AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 45 7 



Agnosticism (we judice) says : There is no good evidence of 

 the existence of a demonic spiritual world, and much reason for 

 doubting it. 



Hereupon the ecclesiastic may observe : Your doubt means 

 that you disbelieve Jesus ; therefore you are an " infidel " instead 

 of an " agnostic." To which the agnostic may reply : No ; for 

 two reasons: first, because your evidence that Jesus said what 

 you say he said is worth very little ; and, secondly, because a man 

 may be an agnostic in the sense of admitting he has no positive 

 knowledge ; and yet consider that he has more or less probable 

 ground for accepting any given hypothesis about the spiritual 

 world. Just as a man may frankly declare that he has no means 

 of knowing whether the planets generally are inhabited or not, 

 and yet may think one of the two possible hypotheses more likely 

 than the other, so he may admit that he has no means of knowing 

 anything about the spiritual world, and yet may think one 

 or other of the current views on the subject, to some extent, 

 probable. 



The second answer is so obviously valid that it needs no dis- 

 cussion. I draw attention to it simply in justice to those agnos- 

 tics, who may attach greater value than I do to any sort of pneu- 

 matological speculations, and not because I wish to escape the 

 responsibility of declaring that, whether Jesus sanctioned the 

 demonological part of Christianity or not, I unhesitatingly reject 

 it. The first answer, on the other hand, opens up the whole ques- 

 tion of the claim of the biblical and other sources, from which 

 hypotheses concerning the spiritual world are derived, to be re- 

 garded as unimpeachable historical evidence as to matters of fact. 



Now, in respect of the trustworthiness of the Gospel narratives, 

 I was anxious to get rid of the common assumption that the 

 determination of the authorship and of the dates of these works 

 is a matter of fundamental importance. That assumption is based 

 upon the notion that what contemporary witnesses say must be 

 true, or, at least, has always a prima facie claim to be so regarded ; 

 so that if the writers of any of the Gospels were contemporaries 

 of the events (and still more if they were in the position of eye- 

 witnesses) the miracles they narrate must be historically true, 

 and, consequently, the demonology which they involve must be 

 accepted. But the story of the " Translation of the Blessed Martyrs 

 Marcellinus and Petrus," and the other considerations (to which 

 endless additions might have been made from the fathers and 

 the mediaeval writers) set forth in this review for March last, 

 yield, in my judgment, satisfactory proof that, where the miracu- 

 lous is concerned, neither considerable intellectual ability, nor 

 undoubted honesty, nor knowledge of the world, nor proved faith- 

 fulness as civil historians, nor profound piety, on the part of eye- 



