The Waco daily examiner. [volume] (Waco, Tex.) 187?-1888, 1881-12-25
Huxley on the Bible.


az have always," says Professor
Huxley, 'been strongly in favor OF
| secular education in the sense of edu-
cation without theology; but must
confess have been no less seriously
perplexed to know by what practicsl
measures the religious feeling, which
is the essential basis of conduct, was
to be kept up, IN the present utterly
chaotic state of opinion on these mat
ters, without the use of the bible. The
! Pagan morsIists lack life and color;
and even the noble Stole, Marcus An
tonius, is too high and refined for al
ordinary child, Take the bible as q
whole; make the seyerest deduction
which fair criticism can dictate for
shortcomings and positive errors;
eliminate as sensible teacher
would do, if left to himself, all that Is
not desirable for children to occupy
themselves Wlth-and there still
remains i'll this old literature a
vast residuum of moral grandeur. Aud
then consider the great historical fact
that for three centuries this book has
been woven into the life of all that is
best and noblest in English history; that
it has become the national epic of
Britain, and is familiar to noble and
simple, from John OGroat's house to
Lands End, as Dante and Tssso were
one to the Italians; that it is written in
the noblest and purest English, and
abounds In exquisite beauties OF
merely literary form; and, finally, that
it forbids the veriest hind, who never
left his village, to be ignorant OF the
existence OF other countries and other
civilizations and of great past, stretch
ing back to the furthest limits of the
oldest nations in the world. BY the
study of what other books could chill
dren be so humanized, and made to feel
that each figure in that vast historical
procession fills, like themselves, but IA
mOnentary space in the interval between
the two eternIties, and earns the bless
ing or the curses of all time, according
to its effort to do good and hate evil,
even as they are earning their payment
for their work
"And il Bible reading ia not accom-
panied by constraint and solemnity, AS
il it were II sacramental operation, l
do not believe there IL anything in
which children take more pleasure
AT least, know that some of the
pieasantest recollcctions OF my child
hood are connected with the voluntary
study OF an ancient Bible which be-
iOnged to my grandmother. There
were splendid pictures in it, TO be
sure but recollect little or nothing
shout them save q portrait of the high
priest in his vestments. What comes
vividly back TO my mind are remem-
brances of my delight in the histories
of Joseph and David, and of my keen
appreciation of the chivalrous kind
ness of Abraham in his deal
ings with Lot. Like sud-
den fash there returns back upon me
my utter scoru of the pettifogging
mnanness of Jacob, and my sympa-
thetic grief oyer the heart-breaking
lamentation of the cheated Eau:
Hast thou not a blessing for me also,
o my father" And | see, as IN
cloud, pictures of the grand phantas-
ma9oria of the book of Revelation.
u enumerate, as they issue, the
childish impressions which come
crowding out of the pigcou-holes in
my brain, in which they haYe lain
almost undIsturbed for forty years
l prize them as an evidence that
child of FIVE or six years old, lert to
his own devices, may be deeply
interested in the Bible, aud draw
sonnd moral sustenancc from it,