If there is a Deity it seems to be in some indefinite degree more probable that He should impart a Revelation than that He should not.

Women, as a class, are in all countries much more disposed to Christianity than men.  I think the scientific explanation of this is to be found in the causes assigned in my essay on Mental differences between Men and Women[70].  But, if Christianity be supposed true, there would, of course, be a more ultimate explanation of a religious kind—­as in all other cases where causation is concerned.  And, in that case I have no doubt that the largest part of the explanation would consist in the passions of women being less ardent than those of men, and also much more kept under restraint by social conditions of life.  This applies not only to purity, but likewise to most of the other psychological differentiae between the sexes, such as ambition, selfishness, pride of power, and so forth.  In short, the whole ideal of Christian ethics is of a feminine as distinguished from a masculine type[71].  Now nothing is so inimical to Christian belief as un-Christian conduct.  This is especially the case as regards impurity; for whether the fact be explained on religious or non-religious grounds, it has more to do with unbelief than has the speculative reason.  Consequently, woman is, for all these reasons, the ‘fitter’ type for receiving and retaining Christian belief.

Modern agnosticism is performing this great service to Christian faith; it is silencing all rational scepticism of the a priori kind.  And this it is bound to do more and more the purer it becomes.  In every generation it must henceforth become more and more recognized by logical thinking, that all antecedent objections to Christianity founded on reason alone are ipso facto nugatory.  Now, all the strongest objections to Christianity have ever been those of the antecedent kind; hence the effect of modern thinking is that of more and more diminishing the purely speculative difficulties, such as that of the Incarnation, &c.  In other words the force of Butler’s argument about our being incompetent judges[72] is being more and more increased.

And the logical development of this lies in the view already stated about natural causation.  For, just as pure agnosticism must allow that reason is incompetent to adjudicate a priori for or against Christian miracles, including the Incarnation, so it must further allow that, if they ever took place, reason can have nothing to say against their being all of one piece with causation in general.  Hence, so far as reason is concerned, pure agnosticism must allow that it is only the event which can ultimately prove whether Christianity is true or false.  ’If it be of God we cannot overthrow it, lest haply we be found even to fight against God.’  But the individual cannot wait for this empirical determination.  What then is he to do?  The unbiassed answer of pure agnosticism ought reasonably to be, in the words