And it is this rational ground of belief which the writers of the Gospels, no less than Paul, and Eginhard, and Fox, so little dream of offering that they would regard the demand for it as a kind of blasphemy.

AGNOSTICISM

[1889]

Within the last few months [1889] the public has received much and varied information on the subject of Agnostics, their tenets, and even their future.  Agnosticism exercised the orators of the Church Congress at Manchester.[28] It has been furnished with a set of “articles,” fewer, but not less rigid, and certainly not less consistent than the thirty-nine; its nature has been analysed, and its future severely predicted by the most eloquent of that prophetical school whose Samuel is Auguste Comte.  It may still be a question, however, whether the public is as much the wiser as might be expected, considering all the trouble that has been taken to enlighten it.  Not only are the three accounts of the agnostic position sadly out of harmony with one another, but I propose to show cause for my belief that all three must be seriously questioned by any one who employs the term “agnostic” in the sense in which it was originally used.  The learned Principal of King’s College, who brought the topic of Agnosticism before the Church Congress, took a short and easy way of settling the business:—­

But if this be so, for a man to urge, as an escape from this article of belief, that he has no means of a scientific knowledge of the unseen world, or of the future, is irrelevant.  His difference from Christians lies not in the fact that he has no knowledge of these things, but that he does not believe the authority on which they are stated.  He may prefer to call himself an agnostic; but his real name is an older one—­he is an infidel; that is to say, an unbeliever.  The word infidel, perhaps, carries an unpleasant significance.  Perhaps it is right that it should.  It is, and it ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ.[29]

So much of Dr. Wace’s address either explicitly or implicitly concerns me, that I take upon myself to deal with it; but, in doing so, it must be understood that I speak for myself alone.  I am not aware that there is any sect of Agnostics; and if there be, I am not its acknowledged prophet or pope.  I desire to leave to the Comtists the entire monopoly of the manufacture of imitation ecclesiasticism.

Let us calmly and dispassionately consider Dr. Wace’s appreciation of agnosticism.  The agnostic, according to his view, is a person who says he has no means of attaining a scientific knowledge of the unseen world or of the future; by which somewhat loose phraseology Dr. Wace presumably means the theological unseen world and future.  I cannot think this description happy, either in form or substance; but for the present it may pass.  Dr. Wace continues that is not “his difference from Christians.”  Are there then any Christians who say that they know nothing about the unseen world and the future?  I was ignorant of the fact, but I am ready to accept it on the authority of a professional theologian, and I proceed to Dr. Wace’s next proposition.