generation it must henceforth become more and more recognized by
logical thinking, that all antecedent objections to Christianity founded
on reason alone are _ipso facto_ nugatory. Now, all the strongest
objections to Christianity have ever been those of the antecedent kind;
hence the effect of modern thinking is that of more and more diminishing
the purely speculative difficulties, such as that of the Incarnation,
&c. In other words the force of Butler's argument about our being
incompetent judges[72] is being more and more increased.

And the logical development of this lies in the view already stated
about natural causation. For, just as pure agnosticism must allow that
reason is incompetent to adjudicate _a priori_ for or against Christian
miracles, including the Incarnation, so it must further allow that, if
they ever took place, reason can have nothing to say against their being
all of one piece with causation in general. Hence, so far as reason is
concerned, pure agnosticism must allow that it is only the event which
can ultimately prove whether Christianity is true or false. 'If it be of
God we cannot overthrow it, lest haply we be found even to fight against
God.' But the individual cannot wait for this empirical determination.
What then is he to do? The unbiassed answer of pure agnosticism ought
reasonably to be, in the words of John Hunter, 'Do not think; try.' That
is, in this case, try the only experiment available--the experiment of
faith. Do the doctrine, and if Christianity be true, the verification
will come, not indeed mediately through any course of speculative
reason, but immediately by spiritual intuition. Only if a man has faith
enough to make this venture honestly, will he be in a just position for
deciding the issue. Thus viewed it would seem that the experiment of
faith is not a 'fool's experiment'; but, on the contrary, so that there
is enough _prima facie_ evidence to arrest serious attention, such an
experimental trial would seem to be the rational duty of a pure