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Updated: June 5, 2025
When to this full measure of lay perfection the complexion of Levite godliness was superadded by election to the deaconate in the Baptist Church, it will readily be seen that two young people, in whom the hard worldliness of wealth and easy conditions had not bred home agnosticism, were material for all the credulities of parent worship.
The more carefully one examines the reasons given for the preference for the word Agnosticism, the clearer it becomes that the real motive is not the wish to obtain mental clarity, but the desire to avoid association with a term that carries, religiously, disagreeable associations.
Shall we seek light in the modern lady-novelist, with her demand for phases of passion suited to every stage of existence? Shall we fall in with the agnosticism of John Davidson, and admit that no man has ever understood a woman, a man, or himself, and vice versa?
The essence of Christianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life, but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one's duty, in speaking the truth, in finding the true life rather in others than in oneself, and in the certain hope that he who loses his life on these behalfs finds more than he has lost. What can Agnosticism do against such Christianity as this?
There is no love of Penelope for her own sake; that is a Christian product. Everything in that old world would appear to have been clean and obvious. A good man was a good man; a bad man was a bad man. For this reason they had no charity; for charity is a reverent agnosticism towards the complexity of the soul.
"It is impossible," said Emerson, whom he loved and admired, "for a man not to be always praying." The relations of such men with the unseen are an inseparable part of their daily lives. Froude had no more sympathy with the self-complacent "agnosticism" of modern thought than he had with Catholic authority or ecstatic revivalism.
The only Agnosticism that seems capable of justifying itself is an Agnosticism that is indistinguishable from Atheism. To again cite Professor Flint, Atheist "means one who does not believe in God, and it means neither more nor less." The Agnostic is also one who is without belief in a god, every argument he uses to justify his position is and has been used as a justification of Atheism.
"Yes; that makes it all so much the worse, as we doctors are aware. It's a species of disease, Opdyke, and when a patient takes his disease seriously, as a general rule it's all up with him. Just how far has Brenton gone?" "From our standpoint, not very far; from the standpoint of the student mind, to the outer limits of agnosticism." The doctor whistled thoughtfully.
Still less justifiable was it to proceed to misinterpret Atheism in order to justify a departure that need never have been made. One cannot at this point forbear a word on Mr. afterwards Sir Leslie Stephen's curious justification of his choice of the word Agnosticism. After the enlightening remark that the word "Atheist" carries with it an unpleasant connotation, he says:
We can describe the appearance and conditions of a process; but not the way of it. Agnosticism is a fundamental fact. It is the starting-point of the wise man who has discovered that it needs eternity to study infinity. Agnosticism, however, is no excuse for indolence. Because we cannot know all, we need not therefore be totally ignorant.
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