three elements—belief, worship, conduct. A religion which gives us nothing in particular to believe, nothing as an object of awe and gratitude, which has no special relation to human duty, is not a religion at all.

He goes on to show how the religion of the Unknowable, as he calls it (Mr. Spencer does not use the expression), fulfils none of these conditions, whereas Positivism fulfils them all.

Mr. Harrison has made us all so familiar with the leading doctrines of his creed that I need not here restate them, but may proceed at once to repeat, perhaps for the fiftieth time, the reasons which seem to show that it is open to every objection which he so justly brings against what he regards as Mr. Spencer's creed. These reasons are broad, common, and familiar. So far as I know they never have been, and I do not believe they ever will be, answered.

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The first objection is that Humanity with a capital H (Mr. Harrison's God) is neither better nor worse fitted to be a god than the Unknowable with a capital U. They are as much alike as six and half-a-dozen. Each is a barren abstraction to which anyone can attach any meaning he likes. Humanity as used by Mr. Harrison is not an abstract name for those matters in which all human beings as such resemble each other; as, for instance, a human form and articulate speech. If this were the meaning of the word, it would at the very best be no more than a correct definition, or, to use Mr. Harrison's own words about the Unknowable, it may be a formula, a generalisation, a logical postulate; but it is not' (i.e. it cannot properly be made the foundation of) a religion.' He uses the word apparently in a narrower sense, though he does not specially define it in the article under consideration; nor can I quote a precise definition from other writings of his, but it is something of this sort. Humanity is a general name for all human beings who in various ways have contributed to the improvement of the human race. The Positivist Calendar, which appropriates every day in the year for the commemoration of one or more of these benefactors of mankind, is an attempt to give what a lawyer would call further and better particulars' of the word. If this or anything like this be the meaning of Mr. Harrison's God, I must say that he, she, or it, appears to me quite as ill-fitted for worship as the Unknowable. How can a man worship an indefinite number of dead people, most of whom are unknown to him even by name, and many of whose characters were exceedingly faulty, besides which the facts as to their lives are most imperfectly known? How can he in any way combine these people into a single object of thought? An object of worship must surely have such a degree of unity that it is possible to think about it as distinct from other things, as much unity at least as the English nation, the Roman Catholic Church, the Great Western Railway. No doubt these are abstract terms, but they are concrete enough for practical purposes. Everyone understands what is meant when it

is asserted that the English nation is at war or at peace; that the Pope is the head of the Roman Catholic Church; that the Great Western Railway have declared a dividend: but what is Humanity? What can anyone definitely assert or deny about it? How can any one meaning be affixed to the word so that one person can be said to use it properly and another to abuse it? It seems to me that it is as 'unknowable' as the Unknowable itself, and just as well and just as ill fitted to be an object of worship.

Again, a religion in Mr. Harrison's view implies a power towards which we can feel awe and gratitude.' How can we feel either towards an unascertained multitude of people, most of whom are utterly unknown to us even by name or reputation, and all of whom are, according to Mr. Harrison, dead and done with. Most of them indeed are utterly forgotten, and when they were alive. thought as little and cared as little about us as we now do about them. Further than this, how in practice can anyone feel either awe or gratitude in the proper sense of those words, the only sense in which they can have much effect upon our conduct, towards anyone but a person supposed to be living and conscious, and to be capable of actual knowledge of and sympathy with us? The principal sting of death is that it terminates all human relations whatever, and converts what were real living sentiments into mere recollections. The great point of the doctrine of a future state is that it converts death into temporary separation, and permits the living to think of the dead as beings towards whom they may still feel as they did, and whom they may expect to meet again in some human or quasi-human form. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Harrison, as I understand them, regard this belief as a dream founded on nothing; though Mr. Harrison on occasion employs much eloquence to show that the belief that a dead man is absolutely dead, and has no longer and never will have again any individual conscious existence at all, need make no difference in our feelings towards him: an attempt in which he appears to me to be about as successful as if he argued to show that to lose one's eyes did not affect one's sight.

I do not mean to say anything on this view of death, except that it appears to me to be an inevitable consequence that Mr. Harrison's language about awe and gratitude to humanity represents nothing at all, except a yearning after some object of affection, like a childless woman's love for a lapdog. Not to heap up illustrations, take at once the greatest of all. Jesus Christ has been for many centuries the object of passionate devotion and enthusiasm to large numbers of persons, of all times and countries. Is there any one single authentic instance of any person having entertained those feelings in a genuine simple way who was at the same time firmly convinced that he was merely a dead man, who no longer had any existence anywhere except in the imagination of

those who think of him? It may be said that the belief that Christ rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, whence he will come again to judge the quick and the dead, is the effect, or, so to speak, the expression of the awe and gratitude with which his disciples regarded him. Be it so, but surely this proves that the belief and the sentiment are essential to each other, and that if Jesus Christ had not been conceived of as a being actually living, and capable in some mysterious way of communicating with his disciples, if he had been looked upon from the time of his crucifixion downwards simply as a dead man, who had preached for a few years in Judæa, there would now be neither Christianity nor Christians, nor would his name have excited either awe, gratitude, or any other feeling of the sort.

Of course, isolated people here and there may be found to worship anything, but I think that, exceptions excepted, Humanity is and will for ever continue to be to mankind at large just as poor a shadow of a God as the Unknowable. There is nothing really to choose between two words, one of which incorrectly expresses a universal negation, while the other is so hopelessly vague that it can hardly have the same meaning for any two different people.

