AGNOSTICISM. 73 



But I am forced to conclude that Prof. Huxley can not have 

 taken the pains to understand the point I raised, not only by the 

 irrelevance of his argument on these considerations, but by a mis- 

 quotation which the superior accuracy of a man of science ought 

 to have rendered impossible. Twice over in the article he quotes 

 me as saying that " it is, and it ought to be, an unpleasant thing 

 for a man to have to say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus 

 Christ." As he winds up his attack upon my paper by bringing 

 against this statement his rather favorite charge of " immorality " 

 — and even " most profound immorality " — he was the more bound 

 to accuracy in his quotation of my words. But neither in the offi- 

 cial report of the congress to which he refers, nor in any report 

 that I have seen, is this the statement attributed to me. What I 

 said, and what I meant to say, was that it ought to be an unpleas- 

 ant thing for a man to have to say plainly " that he does not 

 believe Jesus Christ." By inserting the little word "in," Prof. 

 Huxley has, by an unconscious ingenuity, shifted the import of 

 the statement. He goes on to denounce "the pestilent doctrine 

 on which all the churches have insisted, that honest disbelief in 

 their more or less astonishing creeds is a moral offense, indeed 

 a sin of the deepest dye." * His interpretation exhibits, in fact, 

 the idea in his own mind, which he has doubtless conveyed to 

 his readers, that I said it ought to be unpleasant to a man to 

 have to say that he does not believe in the Christian creed. I cer- 

 tainly think it ought, for reasons I will mention ; but that is not 

 what I said. I spoke, deliberately, not of the Christian creed as a 

 whole, but of Jesus Christ as a person, and regarded as a witness 

 to certain primary truths which an agnostic will not acknowledge. 

 It was a personal consideration to which I appealed, and not a 

 dogmatic one ; and I am sorry, for that reason, that Prof. Huxley 

 will not allow me to leave it in the reserve with which I hoped it 

 had been sufficiently indicated. I said that " no criticism worth 

 mentioning doubts the story of the Passion ; and that story in- 

 volves the most solemn attestation, again and again, of truths of 

 which an agnostic coolly says he knows nothing. An agnosticism 

 which knows nothing of the relation of man to God must not only 

 refuse belief to our Lord's most undoubted teaching, but must 

 deny the reality of the spiritual convictions in which he lived and 

 died. It must declare that his most intimate, most intense beliefs, 

 and his dying aspirations were an illusion. Is that supposition 

 tolerable ? " I do not think this deserves to be called " a propo- 

 sition of the most profoundly immoral character." I think it 

 ought to be unpleasant, and I am sure it always will be unpleas- 

 ant, for a man to listen to the Saviour on the cross uttering such 

 words as " Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," and to 



* "Popular Science Monthly" for April, 1889, p. 766. 



