From my point of view, I am not sure that it might not be well for them to succeed, so that the sweep into space which would befall them in the course of the next twenty-three years might be complete and final.

As to the case you put to me—­permit me to continue the dialogue in another shape.

Boy.—­Please, teacher, if Joseph was not Jesus’ father and God was, why did Mary say, “Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing”?  How could God not know where Jesus was?  How could He be sorry?

Teacher.—­When Jesus says Father, he means God; but when Mary says father, she means Joseph.

Boy.—­Then Mary didn’t know God was Jesus’ father?

Teacher.—­Oh, yes, she did (reads the story of the Annunciation).

Boy.—­It seems to me very odd that Mary used language which she knew was not true, and taught her son to call Joseph father.  But there’s another odd thing about her.  If she knew her child was God’s son, why was she alarmed about his safety?  Surely she might have trusted God to look after his own son in a crowd.

I know of children of six and seven who are quite capable of following out such a line of inquiry with all the severe logic of a moral sense which has not been sophisticated by pious scrubbing.

I could tell you of stranger inquiries than these which have been made by children in endeavouring to understand the account of the miraculous conception.

Whence I conclude that even in the interests of what people are pleased to call Christianity (though it is my firm conviction that Jesus would have repudiated the doctrine of the Incarnation as warmly as that of the Trinity), it may be well to leave things as they are.

All this is for your own eye.  There is nothing in substance that I have not said publicly, but I do not feel called upon to say it over again, or get mixed up in an utterly wearisome controversy.

I am, yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[However, he was unsuccessful in his proposal that a selection be made of passages for reading from the Bible; the Board refused to become censors.  On May 10 he raised the question of the diversion from the education of poor children of charitable bequests, which ought to be applied to the augmentation of the school fund.  In speaking to this motion he said that the long account of errors and crimes of the Catholic Church was greatly redeemed by the fact that that Church had always borne in mind the education of the poor, and had carried out the great democratic idea that the soul of every man was of the same value in the eyes of his Maker.

The next matter of importance in which he took part was on June 14, when the Committee on the Scheme of Education presented its first report.  Dr. Gladstone writes:—­