AGNOSTICISM. 69 



not. But if Prof. Huxley were to maintain that the pursuit of 

 glory was the true motive of the soldier, and that it was an illu- 

 sion to suppose that simple devotion to duty could be the supreme 

 guide of military life, I should certainly charge him with contra- 

 dicting the duke's teaching and disregarding his authority and 

 example. A hundred stories like that of "Up, Guards, and at 

 'em ! " might be doubted, or positively disproved, and it would 

 still remain a fact beyond all reasonable doubt that the Duke of 

 Wellington was essentially characterized by the sternest and most 

 devoted sense of duty, and that he had inculcated duty as the very 

 watchword of a soldier ; and even Prof. Huxley would not sug- 

 gest that Lord Tennyson's ode, which has embodied this charac- 

 teristic in immortal verse, was an unfounded poetical romance. 



The main question at issue, in a word, is one which Prof. Hux- 

 ley has chosen to leave entirely on one side — whether, namely, 

 allowing for the utmost uncertainty on other points of the criti- 

 cism to which he appeals, there is any reasonable doubt that the 

 Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount afford a true account 

 of our Lord's essential belief and cardinal teaching. If they do — 

 then I am not now contending that they involve the whole of 

 the Christian creed; I am not arguing, as Prof. Huxley would 

 represent, that he ought for that reason alone to be a Christian — 

 I simply represent that, as an agnostic, he must regard those be- 

 liefs and that teaching as mistaken — the result of an illusion, to 

 say the least. I am not going, therefore, to follow Prof. Hux- 

 ley's example, and go down a steep place with the Gadarene swine 

 into a sea of uncertainties and possibilities, and stake the whole 

 case of Christian belief as against agnosticism upon one of the 

 most difficult and mysterious narratives in the New Testament. 

 I will state my position on that question presently. But I am 

 first and chiefly concerned to point out that Prof. Huxley has 

 skillfully evaded the very point and edge of the argument he had 

 to meet. Let him raise what difficulties he pleases, with the help 

 of his favorite critics, about the Gadarene swine, or even about 

 all the stories of demoniacs. He will find that his critics — and 

 even critics more rationalistic than they — fail him when it comes 

 to the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount, and, I will 

 add, the story of the Passion. He will find, or rather he must 

 have found, that the very critics he relies upon recognize that in 

 the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord's Prayer, allowing for 

 variations in form and order, the substance of our Lord's essential 

 teaching is preserved. On a point which, until Prof. Huxley 

 shows cause to the contrary, can hardly want argument, the judg- 

 ment of the most recent of his witnesses may suffice — Prof. 

 Reuss, of Strasburg. In Prof. Huxley's article on the " Evolution 

 of Theology" in the number of this review for March, 1886, 



