Thomas H. Huxley and religion and immortality; a letter from T. Lauder Brunton to Fielding H. Garrison.

TiE Victorian era secured for man the revolutionary concepts of geological time and natural selection and may well have been the last epoch in which the world of science was seriously contested by the principles of theology, if not the ethics of religion. Not since the time of Galileo was there a greater need for resolution and compromise between these opposing forces. Thomas Henry Huxley clearly recognized the conflicting nature of these two divergent forces and, in his lectures and writings, he presented his ideas and views with an eloquence whose clarity and distinction was achieved by few. Still, in 1915, twenty years after Huxley had died, Fielding H. Garrison's comment in his Memoir of John Shaw Billings, that Huxley was 'antagonistic' on the questions of 'religion and the immortality of the soul'1 evoked a reply from Thomas Lauder Brunton to the effect that Garrison had erred in this opinion. 'Antagonistic' is, generally speaking, a strong word and its use can easily evoke response. If by 'antagonistic' Garrison meant that Huxley was 'actively opposed' or was in a 'battle, or struggle for the mastery'2 with those who sought dominance of the views of formal religion and theology over the judgments suggested by science, then Garrison was on safe ground. But ifGarrison's use of the term meant that Huxley was, a priori, 'actively opposed' to religion or the belief in immortality, or that he was hostile to the principles of their existence, Garrison was mistaken. To Huxley religion, and theology, the 'ecclesiastical spirit' and 'clericalism', were two separate things and while he was sympathetic with the idea of the former he was intolerant of the latter. Huxley's biographers are in essential agreement as to his views on the subject of religion and the conclusion reached is that there was no incompatibility between religion and science. Religion for Huxley was simply 'a consciousness of the limitations of man and a sense of an open secret which is impenetrable'; it is 'the reverence and love for an ethical ideal, and the desire to realise that ideal in life which every man ought to feel'.4 It was a purpose of religion to 'bring forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness.'5 Nor was Huxley in any way opposed to the Bible. It was against the 'applications