ost plain of the aphorisms of Jesus, that "Except a man be
born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." But this stern doctrine of
the spiritual deadness of humanity is no mere dogma of a past theology.
The history of thought during the present century proves that the world
has come round spontaneously to the position of the first. One of the
ablest philosophical schools of the day erects a whole antichristian
system on this very doctrine. Seeking by means of it to sap the
foundation of spiritual religion, it stands unconsciously as the most
significant witness for its truth. What is the creed of the Agnostic,
but the confession of the spiritual numbness of humanity? The negative
doctrine which it reiterates with such sad persistency, what is it but
the echo of the oldest of scientific and religious truths? And what are
all these gloomy and rebellious infidelities, these touching, and too
sincere confessions of universal nescience, but a protest against this
ancient law of Death?

The Christian apologist never further misses the mark than when he
refuses the testimony of the Agnostic to himself. When the Agnostic
tells me he is blind and deaf, dumb, torpid and dead to the spiritual
world, I must believe him. Jesus tells me that. Paul tells me that.
Science tells me that. He knows nothing of this outermost circle; and we
are compelled to trust his sincerity as readily when he deplores it as
if, being a man without an ear, he professed to know nothing of a
musical world, or being without taste, of a world of art. The nescience
of the Agnostic philosophy is the proof from experience that to be
carnally minded is Death. Let the theological value of the concession be
duly recognized. It brings no solace to the unspiritual man to be told
he is mistaken. To say he is self-deceived is neither to compliment him
nor Christianity. He builds in all sincerity who raises his altar to the
_Unknown_ God. He does not know God. With all his marvelous and complex
correspondences, he is still one correspondence short.

It is a point worthy of special note that the proclamation of this truth
has always come from science rather than from religion. Its general
acceptance by thinkers is based upon the universal failure of a
universal experiment. The statement, therefore, that the natural man
discerneth not the things of the spirit, is never to be charged against
the intolerance of theology. There is no point at which theology has
been more m