he agnostic stops his ears that
no voice of cheer may be heard. The whole philosophy of Buddhism and of
modern agnosticism is pessimistic. The word and Spirit of God do not
deny the sad facts of human life in a world of sin, but they enable the
Christian to triumph over them, and even to rejoice in tribulation.

7. And this leads to one more common feature of all false systems, their
fatalism. Among the exaggerated claims which are made for heathen
religions in our day, it is alleged that they rest upon a more humane
philosophy than appears in the grim fatalism of our Christian theology,
especially that of the Calvinistic type. Without entering upon any
defence of Christian doctrines of one type or another, it would be easy
to show that fatalism, complete and unmitigated, is at the foundation of
all Oriental religion and philosophy, all ancient or modern pantheism,
and most of the various types of agnosticism. While this has been the
point at which all infidel systems have assailed the Christian faith, it
has nevertheless been the goal which they have all reached by their own
speculations. They have differed from Christianity in that their
predestinating, determining force, instead of being qualified by any
play of free-will, or any feasible plan of ultimate and superabounding
good, has been a real fatalism, changeless, hopeless, remorseless. That
the distaff of the Fates, and the ruthless sceptre of the Erinnys,
entered in full force into all the religions of the Greeks and Romans,
scarcely needs to be affirmed. They controlled all human affairs, and
even the gods were subject to them. The Sagas of the Northmen also were
full of fatalism, and that principle still survives in the folk-lore and
common superstitions of all Scandinavian, Teutonic, and Celtic races.

The fatalism of the Hindus is plainly stated in the "Code of Manu,"
which declares that, "in order to distinguish actions, he (the creator)
separated merit from demerit. To whatever course of action the Lord
appointed each kind of being, that alone it has spontaneously adopted in
each succeeding creation. Whatever he has assigned to each at the first
creation, noxiousness or harmlessness, gentleness or ferocity, virtue or
sin, truth or falsehood, that clings to it."[196] The same doctrine is
put in still more offensive form when it is declared that "Manu (here
used in the sense of creator) allotted to woman a love of her bed, of
her seat, of ornament, also impu