sacerdotal caste, no human being, no Pope of Rome or Llama of Thibet, has the remotest right to claim infallibility. The education of the human race constantly advances. I have just quoted the lines of Robert Browning; but we may adduce the equally emphatic testimony of the other foremost poet of our generation-Lord Tennyson. He wrote

and again—

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day, and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day: Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

The light is constantly shining on amid the darkness, and "God," says George Eliot, "shows all things in the slow history of their ripening."

Since then, the views of every progressive age must differ, in many particulars, from those which prevailed in the generations which preceded it, it becomes a most pertinent enquiry for us, at the close of another century, whether the incessant and unfettered activity of the human mind in all matters of enquiry has resulted in shaking any of the fundamental conceptions in the religion of those millions-amounting to nearly one-third of the entire human race-" who profess and call themselves Christians."

Obviously-considering that no century has been more intellectually restless than this, and in no century has education in Europe been more widely disseminated-it would require not one brief paper, but several volumes, to enter in detail into the whole subject; to estimate the religious effect produced by many epochmaking writings during an age in which "of making books there is no end"; and to define the changes of opinion caused by the discoveries of science during times in which-more than at any

other period of the world's history-"many run to and fro, and knowledge is increased." Such a book, written by a student of competent wisdom and learning, and given to the world before the beginning of the year 1900, might be a very precious boon. But to so full an enquiry this paper must only be regarded as an infinitesimal contribution.

I

First, as to the most fundamental of all enquiries-Has the progress of science, or the widening of all sources of enquiry, weakened our sense of the existence of God? We are, I think, justified in meeting the question with a most decided negative. Judging by all the data open to us, we may safely assert that Infidelity has not increased. It is much less prevalent than it seems to have been in the days of the French Revolution; nor have we in modern society any phenomenon which resembles the state of things in the eighteenth century, when we are told that "wits" and men of the world openly repudiated all religion, and when, as Bishop Butler tells us at the beginning of his "Analogy," the essential truths of Christianity were often scoffed at as though they were exploded absurdities not worth discussion. "It is come," he says, "I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much as a subject of enquiry, but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly, they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule." No one would say that such broad and coarse infidelity is now at all common. It is sometimes supposed that there are many infidels among our working men. I can only say that when I was the Rector of a London Parish, and was familiar with the condition of a large number of working men of various grades, I found many who were addicted to drink, and many who rarely if ever set foot inside a church, but I cannot recall even one of them who had the smallest leaning towards infidel opinions.

Infidelity is sometimes confused with Agnosticism, but they

are wide as the poles asunder. "Agnosticism" is a word of recent birth. It has as yet hardly found its way into our dictionaries. It does not occur either in Latham's edition of Johnson's Dictionary, or in Littré's French Dictionary.1 It was, I believe, first suggested by the late Professor Huxley in a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1869. But as one who had the privilege of knowing Professor Huxley for many years, and of frequently meeting him, I can say that, so far from being an infidel, he was a man of a reverent and even of a religious mind. Never in his life did he, or Darwin, or Tyndall, dream of denying the existence of God. Their scientific enquiries had no doubt deepened in their minds the sense of the uncertainties of all human belief; the conviction that the limits of truth are vaster and more vague than is allowed for in many systems; the feeling that if the curtain which hangs between us and the unseen world be but "thin as a spider's web," it is yet "dense as midnight." But a reverent and limited Agnosticism is by no means an unmitigated evil. Even the ancient Jewish Rabbis, whom none can accuse of a spirit of incredulity, had the apothegm "Learn to say, I do not know." A sense of our human limitations may serve as a counterpoise to the easy familiarity which, as it has been said, talks of God as though He were a man in the next room," or writes scholastic folios of minute dogmatism which have about as much stability as a pyramid build upon its apex. "Agnosticism" may be no more than a strengthened conviction that "what we know is little, what we are ignorant of is immense." In the most solemn parts of Scripture we are warned of this truth. In Exodus we are told that "the people stood afar off," and only Moses "drew near into the thick darkness, where God was." 'Canst thou by searching find out God?" asks Zophar in the Book of Job.

Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?
It is as high as Heaven, what canst thou do?
Deeper than Sheol: what canst thou know?

"Verily thou art a God that hidest Thyself," says Isaiah. "How

It is fully handled in Dr. Murray's New English Dictionary. An Agnostic is one who holds "that God is unknown and unknowable."