t science.

[21] _Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews_. By Thomas Henry Huxley, LL.
D., F. R. S. London, 1870, p. 323.

[22] _Evidence of Man's Place in Nature_. London, 1864, p. 107.

[23] Since writing the above paragraph our eye fell on the following
note on the 89th page of the Duke of Argyle's _Reign of Law_, which it
gives us pleasure to quote. It seems that a writer in the _Spectator_
had charged Professor Huxley with Atheism. In the number of that paper
for February 10, 1866, the Professor replies: "I do not know that I care
very much about popular odium, so there is no great merit in saying that
if I really saw fit to deny the existence of a God I should certainly do
so, for the sake of my own intellectual freedom, and be the honest
atheist you are pleased to say I am. As it happens, however, I cannot
take this position with honesty, inasmuch as it is, and always has been,
a favorite tenet, that Atheism is as absurd, logically speaking, as
Polytheism." In the same paper he says, "The denying the possibility of
miracles seems to me quite as unjustifiable as speculative Atheism." How
this can be reconciled with the passages quoted above, we are unable to
see.

[24] _Lay Sermons_, etc., p. 330.

[25] _Contemporary Review_, vol. xviii. 1871, p. 444. In this same
article Mr. Huxley says: "Elijah's great question, Will ye serve God or
Baal? Choose ye, is uttered audibly enough in the ears of every one of
us as we come to manhood. Let every man who tries to answer it seriously
ask himself whether he can be satisfied with the Baal of authority, and
with all the good things his worshippers are promised in this world and
the next. If he can, let him, if he be so inclined, amuse himself with
such scientific implements as authority tells him are safe and will not
cut his fingers; but let him not imagine that he is, or can be, both a
true son of the Church and a loyal soldier of science." "And, on the
other hand, if the blind acceptance of authority appear to him in its
true colors, as mere private judgment _in excelsis_, and if he have
courage to stand alone face to face with the abyss of the Eternal and
Unknowable, let him be content, once for all, not only to renounce the
good things promised by 'Infallibility,' but even to bear the bad things
which it prophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and
honesty of purpose, wherever they may lead, in the sure faith that a
hell of honest men will to him be