232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Sirius; but if any action depended on our believing this to be 

 true, be would certainly not besitate to declare tbat it was a f ool- 

 isb and fantastic f alsebood. Who would think the better of him — 

 who would not think the worse — if in this matter he gravely de- 

 clared himself to be an agnostic ? And precisely the same may be 

 said of him with regard to the existence of God. For all practical 

 purposes he is not in doubt about it. He denies it. I need not, 

 however, content myself with my own reasoning. I find Prof. Hux- 

 ley himself indorsing every word that I have just uttered. He 

 declares that such questions as are treated of in volumes of divin- 

 ity " are essentially questions of lunar politics, . . . not worth the 

 attention of men who have work to do in the world " : and he cites 

 Hume's advice with regard to such volumes as being " most wise " 

 — " Commit them to the flames, for they can contain nothing but 

 sophistry and illusion." * Quotations of a similar import might 

 be indefinitely multiplied ; but it will be enough to add to this 

 the statements quoted already, that agnosticism is to theologic 

 religion what death is to life ; and that physiology does but deep- 

 en and complete the gloom of the gloomiest motto of paganism — 

 "Debemur morti." If then agnosticism is not an absolute and dog- 

 matic denial of the fundamental propositions of theology, it dif- 

 fers from an absolute and dogmatic denial in a degree that is so 

 trivial as to be, in the words of Prof. Huxley himself, " not worth 

 the attention of men who have work to do in the world." For all 

 practical purposes and according to the real opinion of Prof. Hux- 

 ley and Mr. Harrison equally, agnosticism is not doubt, is not 

 suspension of judgment ; but it is a denial of what " most people 

 mean by religion " — that is to say, the fundamental propositions 

 of theology, so absolute that Prof. Huxley compares it to their 

 death. 



And now let us pass on to the next point in our argument, 

 which I will introduce by quoting Prof. Huxley again. This de- 

 nial of the fundamental propositions of theology " affects," he says, 

 " men's whole conception of life." Let us consider how. By the 

 Christian world, life was thought to be important owing to its 

 connection with some unseen universe, full of interests and issues 

 which were too great for the mind to grasp at present, but in 

 which, for good or evil, we should each of us one day share, tak- 

 ing our place among the awful things of eternity. But at the 

 touch of the agnostic doctrine this unseen universe bursts like a 

 bubble, melts like an empty dream ; and all the meaning which it 

 once imparted to life vanishes from its surface like mists from a 

 field at morning. In every sense but one, which is exclusively 

 physical, man is remorselessly cut adrift from the eternal ; and 

 whatever importance or interest anything has for any of us, must 



* "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews," p. 125. 



