THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 217 

 THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 



By JAMES A. SKTLTOK 



WITH LETTERS FROM HERBERT SPENCER, PROF. HUXLEY, AND 



DR. LYMAN ABBOTT. 



IN the sacred literature of the Christian Church a word appears 

 that to its founder and to his immediate followers evidently 

 had a deep significance, the nature of which was at least partially 

 concealed from his later followers, and is still concealed from 

 those of the present day, through admitted mistranslation. 



Standing on Mars' Hill and speaking to the men of Athens, 

 Paul affirmed that in all things they were " too Godi-f earing." * 

 Whereupon he proceeded to declare and make known unto them 

 the God whom they worshiped as the Unknown or Agnostic God. 

 In so doing he spoke of a God, the Lord of heaven and earth, who 

 made the world and all things therein ; who dwelt not in temples 

 made with hands ; who needed nothing, seeing he was the giver 

 of life, breath, and all things ; who had made of one blood all 

 nations of men; and who had determined the times before ap- 

 pointed and the bounds of their habitation. He declared that 

 they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and 

 find him, though he was constantly at hand, and the one in whom 

 they lived and moved and had their being. He closed with a 

 strongly put antithesis in which, without declaring divine con- 

 demnation of their agnosticism, which he said God " winked at," 

 and they might therefore tolerate, he urged them to obey the com- 

 mand of God — "metanoein" — to practice metanosticism. This 

 word has been translated to mean " repent." It is hardly suffi- 

 cient to say that that translation is etymologically inadequate; 

 the history of the Christian Church also, for eighteen centu- 

 ries, proves it to be practically so. Paul evidently found in the 

 word " metanoein " the open door of a temple in which a God- 

 fearing worship might be exchanged for a God-loving worship. 

 The history of his own life shows that his personal conversion 

 was a metanostic process through which a defective external sight 

 was exchanged for a clear insight, revealed to him as with a 

 lightning-flash at midnight, wherein he instantly saw " the world 

 and all things therein " in an entirely new aspect. 



The question, then, indirectly presented for the consideration of 

 the entire Christian Church, in the following correspondence, is, 

 Whether it should adopt the word actually used by Paul, with its 

 large meaning, either alone, as a step forward, and to restore to 

 the sacred record and to the working power of the Church the 



* The word he uses is " deisidaimonesterous," and includes the idea of devil-fearing. 



TOL. XXXVII. — 17 



