IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 365 



have howled me down, as the religious newspapers 

 howled down my too honest friend, the late 

 Bishop of Natal ; nor would my colleagues of the 

 Koyal Society have turned their backs upon me, 

 as his episcopal colleagues boycotted him. 



I say these facts are obvious, and that it is 

 wholesome and needful that they should be 

 stated. It is in the interests of theology, if it be 

 a science, and it is in the interests of those 

 teachers of theology who desire to be something 

 better than counsel for creeds, that it should be 

 taken to heart. The seeker after theological 

 truth and that only, will no more suppose that I 

 have insulted him, than the prisoner who works 

 in fetters will try to pick a quarrel with me, if I 

 suggest that he would get on better if the fetters 

 were knocked off; unless indeed, as it is said does 

 happen in the course of long captivities, that the 

 victim at length ceases to feel the weight of his 

 chains, or even takes to hugging them, as if they 

 were honourable ornaments. 1 



1 To-day's Times contains a report of a remarkable speech by 

 Prince Bismarck, in which he tells the Reichstag that he has 

 long given up investing in foreign stock, lest so doing should 

 mislead his judgment in his transactions with foreign states. 

 Does this declaration prove that the Chancellor accuses himself 

 of being "sordid 5 ' and " selfish" ; or does it not rather show 

 that, even in dealing with himself, he remains the man of 

 realities ? 



