us to listen with a certain
measure of scepticism to the assurances of those who say that right
conduct will survive though religion be surrendered. It has perhaps
not been generally observed that just as the virtuous agnostic is
generally the child of Christian parents, so by a seeming irony he is
{179} often found to be the father of Christian children: there is
hardly a genuine case on record where "free-thought," Agnosticism,
Rationalism, has descended from parents to children to the third or
fourth generation without a break, and the practical non-existence of
such cases proves something of real and great importance. It has been
said that pure-bred Londoners die out in three generations at most,
unless new blood from the country is brought in to replenish their
failing vital power. If unbelief shows the same incapacity to
propagate itself by natural descent--if the descendants of unbelievers
show a marked tendency to "revert to type," _i.e._, to religion--such a
fact suggests only one adequate explanation, _viz._, the instinct of
self-preservation, a return to the soil which made the growth of the
flower possible. The virtues of the agnostic may be not unfairly
compared to cut flowers, which may continue to shed their perfume for
awhile, but are bound to fade before long. Our agnostic ethicists,
being themselves the products of a Christian civilisation, may commend,
approve and practise--they may _wear_ the Christian virtues; that those
virtues will bear transplanting into an agnostic soil and flourish in
an agnostic climate is a highly dubious proposition. We can only say
that available experience seems to be against it. The Christian
morality implies the Christian religion which has created it; as for
the {180} high-minded, altruistic individual agnostic, he must simply
be pronounced a credit to Christianity.

We say "the high-minded _individual_ agnostic," because candour compels
us to go on to state that generally speaking those who have thrown
religion to the winds hardly strike one as standing on a particularly
high ethical level. One can only go by facts; and the facts are that
the frequenters of the betting-ring, the dram-shop, the light-minded,
pleasure-seeking throng that flutters from amusement to amusement
without any interest in life's serious duties--these are hardly drawn
from the Church-going strata of society. Religion says "no" to this
whole mode of life; and unbelief is most frequently,