Perhaps the moral vitality of our age is in no way better exemplified than by the fact that certain doubts, which seem to strike mortal blows at the head and heart of human virtue, yet leave it breathing, and even pulsating with aspirations after some yet loftier excellence than saints and heroes have hitherto attained. To look back to the “infidels” with whom Massillon and Jeremy Taylor had to do, and compare them with the Agnostics of our time, is indeed more encouraging than to compare the “faithful” of past centuries with those of the present age. While the old Atheist sheltered his vice behind a rampart of unbelief where no appeals could reach him, the new Agnostic honestly maintains that his opinions are the very best foundations of virtue. No one can for a moment say of him that he chooses darkness rather than light _because_ his deeds are evil. If it be (as we think) darkness which he has chosen, there can be no question that his deeds are good, and that his conceptions of duty are truly elevated and far-reaching, and enforced by every argument which he has left himself at liberty to use. Renouncing faith in God and in the life hereafter,--that is to say, in _Goodness Infinite_ and _Goodness Immortalized_,--he retains the most fervent faith in goodness as developed in human life,--that is to say, in _goodness finite_ in degree and in duration. If we are to accept his own statement of the case, the Agnostic has completely turned the front of the theological battle. It is now the pagans who have seized and hold aloft the sacred labarum of duty and self-sacrifice, and _in hoc signo_ are destined to victory. The claim is one of the gravest which can be put forth between man and man. It was not easy--it was, alas! often beyond our strength--to combat our doubts or those of others, while yet we fought against them as a sailor fights against enemies cutting his anchor cable on a stormy night. We stand amazed and disarmed by the strange intelligence that, when these doubts have done their work, and cast us adrift altogether from allegiance to God and hope of another life, _then_, when all seems lost, we shall suddenly discover that we have touched the Fortunate Isles of virtue and peace. Only the thorough sceptic, we are assured, can be the perfect saint. Nobody can disinterestedly serve his brother on earth till he is entirely persuaded he has no Father in heaven. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (of course it is always assumed that it _is_ a tree of genuine knowledge on which Atheism grows) is to be desired, not only because it will make us “wise,” but because it will make us _good_. Who will hesitate any more to pluck and eat?