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Ingersoll and the Freethought publications of Madras and Calcutta. This materialism is essentially atheistic. It entirely ignores man's religious instincts. It takes for granted that he has no desires beyond the present life, and that the highest happiness consists in the full enjoyment of the world. Its maxim is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." It naturally tends to the grossest sensuality, and indeed some materialists are shameless enough to advocate free-love as the outcome of free-thought, and to throw ridicule on any efforts to restrain the lower passions. It is evident that all argument will be thrown away upon men who profess to accept such teaching as this. There may be dimness of mental vision, but it is merely the result of spiritual depravity. The mind will not be open to the truth while the moral sense is dormant and there is no desire after good. Those who have already fallen into this miry slough must ask God to stretch out His hand to extricate them before they inquire for the way of truth. They must pray for grace to loathe and abandon sin. And if any young men are tempted to make the acquaintance of a system which inculcates vice, deceived it may be by the covering of science which at first hides its true nature, we earnestly beseech them to pause before taking a step which may end in their ruin. There is no necessity to examine teaching which confessedly leads to unrighteousness. No good men can admit the possibility of establishing the truth of an immoral creed, inasmuch as it is opposed to the moral sense within him, and hence he will not waste his time or defile his mind by wading through the filthy publications which explain and promulgate it.

There are, however, certain systems which although, as we think, most unsatisfactory substitutes for religion, nevertheless claim respectful treatment as the creation of able, and, to all appearance, honest thinkers. We have Agnosticism, associated with the wellknown name of Mr. Herbert Spencer as its principal exponent, which maintains that the existence of any

faculty for knowing God is a delusion, and that we must resign ourselves to total and hopeless ignorance of all that transcends the data furnished to our thought in observation and consciousness.' While Spencer regards a personal God as unscientific and merely a development of the primitive belief in ghosts, he does not give up religion altogether. He substitutes, as the true object of the sentiments of awe and worship, the Unknowable, as a trinity of Infinity, Eternity, and Energy. He says that it is absolutely certain we are in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal energy from which all things proceed. Thus strangely enough Agnosticism claims to be a religion, although a religion without God. But of what practical utility can such a religion be to any one? It can offer no guidance in perplexity or comfort in times of sorrow. It can excite to no high moral purposes, and can give no hope of a life beyond. It is essentially a religion of despair. Unfortunately it is just now popular with a certain class of educated men. It fascinates by the simplicity of its creed. It seems to relieve from the necessity of painful investigation, and what is more from the fulfilment of moral duty. Ignorance can always be pleaded in excuse of indolence. But it is evident that the tendencies which constitute the charm of this doctrine are just those which make it so pernicious. It demoralises men, taking away from them all hopefulness and courage, and making them faint-hearted in the battle of life. Mr. Frederick Harrison, the noted Positivist, criticising this doctrine, says, ' Better bury religion at once than let its ghost walk uneasy in our dreams.' 'How mere a phrase must any religion be of which neither belief nor worship nor conduct can be spoken.' And he represents the Agnostic as praying O a" love us, help us, make us one with thee."

The practical influence of Agnosticism may be traced in the life and works of George Eliot, the great novelist, whose complex character was recently the favourite study in English Reviews and Magazines. Although sometimes claimed as a Positivist she seems

rather to have been an Agnostic as she did not make Humanity an object of worship. Till past twenty years of age she was a sincere believer in Christianity, and the fruits of her early experience appeared in after life. In all her works she figures as a great philosophical moralist whose teaching is of the highest order. But all that is morally excellent in her writings can be traced to the faith she had left. Some of her finest characters are drawn from her own memories of Christian life. On the other hand, the efforts of abandoning her former creed are seen in her own lowered moral tone. An earnest Christian woman could not have shown such sympathy and admiration for men of lax principle or have taken the fatal step which has for ever blotted her memory. The effects are likewise seen in her hopeless efforts to find a support for moral action after withdrawing the sanction of religion, and they are seen in her sadder views of human life. There is something exquisitely melancholy in her attempts to comfort bereaved friends. She tries to soothe a mother who has lost her child by reminding her that "life is a doubtful good to many and to some not a good at all." To a widow she offers comfort just as cold. We know how different would have been her letters if she could have held out the consolations of Christian hope. In her own last days she turned for solace to the Bible and a Manual of Christian Devotion. Thus did Agnosticism mar the work and becloud the life of the most gifted woman of modern times.

