and known to be real, though less vividly | accoutred after the fashion of Richard felt at the moment than the dream he Cœur de Lion, would find his costume knows to be false. Positivist worship is and weapons of little use against Krupp here again the clothes without the essence. guns or mitrailleuse. And a man who, The essence of the religious prayer and inspired by St. Bernard's moral greatness, meditation is that the imaginative effort attempted to imitate it, without religious and aspiration are felt to be a process of faith himself, and in a world without faith, reaching out towards realities, and it is would soon find that all motive for conprecisely this that Positivism drops out of sistent action of this nature was dissolved. its worship. The effort of imagination, He would find the type old-fashioned and the aspiration, the communing with other quite unable to resist the onslaught of a minds in spirit, are preserved, but the ob- belief which destroys the essential and jects are all unreal. The religious medi- central motive for moral heroism. Here tation aims at the fullest sense of reality; then, again, in the domain of conduct, we the Positivist attains to perfection only have the conception left and the reality in the illusions of the mad-house. Reli- gone. We can still admire the beauty of gion says to him who is in trial, "Your self-devotion, but, as a practical reality, it trial is but a dream compared with the is impossible. Once more the clothes happy reality which exists for God's ser- without the substance. Clothes in every vants." Positivism says, "Your trial may case. Phrases, emotions, ideas are kept; be sad, but don't think of it; live in dream- the essence of religion is gone. Surely if land." It is the remedy of one who takes it is to be war to the knife between the to drink that he may forget the trials of philosophers and the old religion — if, inlife; and let him who thinks that constant deed, they think they have killed it-it dram-drinking, and its consequent illu- would be more becoming in them to bury sions, can give substantial comfort and it clothes and all, and give forth a sigh make an unhappy life happy, rest content over its grave, as Schopenhauer did, than with the Positivist clothes of religion, to keep its clothes as perquisites whereand declare them to be as good as the with to array their own children. reality they profess to replace.* former is, at all events, the ordinary procedure of civilized warfare; the latter is rather suggestive of the public execu tioner.

And, finally, the effects of any general acceptance of Positivism on moral conduct and moral progress would be the natural consequence of the nature of its belief and worship. A man may indulge in the pleasures of day-dreaming, but none, save a madman, will act on a dream as though it were truth. The goal of physical progress is in sight, and the motive for scientific labors is untouched by Positivism. But the goal both of moral conduct for the individual, and moral progress for the race, is in the world of spirits; and if that world be only a dream no motive is left for the self-denial involved in the pursuit of virtue. The moral hero must become, as soon as human nature bas completely adjusted itself to this new creed, an ideal conception belonging to the past - noble to think on as the hero of chivalry is, with his armor, his battle axe, and his lance in rest; but not to be imitated, because he is not adapted to the intellectual conditions of the age. A man who went to the Franco-German war,

It will, I hope, be understood that I am speaking of the effects of religion in this life-of its practical working on earth. The "need for religion," which Positivism professes to supply, is of course a need here. Of the life hereafter it is obviously irrelevant to speak, except so far as the hope for it is an important element in the working of religion here. And it has been

alluded to so far and no further in the text.

The

But I have already dwelt too long upon the claim of the Positivist scheme to the title of "religion." It only needs that we should look closely at its features, and remain for a short time in its company, that we may find out how grotesquely unlike it is to all that mankind has hitherto meant by the term, and how completely it must fail of all practical helpfulness. The danger is that it may pass without close observation, and may sustain its claim by means of the clothing it has borrowed. If we hold intercourse with it, and listen to its voice, we become speedily convinced that it is not the voice of religion. Readers of Æsop's fables will remember that a certain animal once tried to pass himself off as a lion by putting on the lion's skin; but his voice betrayed him. I do not mean to imply that the voice of Positivism is the voice of the ass, but it certainly is not that of the lion. All that remains now is to point, as shortly as may be, the moral to be drawn from what has preceded.

