She thought that text the _worst_ in the Bible. Huxley thought it the
_best_. Huxley was, as everybody knows, the Prince of Agnostics. We need
not stop to ask why. Nobody who has read the story of John Stuart Mill's
boyhood will wonder that Mill was a skeptic. And nobody who has read the
story of Thomas Huxley's boyhood will wonder at his becoming an
agnostic. As Edward Clodd, his biographer, says, 'his boyhood was a
cheerless time. Reversing Matthew Arnold's sunnier memories:
No rigorous teachers seized his youth,
And purged its faith and tried its fire,
Shewed him the high, white star of truth,
There bade him gaze, and there aspire.
'He told Charles Kingsley that he was "kicked into the world, a boy
without guide or training, or with worse than none"; he "had two years
of a pandemonium of a school, and, after that, neither help nor sympathy
in any intellectual direction till he reached manhood."' And, even then,
as those familiar with his biography know, he had little enough.
What would Huxley have been, I wonder, if the sympathy for which he
hungered had been extended to him? If, instead of badgering him with
arguments and entangling him in controversy, Mr. Gladstone and Bishop
Wilberforce and others had honestly attempted to see things through his
spectacles! Huxley was said to be as cold as ice and as inflexible as
steel; but I doubt it. In his life-story I find two incidents--one
belonging to his early manhood and one belonging to his age--which tell
a very different tale.
The _first_ is connected with the birth of his boy. It is the last night
of the Old Year, and he is waiting to hear that he is a father. He
spends the anxious hour in framing a resolution. In his diary he pledges
himself 'to smite all humbugs, however big; to give a nobler tone to
science; to set an example of abstinence from petty personal
controversies and of toleration for everything but lying; to be
indifferent as to whether the work is recognized as mine or not, so long
as it is done. It is half-past ten at night. Waiting for my child. I
seem to fancy it the pledge that all these things shall be.' And the
next entry runs:
'_New Year's Day, 1859._ Born five minutes before twelve. Thank God!'
Mark that '_Thank God!_' and then note what follows. A year or two
later, when the child is snatched from him, he makes this entry and then
closes the journal for ever. He has no heart to keep a diary afterwards.
'Our Noel, our firstborn, after being for nearly four years our delight
and our joy, was carried off by scarlet fever in forty-eight hours. This
day week he and I had a great romp together. On Friday his restless
head, with its bright blue eyes and tangled golden hair, tossed all day
upon the pillow. On Saturday night I carried his cold, still body here
into my study. Here, too, on Sunday night, came his mother and I to that
holy leavetaking. My boy is gone; but in a higher and better sense than
was in my mind when, four years ago, I wrote what stands above, I feel
that my fancy has been fulfilled. I say heartily and without
bitterness--Amen, so let it be!'
'_Thank God!_' exclaims our great Agnostic when the child is born.
'_Amen!_' he says, submissively, when the little one is buried.
This is the _first_ of the two incidents. The _second_--which is no less
pathetic--is recorded by Dr. Douglas Adam. 'A friend of mine,' the
doctor says, 'was acting on a Royal Commission of which Professor Huxley
was a member, and one Sunday they were staying together in a little
country town. "I suppose you are going to church," said Huxley. "Yes,"
replied my friend. "What if, instead, you stayed at home and talked to
me of religion?" "No," was the reply, "for I am not clever enough to
refute your arguments." "But what if you simply told me your own
experience--what religion has done for you?" My friend did not go to
church that morning; he stayed at home and told Huxley the story of all
that Christ had been to him; and presently there were tears in the eyes
of the great agnostic as he said, "_I would give my right hand if I
could believe that!_"'
This, if you please, is the man who was supposed to be as cold as ice
and as inflexible as steel! This is the man for whom the Christians of
his time had nothing better than harsh judgments, freezing sarcasms and
windy arguments! How little we know of each other! How slow we are to
understand!