Page 97 - Life of Gertrude Bell

■ I Ill

DURBAR 83
them as they went round the world. On Thursday November
27th aboard the s.s. China off Marseilles, Hugo noted: ‘Gertrude
is an excellent person for a travelling companion, for besides the
fact that she has been in the East before and takes a great interest
in things Oriental, she also (which is of great interest to me)
holds strong atheistic and materialistic views, the effect of which
will be, as Michael Furse says, to put me on my mettle. She holds
them sometimes aggressively: I think that aggression on her part
will probably be met by aggression on mine and that we shall
thereupon be rude and quarrel!’ Hugo had begged his sister
before leaving to refrain from quarrelling and she had assured
him that nothing was further from her mind. She opened the
debate, however, with a jocular story to do with the Archbishop
of Canterbury, Dr Temple. When he was Bishop of London, said
Gertrude, he drove from Fulham in a cab, but his fare did not
satisfy the cabman who told the bishop, ‘If St Paul were here he
would give me one and sixpence,’ to which Temple replied, ‘If
St Paul were here he would be at Lambeth, and that is only a
shilling fare.’ Hugo appreciated the joke. As the good-humoured
exchange proceeded, he even admitted to some shortcomings in
Genesis, especially with regard to Methuselah’s reputed age.
But liis sister was not prepared to let the discussion rest there.
She wanted to know if Christians still held to the theory of verbal
inspiration. Hugo replied:

‘It has been impossible during the nineteenth century to hold
that all scripture was verbally inspired.’
‘Then what do you mean when you say inspiration?’
‘I would confine inspiration to the things which concern
human nature exclusively, not the external world of which
men’s views must be modified by the progress of science.
Spiritual insight into human nature can, it seems to me, be
given by revelation and not disproved.’
‘Then what about Muhammad?’
‘I should say he was certainly inspired—although being a
man he was liable to err and misinterpret, and the revelation
to him may only have been partial.’
‘On that supposition surely it was very deceitful of God to
give one revelation at one time and 600 years later to give
another which would lead men astray. And the fact that
Christians take upon themselves to preach to Muhammadans
G