Essays Upon Some Controverted QuestionsHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
"What made the Mahommedan world? Trust and faith in the declarations and
assurances of Mahommed. And what made the Christian world? Trust and {333}
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 falsehood.
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.[83]
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 {334} 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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