To-day the intelligence of the world denies the miraculous. Ignorance is the soil of the supernatural. The foundation of Christianity has crumbled, has disappeared, and the entire fabric must fall. The natural is true. The miraculous is false.
North American Review, March, 1890.
HUXLEY AND AGNOSTICISM.
PROFESSOR HUXLEY AND AGNOSTICISM.
IN the February number of the Nineteenth Century, 1889, is an article by Professor Huxley, entitled "Agnosticism." It seems that a church congress was held at Manchester in October, 1888, and that the Principal of King's College brought the topic of Agnosticism before the assembly and made the following statement:
"But if this be so, for a man to urge as an escape from this article of belief that he has no means of a scientific knowledge of an unseen world, or of the future, is irrelevant. His difference from Christians lies, not in the fact that he has no knowledge of these things, but that he does not believe the authority on which they are stated. He may prefer to call himself an Agnostic, but his real name is an older one—he is an infidel; that is to say, an unbeliever. The word infidel, perhaps, carries an unpleasant significance. Perhaps it is right that it should. 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."
Let us examine this statement, putting it in language that is easily understood; and for that purpose we will divide it into several paragraphs.
First.—"For a man to urge that he has no means of a scientific knowledge of the unseen world, or of the future, is irrelevant."