The two essays of which I have spoken are perfectly agreed as to one thing. that the central features of the old theolgy are effete; that a Providence ruling the destiny of the world, who watches

resent humanity as being as many-sided and rich in sympathy as you please, without winning for it the smallest real adoration. Man can adore only that which he can trust and love; and he cannot trust and love either a totally unexplored power, or a power which has been so well ex

more advanced proficient in this kind of monomania when he rests his exposure of Mr. Spencer on the strength of his own private certainty that the true object of worship, instead of being the Unknowable, with a capital U, is Humanity, with a capital H. For the witty illustration of this conflict of monomania with mono-plored as to exhibit not only strength and mania which Mr. Wilfrid Ward gives us, we will refer to the pages of the National Review itself, and only add here that by those who read the article the worship of the unknowable and the worship of humanity are likely to be connected as long as they live with the melancholy humors of a lunatic asylum.

There is more to be said, however, on the definite subject of Mr. Wilfrid Ward's article, namely, what he calls "the clothes of religion," by which he means, as we understand him, the attributes with which we invest not religion, but the object of worship. We attribute to God infinity, eternity, absolute energy; we attribute to Christ sympathy, brotherhood, an ideal humanity; and all that we thus attribute to God and Christ are conditions of our worship; they belong to the object of worship as such; and if any attempt be made to separate them from a true object of worship, and to clothe with them that which cannot be an object of worship at all, that attempt fails, and we find those who make it descending into a foolish idolatry, dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous. What Mr. Ward maintains is that these true attributes of God and Christ are thus separated from any true object of worship when they are held up to us as the justification for awe-struck meditation over the mystery of the unknowable, or enthusiastic contemplation of the ideal of humanity. You cannot trust either the unknowable or humanity,

not the unknowable, because you know nothing about it; not humanity, because you know too much about it. And what you cannot trust, what you cannot pray to, what you cannot lean on, you may dress up in what attributes you please, but you cannot, by so dressing it up, make it the object of worship. The object of worship must be so far known as to inspire absolute trust, and therefore cannot be unknowable. The object of worship must be so far above humanity as to have conquered, as well as fathomed, its frailties, and therefore cannot be Humanity. Hence you may represent the unknowable as being as mysterious as you please, without winning for it the smallest real adoration; and you may rep

goodness, but weakness and wickedness of every kind. In vain, then, will you persuade man to worship either that which is pure invisibility, or that which is visible frailty, a compound of good and evil, of feebleness and vigor.

No love [says Mr. Ward] is too ardent for God, because he is all-good and all-loving; no awe too deep, because he is all-wise and allpowerful; no trust too absolute, because he never deserts them that put their trust in him. So too as to the sentiments proper to Christianity. The martyrs did not die for a feeling or an idea as such; they died because they be lieved Christ to be God, and that he bid them go through all torments rather than deny him. They believed him to exist, and that death would unite them to him whom they loved, joy, whose every word and action was their rule for whom they suffered, whose smile was their of life, and union with whom was the only perfect end of their being. "If Christ is not risen," said the Apostle, "then is your faith vain." The root of their devotion was belief in a real fact. Convince the would-be martyr that Christ is no longer in existence, is not approving his action, and will not welcome him after he has passed through the gates of death, and his love and devotion evaporate. The essence of the deepest feelings consists in their being aroused by a reality; and if that be taken away, the feelings themselves lose all meaning and dignity. The clothes of a handsome man are intended to set off the essential dignity of his appearance. Put them on a scarecrow, and be they never so rich and wellmade, their dignity is gone. Their dignity was part of his dignity. And so too religious senbelief-on belief in really existing objects to timents depend for their dignity on religious which they may be worthily applied. I say, then, that all these feelings, ideas, and emotions which are associated with religion are its fitting clothes, but that the essence of religion, the central figure which they adorn, is trust in real objects worthy of these things; and fur ther, that while these clothes are suitable to a belief in God and the supernatural - while they constitute the form in which supernatural belief comes before us in the greatest majesty and the greatest practical usefulness - they are the unknowable or the Positivist deity hu nothing less than grotesque when they array manity.

