en of high character and
gracious personality? All this may be very readily admitted; but all
this has not an atom of bearing upon the matter in hand. The question
really is not whether certain avowed agnostics are not as good men as
certain professing Christians; but whether the moral excellences of the
good agnostic are the _product_, the fruit, of agnosticism, in the same
sense in which the virtues of the Christian are the _product_ of
Christianity. The answer to that question must be unhesitatingly in
the negative. There is no disputing the historical fact that the force
which has been most potent in building up our Western civilisation is
none other than Christianity; the ethics which have shaped and guided
right conduct through all these centuries are Christian ethics. Think
as we will about dogma, few will feel competent to contest Lecky's
verdict, when the historian of Rationalism and of European Morals
declares that Christianity "has been the main source of moral
development in Europe"; we know what this religion has done, because
its actual record is open to inspection. To quote Lecky again,
"Christianity has produced more heroic actions and formed more upright
men than any other creed." Now Agnosticism has not created its own
moral system; agnostic morality at its {178} highest has so far grown
in Christian soil, and to say that the flower will continue to grow in
quite a different soil is to make a very bold and very hazardous
prophecy. In the West we have never had anything like an agnostic
civilisation, which would allow us to test the effects of non-belief
upon conduct on a large scale; in the East, it is true, Japan offers us
something like an agnostic civilisation, but those who are best
acquainted with that nation are least inclined to exalt her
performances in the domain of ethics. Japanese commercial morality is
notoriously low; while Japan's dealings with Korea have called forth
the unmeasured denunciations of European eyewitnesses. The material
advances and military exploits of this virtually agnostic nation must
not blind us to other and less admirable features; it would, indeed,
seem that this highly-gifted race, while frantically eager to "gain the
whole world," has not yet discovered its own soul, and the familiar
question, "What shall it profit?" inevitably suggests itself.

But not only has Agnosticism so far not grown its own morality; there
is yet another consideration which leads