The question of the place of religion as an element of human nature, as a force of human society, its origin, analysis, and functions, has never been considered at all from an agnostic point of view (p. 152).

I doubt not that Mr. Harrison knows vastly more about history than I do; in fact, he tells the public that some of my friends and I have had no opportunity of occupying ourselves with that subject.  I do not like to contradict any statement which Mr. Harrison makes on his own authority; only, if I may be true to my agnostic principles, I humbly ask how he has obtained assurance on this head.  I do not profess to know anything about the range of Mr. Harrison’s studies; but as he has thought it fitting to start the subject, I may venture to point out that, on evidence adduced, it might be equally permissible to draw the conclusion that Mr. Harrison’s other labours have not allowed him to acquire that acquaintance with the methods and results of physical science, or with the history of philosophy, or of philological and historical criticism, which is essential to any one who desires to obtain a right understanding of agnosticism.  Incompetence in philosophy, and in all branches of science except mathematics, is the well-known mental characteristic of the founder of positivism.  Faithfulness in disciples is an admirable quality in itself; the pity is that it not unfrequently leads to the imitation of the weaknesses as well as of the strength of the master.  It is only such over-faithfulness which can account for a “strong mind really saturated with the historical sense” (p. 153) exhibiting the extraordinary forgetfulness of the historical fact of the existence of David Hume implied by the assertion that

it would be difficult to name a single known agnostic who has given to history anything like the amount of thought and study which he brings to a knowledge of the physical world (p. 153).

Whoso calls to mind what I may venture to term the bright side of Christianity—­that ideal of manhood, with its strength and its patience, its justice and its pity for human frailty, its helpfulness to the extremity of self-sacrifice, its ethical purity and nobility, which apostles have pictured, in which armies of martyrs have placed their unshakable faith, and whence obscure men and women, like Catherine of Sienna and John Knox, have derived the courage to rebuke popes and kings—­is not likely to underrate the importance of the Christian faith as a factor in human history, or to doubt that if that faith should prove to be incompatible with our knowledge, or necessary want of knowledge, some other hypostasis of men’s hopes, genuine enough and worthy enough to replace it, will arise.  But that the incongruous mixture of bad science with eviscerated papistry, out of which Comte manufactured the positivist religion, will be the heir of the Christian ages, I have too much respect for the humanity of the future to believe.  Charles the Second told his brother, “They will not kill me, James, to make you king.”  And if critical science is remorselessly destroying the historical foundations of the noblest ideal of humanity which mankind have yet worshipped, it is little likely to permit the pitiful reality to climb into the vacant shrine.