argument, I shall
base what I have to say upon a case, the consideration of which lies
strictly within the province of natural science, and of that
particular part of it known as the physiology and pathology of the
nervous system.
I find, in the second Gospel (chap. v.), a statement, to all
appearance intended to have the same evidential value as any other
contained in that history. It is the well-known story of the devils
who were cast out of a man, and ordered, or permitted, to enter into a
herd of swine, to the great loss and damage of the innocent Gerasene,
or Gadarene, pig owners. There can be no doubt that the narrator
intends to convey to his readers his own conviction that this casting
out and entering in were effected by the agency of Jesus of Nazareth;
that, by speech and action, Jesus enforced this conviction; nor does
any inkling of the legal and moral difficulties of the case manifest
itself.
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