mption of
superiority, and often a manifestation of contempt. Those who call their
logic or their conjectures into question, are stigmatized as
narrow-minded, bigots, old women, Bible worshippers, etc.

Professor Huxley's advice to metaphysicians and theologians is, to let
science alone. This is his Irenicum. But do he and his associates let
metaphysics and religion alone? They tell the metaphysician that his
vocation is gone; there is no such thing as mind, and of course no
mental laws to be established. Metaphysics are merged into physics.
Professor Huxley tells the religious world that there is over-whelming
and crushing evidence (scientific evidence, of course) that no event has
ever occurred on this earth which was not the effect of natural causes.
Hence there have been no miracles, and Christ is not risen.[44] He says
that the doctrine that belief in a personal God is necessary to any
religion worthy of the name, is a mere matter of opinion. Tyndall,
Carpenter, and Henry Thompson, teach that prayer is a superstitious
absurdity; Herbert Spencer, whom they call their "great philosopher,"
_i. e._, the man who does their thinking, labors to prove that there
cannot be a personal God, or human soul or self; that moral laws are
mere "generalizations of utility," or, as Carl Vogt says, that self
respect, and not the will of God, is the ground and rule of moral
obligation. If any protest be made against such doctrines, we are told
that scientific truth cannot be put down by denunciation (or as Vogt
says, by barking). So doubtless the Pharisees, when our blessed Lord
called them hypocrites and a generation of vipers, and said: "Ye compass
sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, ye make him
twofold more the child of hell than yourselves," doubtless thought that
that was a poor way to refute their theory, that holiness and salvation
were to be secured by church-membership and church-rites. Nevertheless,
as those words were the words of Christ, they were a thunderbolt which
reverberates through all time and space, and still makes Pharisees of
every name and nation tremble. Huxley's Irenicum will not do. Men who
are assiduously poisoning the fountains of religion, morality, and
social order, cannot be let alone.

Haeckel's Irenicum amounts to much the same as that of Professor Huxley.
He forbids the right to speak on these vital subjects, to all who are
not thoroughly versed in biology, and who are not entirel