Christianity and agnosticism - 1889 Author:Henry Wace Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. AGNOSTICISM. A REPLY TO PROFESSOR HUXLEY. Bit W. C. MAGEE, BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH. I Should be wanting in the respect which I sincerely entertai... more »n for Prof. Huxley if I were not to answer his " appeal" to me in the last number of this review for my opinion on a point in controversy between him and Dr. Wace. Prof. Huxley asks me, " in the name of all that is Hibernian, why a man should be expected to call himself a miscreant or an infidel " ? I might reply to this after the alleged fashion of my countrymen by asking him another question, namely—When or where did I ever say that I expected him to call himself by either of these names ? I can not remember having said anything that even remotely implied this, and I do not therefore exactly see why he should appeal to my confused " Hibernian " judgment to decide such a question. As he has done so, however, I reply that I think it unreasonable to expect a man to call himself anything unless and until good and sufficient reason has been given him why he should do so. We are all of us bad judges as to what we are and as to what we should therefore be called. s Other persons classify us according to what theyknow, or think they know, of our characters or opinions, sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly. And were I to find myself apparently incorrectly classified, as I very often do, I should be quite content with asking the person who had so classified me, first to define his terms, and next to show that these, as defined, were correctly applied to me. If he succeeded in doing this, I should accept his designation of me without hesitation, inasmuch as I should be sorry to call myself by a false name. In this case, accordingly, if I might venture a suggestion to Prof. Huxley, it would be that the term " infidel" is...« less