But if Mr. Harrison's religion presents to the mind no object of worship, has it the smallest prospect of being able to govern men and societies'? One, perhaps the great, standing difficulty of all religions is that the great mass of men do not really like and do not really want them. They must be compelled to come in. Neither Mahommedanism nor Christianity attained its present position in the world without exhausting all the resources both of persuasion and of force, military, moral, and spiritual. European Christianity was established by the joint operation of all the terrors of this world. and the next, and, now that it has been established for centuries, the vast majority of mankind are and are reproached by the rest for being but nominal Christians, with a lukewarm affection for their nominal. creed, and a practical standard of morals and conduct falling far short of its requirements. What will Positivism do with the vast mass of indifferent and worldly people? It can neither hang them nor damn them. How, then, can it hope to govern them, which Mr. Harrison tells us is one of the functions essential to a religion which deserves the name. The Unknowable is certainly singularly ill-adapted for the functions of government, but Mr. Spencer never proposed to govern mankind by it. Mr. Harrison does propose to govern. How does he mean to set about it? and in particular what will he do with the indifferent and worldly-minded? They are a numerous body. 'I can understand,' said one of the body, 'the sheep on the right and the goats on the left, but where are the alpacas to be?' Mr. Harrison's religion does not even provide a sheep-dog to bark at them, but practically all mankind are alpacas as against his religion of Humanity. These

questions have been pressed on Mr. Harrison many times. I do not think he can answer any of them,

Assume that Mr. Herbert Spencer's really important conclusion is the negative one, that all that has hitherto been called religion is destined to die out, and that his abstractions about the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which we proceed, and in whose presence we are, are merely unmeaning, and that Mr. Harrison's religion of Humanity is of exactly the same value, what follows? The inference is that their speculations are opposed, not merely to theology which is admitted, but to religion in Mr. Harrison's sense of the word, and this is a conclusion of great importance and interest, though it has a very different bearing upon the theories of the two writers in question.

Mr. Spencer does not seem to attach much practical importance to the meagre residuum of religion which he considers will survive the absolute destruction of all theology. If he is right, all that will happen apparently will be that a certain number of persons who combine fondness for abstract speculation with a slight tinge of mysticism will find some satisfaction in thinking about the Infinite and Eternal Energy in whose presence they consider themselves to be. The part of his theory which will influence the conduct of mankind is in no way affected by this. His political and ethical speculations rest upon a basis of their own, independent not only of theology but of any sort of semi-mystical theory which may survive it, and to a small extent, and in a few cases, take its place in part or in whole. In other words, his view as to the prospects of religion is an unimportant part of his general system, and may be true or false without much affecting it.

With Mr. Harrison it is entirely different. Religion is in his view the highest and most important of all things, the crown and soul of all ethical and social speculation, without which such speculation. will, at all events as far as the great mass of mankind are concerned, remain comparatively inert. He would quote in confirmation of his view the history of all great religions, and especially the history of all forms of the Christian religion, as compared with the history of moral, social, and political theories, and he would ask with great plausibility, to say the least, whether any instance can be given in which mere moral theory has by itself produced any great changes, or indeed been brought to bear upon mankind at all to much purpose except in connection with some form or other of religion? He would then go on to argue (I do not affect to quote him, but merely to state. the general effect which his various writings for many years past have left upon my mind) that theology having been exploded is no longer capable of producing such effects if it ever did so, and that it is the office of philosophy or science, by whatever name it is called, to discover the true foundations of a new religion, and to erect upon VOL. XV.-No. 88.

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them an edifice which shall discharge the functions of the old

ones.

A great deal of this appears to me, to say the least, extremely plausible and even probable, though no one really possesses the knowledge necessary to form a complete and distinct opinion upon the subject. The changes which have taken place in the course of many ages in the moral and social principles and practices of mankind are so many and so intricate that it is extremely difficult to say what they have been, and even more difficult to say how they have been caused, and to what extent by religion as distinguished from many other causes; but, on the whole, I think it would be carrying scepticism too far to doubt that an habitual belief in a good God who exercises an influence over human life must be a most powerful motive to virtue, or that it has in fact played in various ways a great part in the government of mankind, even when it has not been coupled with a belief in a future state of conscious existence, and much more when it has.

Again, to deny that Christianity in its various forms has been, and still is, one of the greatest powers in the world, or to deny that its leading doctrines have in fact been associated in many ways with all that we commonly recognise as virtue, is like denying the agency of the sun in the physical world.

Assume that Christianity is to be destroyed, what prospect have Mr. Harrison and other like-minded persons of establishing a new religion which will do what was done by the old one? It appears to me that their attempts to do so are not only accidentally unsuccessful but essentially misconceived, and doomed to failure by the conditions under which they are undertaken. The old story of Talleyrand and the theophilanthropists puts the standing difficulty of all such creeds in a striking light. Gentlemen,' he said, after listening to an exposition of their creed, when Jesus Christ established a new religion he found it necessary to be crucified, dead, and buried, and to rise again the third day from the dead; go and do likewise, and your religion will be worth discussing.'

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This well-known anecdote puts into a few words what I believe to be a great truth, a truth which has been advanced by many people from different points of view, and which in these days is not recognised as it ought to be. It is that a religion capable of discharging the functions which Mr. Harrison rightly describes as those which are characteristic of a religion, the function of uniting and governing men, must be founded on a supernatural basis believed to be true. The same thing may be expressed by saying that theology is essential to religion, and that to destroy the one is to destroy the other. If this is true, it necessarily follows that if Mr. Harrison and Mr. Spencer are right in the opinion that any supernatural basis for religion is unattainable, their doctrines tend to the absolute destruc