Now, we so absolutely and heartily agree with that, that we should be sorry to say a word indicating the slightest divergence

from its drift; but we think it almost | imposed on or rather detached from the necessary to Mr. Wilfrid Ward's true figure of our Lord. That which is a mere object to point out that the title which ideal robe, which you may unfold or fold he has chosen, and which expresses up at pleasure, when you come to apply it most admirably the artificial character to the lay figures of our modern philosoof Mr. Spencer's and Mr. Frederic Har-phy, is of the very essence of the object rison's attempts to idealize a laborious of worship; and you cannot by any viocreation of our own minds, is open to lence detach it from the true God of a good deal of misunderstanding, unless Christian faith. To take Mr. Ward's it be explained and insisted on that what own test. God could not be the object of are mere artificial draperies for "the Un- perfect trust if we did not find in him knowable" 66 or 'Humanity' are in no that eternity or absolute independence of way external to the true objects of wor- time and change, that infinity, or limitship, but of the very essence of God lessness of nature and resource, and that and Christ. Some of Mr. Ward's lan- absolute energy or power, which alone guage might perhaps mislead a careless justify trust. Christ could not be the reader into a contrary view. He talks of object of perfect trust, if he did not maniinfinity and eternity and power" as fest the love of God in all its eternity, "clothing the Deity." He suggests that infinity, and energy, and if he did not the saying of the Psalmist, "which was show us what man may become in power applied to other slayers of their God," may of brotherhood and in sacrifice when taken be said of the Agnostic and the Positivist, up into the nature of God. Attributes namely, Diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea which may be rightly spoken of as mere et super vestem meam miserunt sortem vestures when they are disposed in imag"They parted my garments amongst inative folds round abstract conceptions, them, and for my vesture they did cast are seen to be of the very essence of the lots." Such language might suggest that real objects of faith and worship. The in some sense those separable and artifi- mere artificial drapery of a false God, is cial attributes of the unknowable and of of the actual essence and spirit of the humanity by which Mr. Spencer and Mr. true God. Indeed, may we not say that Frederic Harrison try to subdue us into any quality with which we venture to inthe mood of worship, are also in some vest the unknowable must necessarily be degree separable, though not artificial, external to it, since it cannot be compreattributes of God and Christ himself, - hended in the idea of the unknowable; and that we could trust God without his eter- also that any quality which we impute to nity, infinity, and omnipotence; or that humanity must be more or less acciden⚫ we could love Christ without his sympa- tal, since experience shows that man as thy, brotherhood, and self-sacrifice. We such is a variable, inconstant, and feeble are perfectly aware that this is not in the creature, full of inconsistencies, mental least what Mr. Wilfrid Ward means, nor and moral; but that any attribute of God what his article, carefully read, will so must be of his very essence, or cannot much as admit of. But he has perhaps belong to him at all? There can be no hardly been careful enough to guard him- accident in God, nothing external to him self against the imputation of conveying which we can presume to liken to the that these true attributes of God and vesture of mortality. Even of the heavens Christ which are only imaginary vestures it is written, "They shall perish, but thou of the unknowable and of humanity, are shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax in the same sense external to the true old like a garment; as a vesture shalt objects of worship, in which they are ex- thou change them, and they shall be ternal to the false ones. Mere "clothes," changed: but thou art the same, and thy no doubt, eternity, infinity, and energy years shall have no end." Might we not are to the abstract idea of the unknow- say that all idolatries consist in the inves able. Mere "clothes," sympathy, broth-titure of lay figures with borrowed dra. erhood, and self-sacrifice are to the abstract idea of humanity. But infinity, eternity, and energy are in no sense vestures that can be superimposed on, or rather detached from the being of God. Sympathy, brotherhood, and self-sacrifice are in no sense vestures that can be super-ling fire" of the true Deity?

peries, but that it is the test of a true object of worship that there are about it no vestures, no separable accidents, that there can be no clothing or unclothing it, since everything which is temporary and perishable shrinks beneath the "consum.

She now lay motionless and unconA mile and a half of the highroad hav-scious before him. ing, however, brought no Lady Matilda "Matilda!" cried Challoner, raising her into view, and the gloom of the winter in his arms "Matilda! Oh, fool that afternoon deepening every minute, Chal- I was! I have killed her by my own act. loner had hesitated about proceeding, for No, she is breathing yet; she is but it had seemed unlikely that the riders stunned by the fall. There is no stone should not have been met by that time, she can have hit her head against," lookunless they had followed some other route.ing round. "There is nothing; and the Could they be returning by the downs?