We have seen how Mr. Frederick Harrison demolishes the religion of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Let us ask what he has to replace it. He is the chief exponent in England of the Positive Philosophy of Comte -the Religion of Humanity. In this religion man takes the place of God and becomes the object of worship. Humanity is the continuous sum total of convergent beings.' It excludes the worthless and the evil. Seven years must elapse after a man's death before deciding whether he is to be incorporated in

the Supreme Being and honoured with a commemorative bust. Several hundreds have now been deified, including men of the most opposite principles.

This system likewise has a charm of its own. If God cannot be found, one would fain substitute the noblest object left for our worship and service. There seems too something practical in this religion. Secularists of all creeds tell us that a supernatural religion like Christianity does not suit the present age of progress. By directing our hope to a future life it is said to prevent us from making the best of the present. We know that the evils which befall us are transitory, and therefore we are willing to endure them instead of making strenuous efforts to overcome them. They tell us such a religion makes us care for the souls of our fellow-men to the neglect of their material interests. The religion of Humanity is to change all this. Man alone and man as existing in this present world, is hereafter to become the one object of our devotion, and to his happiness we are to consecrate our lives.

man.

But we by no means admit that man will receive any benefit from God being left out of the universe. We believe the result would be diametrically opposite. The love of God will always be the spring of love to If there be no common Father, there will be no common brotherhood. How shall we care for men's bodies less because we care for their souls more, or be less interested in their present happiness because we are supremely anxious about their future? It is because man is an immortal being made in the image of God that we regard the lowest of his interests worthy of our most careful regard.

And indeed if there were no God to be the object of our adoration, we doubt whether man's good would be promoted by setting up Humanity in the place of God. The notion is altogether too abstract for common minds. Our interest extends from the particular to the general and not vice versa. If we do not love our neighbour for his own sake we are not likely to do so because we love the Humanity to which he

belongs. If we do not practise virtue for our own good or for that of our children or relatives or friends, we shall scarcely do so for the benefit of Humanity. Nor does this Religion afford us any guidance or any hope. Whom shall we follow among the crowd of deified heroes? Probably there was no single quality of mind, not one principle of conduct common to all. If we follow one we must renounce another. And what is to be the reward of all our service? Man is to go on from one generation to another gradually rising in the scale of being, not in preparation for an eternal life beyond the grave where all his faculties may find freest exercise, but merely to bring out into bolder contrast the greatness of his powers and the utter vanity of his destiny.

If the Positivist can answer the Agnostic, the Pessimist can reply no less effectively to the Positivist. Hartmann, a prominent advocate of Pessimism, tells us that the religion of Humanity, although in advance of Christianity, must nevertheless be abandoned, since with the increased means nothing more has increased but wishes and needs and in their train discontent.' There is not perhaps much likelihood that the scientific Pessimism of Schopenhauer and Hartmann will spread very much-it seems too repulsive a system to do that although in India it may prove attractive in some quarters from its likeness to the Sankhya philosophy of Kapila. Both systems teach the existence of a power underlying all forms of life which is itself unintelligent though giving rise to intelligence.' But practical Pessimism must be the logical outcome of Agnosticism and all other kindred creeds. The Pessimist believes that if we weigh the sum total of good and evil we shall ever find the balance on the bad side. A world without God must be a world without hope.

IV.

Some will admit all that has been said on the insufficiency of modern substitutes for Religion and yet

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