trial, they are admirable. Perhaps the best of the essays are those on "The Gorge of the Niagara," "Alaska," "The Catskill Mountains," "Coal," and "The Tulip-Tree." As the club grows older, the thought of its members will no doubt be more concentrated upon objects within their immediate field of observation, and these will become the subjects of exposition at the winter meetings. It would be well, indeed, if members would take up lines of observation to be pursued during the summer, with special reference to their discussion at the winter gatherings of the club. By taking notes and reading up on the subject chosen, and doing the literary part at convenient intervals, the work would be deliberately and carefully done, and, while the student carried on his own self-instruction, the club would be a gainer by improving the standard of its winter performances.
AGNOSTICTSM AT HARVARD.
The students of Harvard University have been canvassed to ascertain their religious opinions. It has been suspected that this institution, so long the headquarters of Unitarian liberalism, has become pervaded by atheism and agnosticism. But it is now found that the believers in these doctrines are virtually nowhere in this great establishment, and that in fact it is drifting away from rationalistic Unitarianism in the direction of pronounced orthodoxy.
There is a great propensity in this country to count up and see who is ahead. Next to the prime national question, "How many dollars?" the American soul yearns to know "How many votes?" Wherever two or three are gathered together, just before election, they are sure to count noses on the nominations. That there should also be a curiosity to know who is losing, who is gaining, and who leads, in the sphere of religious rivalry, is not surprising, for with our people, next after money-getting and politics, sectarian concernments have the most urgent claims. So the Harvard students were questioned as to their spiritual preferences, with the following results: "College and Law School, 972 men; agnostics, 26; atheists, 7; Baptists, 42; Chinese, 1; Christians, 2; Dutch Reformers, 2; Episcopalians, 275; Hebrews, 10; Lutheran,1; Methodists, 16; nonsectarian, 97; orthodox Congregational, 173; Presbyterians, 27; Quakers, 2; Roman Catholics, 33; Swedenborgians, 20; Unitarians, 214; Universalists, 18; not seen, 6." There has been a great deal of comment and no little congratulation on these unexpected results, but there is one aspect of the matter that we have not seen noticed.
From the point of view of agnosticism there are but two parties in the college, the 26 adherents to that view, and the 940 who do not accept it. The agnostic ground is that religion, in so far as it is supernatural, transcends human intelligence, so that man can really know nothing beyond the phenomenal and the finite. He may imagine much, and believe much, and fancy that he knows, but strictly tested it turns out that his conjectures are not knowledge in the true and proper sense. The position of the agnostic, in short, in regard to other worlds or spheres of existence beyond time, space, and the course of nature, is briefly this: "I know nothing and you know nothing, we neither of us can know anything, and we had better modestly confine our thoughts to the universe which we can know."
Now, as there are only 26 that take this ground, it is only fair to suppose that the other 940 take other and opposite ground; that is, they claim to know in regard to the religious matters of which they profess belief—claim, indeed, that their religious knowledge is the most clear and certain of all their knowledge.
The Harvard agnostic replies: "The condition and course of things in our
