The "religious difficulty" came up again at the meeting of
the London School Board on Wednesday, Professor Huxley describ- ing what sort of selection from the Bible he wants,—namely, a selection excluding plain-spoken passages, which it is undesirable for children who have been perhaps coarsely brought up to read, as containing what might be poison to their minds, though not to that of the more carefully educated, and also excluding pas- sages likely to give false scientific ideas, like the account of the six days' creation in the beginning of Genesis. Mrs. Anderson (née Miss Garrett) made far the best speech on this subject. She objected to the principle of Professor Iluxley's motion, on the ground that it was an attempt to evade a difficulty which ought to be faced. Teachers should be left free to deal with the scien- tific difficulty for themselves. There should be no attempt to exclude all notice of the fact that the science of the Bible is very rude, and often erroneous. The motion was fortunately rejected. To our mind, if you were bound to exclude the wonderful psalm,— for that is its true nature,—in which one of the oldest of the prophets gave his spiritual vision of the divine origin of Creation, on the ground that it contains plenty of scientific error, you might exclude a great proportion of the Bible for doubtful history, exaggerated numbers, questionable natural science, and so forth. It is the duty of the teachers to teach that the Bible reveals the relation of man to God, but not the laws of natural phenomena. No doubt many of the teachers have not yet found this out, but they must be left to grapple with the childrens' questions which will compel them to find it out before long.
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