arned Principal of King's
College, who brought the topic of Agnosticism before the Church
Congress, took a short and easy way of settling the business:--

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 the 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.[29]

So much of Dr. Wace's address either explicitly or implicitly concerns
me, that I take upon myself to deal with it; but, in doing so, it must
be understood that I speak for myself alone. I am not aware that there
is any sect of Agnostics; and if there be, I am not its acknowledged
prophet or pope. I desire to leave to the Comtists the entire monopoly
of the manufacture of imitation ecclesiasticism.

Let us calmly and dispassionately consider Dr. Wace's appreciation of
agnosticism. The agnostic, according to his view, is a person who says
he has no means of attaining a scientific knowledge of the unseen world
or of the future; by which somewhat loose phraseology Dr. Wace
presumably means the theological unseen world and future. I cannot think
this description happy, either in form or substance; but for the present
it may pass. Dr. Wace continues that is not "his difference from
Christians." Are there then any Christians who say that they know
nothing about the unseen world and the future? I was ignorant of the
fact, but I am ready to accept it on the authority of a professional
theologian, and I proceed to Dr. Wace's next proposition.

The real state of the case, then, is that the agnostic "does not believe
the authority" on which "these things" are stated, which authority is
Jesus Christ. He is simply an old-fashioned "infidel" who is afraid to
own to his right name. As "presbyter is priest writ large," so is
"agnostic" the mere Greek equivalent for the Latin "infidel." There is
an attractive simplicity about this solution of t