nce, I was, and am, minded to go straight on, until I either
come out on the other side of the wood, or find there is no other
side to it, at least, none attainable by me.

This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a place
among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists,
long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical
Society. Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was
represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of
my colleagues were _-ists_ of one sort or another; and, however kind
and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to
cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings
which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap
in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally
elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived
to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as
suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who
professed to know so much about the very things of which I was
ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our
Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To my
great satisfaction, the term took; and when the _Spectator_ had stood
godfather to it, any suspicion in the minds of respectable people,
that a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened was, of course,
completely lulled.

That is the history of the origin of the terms "agnostic" and
"agnosticism"; and it will be 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.[62]

* * * * *

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 wh