A GNOS TIC ISM A ND E VOL UTION. 277 



says we must worship humanity in its entirety. 

 Huxley, however, dissents from this view, and tells 

 us that it is not humanity, but the cosmos, the vis- 

 ible material universe, which should constitute- the 

 object of our highest veneration and religious emo- 

 tion. Herbert Spencer is even more nebulous and 

 mystical. His deity is an unknowable energy, "im- 

 personal, unconscious, unthinking and unthinkable." 

 God is " the great enigma which he [man] knows 

 cannot be solved," and religion can at best be con- 

 cerned only with "a consciousness of a mystery which 

 can never be fathomed." According to Mr. Harri- 

 son, however the brilliant critic of the views pro- 

 pounded by Huxley, the doughty combatant who 

 has so frequently run full atilt against the champions 

 of Agnosticism Spencer's Unknowable is " an ever- 

 present conundrum to be everlastingly given up ; " 

 his Something, or All-Being, is a pure negation, "an 

 All-Nothingness, an x n and an Everlasting No." 

 Verily it is of such, " vain in their thoughts and 

 darkened in their foolish heart," that the Apos- 

 tle of the Gentiles speaks when he declares that 

 they " changed the truth of God into a lie ; and 

 worshipped and served the creature rather than the 

 Creator." ' 



But it is not my purpose to dilate on the teach- 

 ings of Agnosticism. My sole object is to indicate 

 briefly some of its more patent and fundamental 

 errors. A detailed examination and refutation of 

 them does not come within the purview of our sub- 

 ject. , For such examination and refutation, the 



1 "Romans," chap, i, 25. 



