observed that it does not quite agree with
the confident assertion of the reverend Principal of King's College,
that "the adoption of the term agnostic is only an attempt to shift the
issue, and that it involves a mere evasion" in relation to the Church
and Christianity.[39]

* * * * *

The last objection (I rejoice as much as my readers must do, that it is
the last) which I have to take to Dr. Wace's deliverance before the
Church Congress arises, I am sorry to say, on a question of morality.

"It is, and it ought to be," authoritatively declares this official
representative of Christian ethics, "an unpleasant thing for a man to
have to say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ" (_l.c._ p.
254).

Whether it is so depends, I imagine, a good deal on whether the man was
brought up in a Christian household or not. I do not see why it should
be "unpleasant" for a Mahommedan or Buddhist to say so. But that "it
ought to be" unpleasant for any man to say anything which he sincerely,
and after due deliberation, believes, is, to my mind, a proposition of
the most profoundly immoral character. I verily believe that the great
good which has been effected in the world by Christianity has been
largely counteracted by the pestilent doctrine on which all the Churches
have insisted, that honest disbelief in their more or less astonishing
creeds is a moral offence, indeed a sin of the deepest dye, deserving
and involving the same future retribution as murder and robbery. If we
could only see, in one view, the torrents of hypocrisy and cruelty, the
lies, the slaughter, the violations of every obligation of humanity,
which have flowed from this source along the course of the history of
Christian nations, our worst imaginations of Hell would pale beside the
vision.

A thousand times, no! It ought _not_ to be unpleasant to say that which
one honestly believes or disbelieves. That it so constantly is painful
to do so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of mankind in that
most valuable of all qualities, honesty of word or of deed, without
erecting a sad concomitant of human weakness into something to be
admired and cherished. The bravest of soldiers often, and very
naturally, "feel it unpleasant" to go into action; but a court-martial
which did its duty would make short work of the officer who promulgated
the doctrine that his men _ought_ to feel their duty unpleasant.

I am very well awar