I am glad you are going to let Wace have another “go.”  My object, as you know, in the whole business has been to rouse people to think...

Considering that I got named in the House of Commons last night as an example of a temperate and well-behaved blasphemer, I think I am attaining my object. [In the debate upon the Religious Prosecutions Abolition Bill, Mr. Addison said “the last article by Professor Huxley in the “Nineteenth Century” showed that opinion was free when it was honestly expressed.”—­“Times” April 14.]

Of course I go for a last word, and I am inclined to think that whatever Wace may say, it may be best to get out of the region of controversy as far as possible and hammer in two big nails—­(1) that the Demonology of Christianity shows that its founders knew no more about the spiritual world than anybody else, and (2) that Newman’s doctrine of “Development” is true to an extent of which the Cardinal did not dream.

I have been reading some of his works lately, and I understand now why Kingsley accused him of growing dishonesty.

After an hour or two of him I began to lose sight of the distinction between truth and falsehood.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

If you are at home any day next week I will look in for a chat.

[The controversy was completed by a third article, “Agnosticism and Christianity,” in the June number of the “Nineteenth Century”.  There was a humorous aspect of this article which tickled his fancy immensely, for he drove home his previous arguments by means of an authority whom his adversaries could not neglect, though he was the last man they could have expected to see brought up against them in this connection—­Cardinal Newman.  There is no better evidence for ancient than for modern miracles, he says in effect; let us therefore accept the teachings of the Church which maintains a continuous tradition on the subject.  But there is a very different conclusion to be drawn from the same premises; all may be regarded as equally doubtful, and so he writes on May 30 to Sir J. Hooker:—­]

By the way, I want you to enjoy my wind-up with Wace in this month’s “Nineteenth” in the reading as much as I have in the writing.  It’s as full of malice [I.e. in the French sense of the word.] as an egg is full of meat, and my satisfaction in making Newman my accomplice has been unutterable.  That man is the slipperiest sophist I have ever met with.  Kingsley was entirely right about him.

Now for peace and quietness till after the next Church Congress!

[Three other letters to Mr. Knowles refer to this article.]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., May 4, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I am at the end of my London tether, and we go to Eastbourne (3
Jevington Gardens again) on Monday.

I have been working hard to finish my paper, and shall send it to you before I go.

I am astonished at its meekness.  Being reviled, I revile not; not an exception, I believe, can be taken to the wording of one of the venomous paragraphs in which the paper abounds.  And I perceive the truth of a profound reflection I have often made, that reviling is often morally superior to not reviling.