ng by the fire, a great cloud came over
me and a temptation beset me; and I sate still. And it was said, _All
things come by Nature_. And the elements and stars came over me; so that
I was in a manner quite clouded with it.... And as I sate still under
it, and let it alone, a living hope arose in me and a true voice arose
in me which said, _There is a living God who made all things_. And
immediately the cloud and the temptation vanished away, and life rose
over it all, and my heart was glad and I praised the living God" (p.
13).

If George Fox could speak, as he proves in this and some other passages
he could write, his astounding influence on the contemporaries of Milton
and of Cromwell is no mystery. But this modern reproduction of the
ancient prophet, with his "Thus saith the Lord," "This is the work of
the Lord," steeped in supernaturalism and glorying in blind faith, is
the mental antipodes of the philosopher, founded in naturalism and a
fanatic for evidence, to whom these affirmations inevitably suggest the
previous question: "How do you know that the Lord saith it?" "How do you
know that the Lord doeth it?" and who is compelled to demand that
rational ground for belief, without which, to the man of science, assent
is merely an immoral pretence.

And it is this rational ground of belief which the writers of the
Gospels, no less than Paul, and Eginhard, and Fox, so little dream of
offering that they would regard the demand for it as a kind of
blasphemy.

AGNOSTICISM

[1889]

Within the last few months [1889] the public has received much and
varied information on the subject of Agnostics, their tenets, and even
their future. Agnosticism exercised the orators of the Church Congress
at Manchester.[28] It has been furnished with a set of "articles,"
fewer, but not less rigid, and certainly not less consistent than the
thirty-nine; its nature has been analysed, and its future severely
predicted by the most eloquent of that prophetical school whose Samuel
is Auguste Comte. It may still be a question, however, whether the
public is as much the wiser as might be expected, considering all the
trouble that has been taken to enlighten it. Not only are the three
accounts of the agnostic position sadly out of harmony with one another,
but I propose to show cause for my belief that all three must be
seriously questioned by any one who employs the term "agnostic" in the
sense in which it was originally used. The le