AGNOSTICISM. 765 



led nowliere else but into the dark depths of a wild and tangled 

 forest. And though I have found leopards and lions in the path ; 

 though I have made abundant acquaintance with the hungry wolf, 

 that with " privy paw devours apace and nothing said," as another 

 great poet says of the ravening beast ; and though no friendly spec- 

 ter has even yet offered his guidance, I was, and am, minded to go 

 straight on, until I either come out on the other side of the wood, 

 or find there is no other side to it — at least, none attainable by me. 



This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a 

 place among the members of that reniarkable confraternity of 

 antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, 

 the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of philosophical and 

 theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself 

 with entire openness; most of my colleagues were -ists of one 

 sort or another ; and, however kind and friendly they might be, 

 I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could 

 not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have 

 beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his 

 tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated 

 companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived 

 to be the appropriate title of " agnostic." It came into my head 

 as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, 

 who professed to know so much about the very things of which I 

 was ignorant ; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it 

 at our society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. 

 To my great satisfaction, the term took ; and when the " Spec- 

 tator " had stood godfather to it, any suspicion in the minds of 

 respectable people, that a knowledge of its parentage might have 

 awakened, was, of course, completely lulled. 



That is the history of the origin of the terms " agnostic " and 

 " agnosticism " ; and it will be observed that it does not quite 

 agree with the confident assertion of the reverend Principal of 

 King's College, that " the adoption of the term agnostic is only 

 an attempt to shift the issue, and that it involves a mere evasion " 

 in relation to the Church and Christianity.* 



The last objection (I rejoice, as much as my readers must do, 

 that it is the last) which I have to take to Dr. Wace's deliverance 

 before the Church Congress arises, I am sorry to say, on a ques- 

 tion of morality. 



" It is, and it ought to be," authoritatively declares this official 

 representative of Christian ethics, " an unpleasant thing for a man 

 to have to say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ " 

 {I. c, p. 254). 



Whether it is so, depends, I imagine, a good deal on whether 



* " Report of the Church Congress," Manchester, 1888, p. 252. 



