Therefore, however sorry I may be to be unable to demonstrate that, if necessary, I should not be afraid to call myself an “infidel,” I cannot do it.  “Infidel” is a term of reproach, which Christians and Mahommedans, in their modesty, agree to apply to those who differ from them.  If he had only thought of it, Dr. Wace might have used the term “miscreant,” which, with the same etymological signification, has the advantage of being still more “unpleasant” to the persons to whom it is applied.  But why should a man be expected to call himself a “miscreant” or an “infidel”?  That St. Patrick “had two birthdays because he was a twin” is a reasonable and intelligible utterance beside that of the man who should declare himself to be an infidel on the ground of denying his own belief.  It may be logically, if not ethically, defensible that a Christian should call a Mahommedan an infidel and vice versa; but, on Dr. Wace’s principles, both ought to call themselves infidels, because each applies the term to the other.

Now I am afraid that all the Mahommedan world would agree in reciprocating that appellation to Dr. Wace himself.  I once visited the Hazar Mosque, the great University of Mohammedanism, in Cairo, in ignorance of the fact that I was unprovided with proper authority.  A swarm of angry undergraduates, as I suppose I ought to call them, came buzzing about me and my guide; and if I had known Arabic, I suspect that “dog of an infidel” would have been by no means the most “unpleasant” of the epithets showered upon me, before I could explain and apologise for the mistake.  If I had had the pleasure of Dr. Wace’s company on that occasion, the undiscriminative followers of the Prophet would, I am afraid, have made no difference between us; not even if they had known that he was the head of an orthodox Christian seminary.  And I have not the smallest doubt that even one of the learned mollahs, if his grave courtesy would have permitted him to say anything offensive to men of another mode of belief, would have told us that he wondered we did not find it “very unpleasant” to disbelieve in the Prophet of Islam.

From what precedes, I think it becomes sufficiently clear that Dr. Wace’s account of the origin of the name of “Agnostic” is quite wrong.  Indeed, I am bound to add that very slight effort to discover the truth would have convinced him that, as a matter of fact, the term arose otherwise.  I am loath to go over an old story once more; but more than one object which I have in view will be served by telling it a little more fully than it has yet been told.