The Positive Evolution of Religion

CHAPTER I

ORTHODOX CRITICISM

It may surprise not a few, but it is certainly true that on general principles, in spirit, and in aim, the points of contact are far greater between Positivism and Orthodox Christianity than between Positivism and any other phase of religious or non-religious thought. There is more sympathy, more of common ground, and a closer analogy.

The intellectual basis is widely different, the logic is opposed, and its judgment upon matters of fact is entirely recast. But since the spiritual feeling which inspires Positivism and Christianity is essentially the same, since the moral and the social end of both are practically the same, the antagonism is less than with phases of belief which aim at being anti-orthodox and hardly call themselves religion. We mean the same thing as the Churches mean. Christianity, in ideal at least, can still be spoken of as a religion. Stunted and pallid as it has become in the more advanced modern societies, it is still strong enough to inspire some nobly religious lives; and it maintains yet great religious institutions, forces, and habits. Even in our public life, where its influence is least pure and least efficient, it maintains the spirit of charity, compassion, and loyalty.

And in personal and in domestic life, its influence is far more potent and of a higher order. It does comfort spirits in anguish; it does control passion; it does keep alive in millions of homes and in tens of millions of hearts, the flame of tenderness, purity, and self-sacrifice. Can this be said of any of the philosophies, of any of the socialisms, or of any of the secularisms? Their aim is to clear thought, to redress wrongs, or to abolish superstition: they do not pretend to purify, direct, inspire life. Christianity does: ethical religion does: Positivism does.

The religion of Humanity stands on the same ground as the religion of Christ-springs out of the same sources, works toward the same ends. It occupies the same ground, but not the same ground alone. Their bases do not coincide, though the base of the one covers that of the other. The conception of Humanity covers a ground far wider than even the Catholic Church or any Gospel Church ever covered in the zenith of their power. For it covers the whole field of Science, of Economics, of Politics, of Art, even of daily intercourse. It covers the whole range of human happiness, power, well-being, and enjoyment of life. It does not crush out earth in order to win Heaven, nor starve our life in the body for the sake of a life in Paradise. But it seeks to bring Heaven nearer to earth, and to win a Crown of Glory for the life which we know and see. The salvation of Man is the end common to both these forms of religion, as it must be to any religion.

Most of us who advocate this cause have come out from some of the Christian churches. Almost every one of those who have sought to propagate in England the belief in Humanity has come from devout homes, and of religious families. For nearly all of us, our childhood and youth were filled with memories and associations of the Christian world, with active devotion to the gospel of Christ in one of the orthodox communions, Anglican, Evangelical, Ritualist, Catholic, or Methodist. I could name but very few active Positivists in England, to whom, up to years of maturity, the Gospel was not a real and living power. If I may speak of myself I can look back in memory to the time when I took part with entire sincerity in the communion of the Church of England in which I was carefully and zealously trained; and I fully entered into that sense of personal relation to God and to Christ which the sacraments and the services of the Church inspire.

I am not conscious of any break in spiritual life as I look back on that. I have never felt any abrupt revulsion in the religious conscience. And in passing from allegiance to Christ to allegiance to Humanity, I have never known the sense of spiritual conflict within, or of doubt, of abandonment, of despair, of desertion. I can recall nothing but an impression of very gradual, quite peaceful, and almost unconscious evolution of mind, a happy widening of sympathy and deepening of interest and zest in life. I still believe that I am seeking the same end, am filled with the same heart, and am inspired

by the same order of spiritual influences, as when I took my first Communion as a boy, with a mental attitude not far removed from belief in the Real Presence.

Seeking the same end now, do I say,-inspired with the same spiritual influences-full of the same hopes? Rather with much clearer, wider, more abiding influences. The Real Presence of Humanity needs no imaginative ecstasy to reveal it: it is in every beautiful word and deed around us. Every great dedication of one's life to good is a Sacrament; every great life is an Incarnation; every great thought is a Revelation; every saint is a Son of Man; every hero is our Lord; every perfect woman is our Lady and our Holy Mother.

A mind in the positive stage of faith feels the orthodox conception of religion to be jejune, artificial, as well as visionary. But it does not feel any direct antagonism towards it. It seeks to include, clarify, and give stamina to these vague and beautiful aspirations; to place these eternal sentiments of piety, veneration, and self-sacrifice on a rational and solid footing. It does not doubt their supreme beauty, their innate affinity with human nature, and their paramount power over human life. It looks not for the death, but for a resurrection of the religious spirit, that it may endow it with a new realm.

I am not at all afraid of these admissions; nor am I concerned if they are hard sayings to Secularists, Agnostics, and Materialists. We find them often turn aside saying—“Ah! this is only a new form of the old