"COWARDLY AGNOSTICISM." 249 



does not lie on the surface, such meaning as may lie on the sur- 

 face it will utterly take away. It will indeed tell us that the 

 soul which sins shall die ; but it will tell us in the same breath 

 that the soul which does not sin shall die the same death. In- 

 stead of telling us that we are responsible for our actions, it will 

 tell us that if anything is responsible for them it is the blind 

 and unfathomable universe ; and if we are asked to repent of any 

 shameful sins we have committed, it will tell us we might as well 

 be repentant about the structure of the solar system. These med- 

 itations, these communings with scientific truth, will be the exact 

 inverse of the religious meditations of the Christian. Every man, 

 no doubt, has two voices — the voice of self-indulgence or indiffer- 

 ence, and the voice of effort and duty ; but whereas the religion 

 of the Christian enabled him to silence the one, the religion of the 

 agnostic will forever silence the other. I say forever, but I 

 probably ought to correct myself. Could the voice be silenced 

 forever, then there might be peace in the sense in which Roman 

 conquerors gave the name of peace to solitude. But it is more 

 likely that the voice will still continue, together with the longing 

 expressed by it, only to feel the pains of being again and again 

 silenced, or sent back to the soul saying bitterly, I am a lie. 



Such, then, is really the result of agnosticism on life, and the 

 result is so obvious to any one who knows how to reason, that it 

 could be hidden from nobody, except by one thing, and that is 

 the cowardice characteristic of all our contemporary agnostics. 

 They dare not face what they have done. They dare not look fix- 

 edly at the body of the life which they have pierced. 



And now comes the final question to which all that I have thus 

 far urged has been leading. What does theologic religion answer 

 to the principles and to the doctrines of agnosticism ? In con- 

 temporary discussion the answer is constantly obscured, but it is 

 of the utmost importance that it should be given clearly. It says 

 this : If we start from and are faithful to the agnostic's funda- 

 mental principles, that nothing is to be regarded as certain which 

 is not either demonstrated or demonstrable, then the denial of God 

 is the only possible creed for us. To the methods of science noth- 

 ing in this universe gives any hint of either a God or a purpose. 

 Duty ; and holiness, aspiration and love of truth, are " merely 

 shadows of our own mind's throwing," but shadows which, instead 

 of making the reality brighter, only serve to make it more ghastly 

 and hideous. Humanity is a bubble ; the human being is a pup- 

 pet, cursed with the intermittent illusion that he is something 

 more, and roused from this illusion with a pang every time it flat- 

 ters him. Now, from this condition of things is there no escape ? 

 Theologic religion answers, There is one, and one only, and this is 

 the repudiation of the principle on which all agnosticism rests. 



