THE CREED OF A LAYMAN.

ONE of the hardest of the many hard sayings of Auguste Comte is this: Man becomes more and more religious. People look back to history, to the times of the early Christians, or the medieval saints, to the Bible heroes or the authors of the Evangelical revival, and they deny the truth of this. In the growing abandonment of all theological belief by so many persons here, and by so many more in Europe, in the emptying of the chapels and the churches, in the visible advance all along the line of Atheism, Agnosticism, Materialism, and Secularism, it certainly does seem that Man is growing less and less religious, at least in one meaning of that term.

Far more than this. The schools of thought which are most in the ascendant are continually reducing the sphere of Religion to a minimum, and many of them systematically discard it-seek to free human life from religion altogether. Many teachers, either openly or silently, consciously or unconsciously, would substitute for religion, Science, Free Thought, Common Sense, the Infinite, or the Unknowable.

Notwithstanding all this, Positivism-which is popularly supposed to be Materialism, Secularism, or Atheism; which is most certainly Positive, i.e. scientific, which accepts no Revelation, no imaginary beings or worlds, trusting to the real, to this world and this life; which has nothing to say about the Creation or direction of the universe, or about a Celestial existence after death-this Positivism still continues to repeat with perfect firmness and confidence, 'Yes! Man does become more and more religious.'

It is plain that we are using religion in some different sense, not in the sense in which it is popularly used to-day, when it is taken to imply divine beings and extra-tellurian life. We are using it in the true and real sense, in the old meaning; that meaning which, in the shrinking process, in the retreat along its whole line, Theology has abandoned. Still, we say, that this is the true and original meaning of Religion-that which Religion all along in theory has ever claimed to be; and when it is candid, feels that it ought to be.

That meaning of Religion is this. It is a scheme of thought and life whereby the whole nature of individual men and societies of men are concentrated in common and reciprocal activity, with reference to a Superior Power which men and societies alike may serve. In popular use the latter phrase alone in the definition has survived ; and that in a particular aspect of it. When the various qualities of a man, and of masses of men, can be brought to work together to a great common object of Devotion-then you have Religion.

The essence of the idea is, that the faculties can all be brought by it into harmony and proper relation; that it binds up great multitudes in one feeling and one thought.

But to put aside for a moment any discussion about terms, to take this idea, this harmony of the whole nature and welding together of society, to use a phrase which was invented by a great master of expression, this 'consolidation of co-operation' (religion is really that and nothing else), it is manifest that this harmony indeed increases from age to age.

In the old pre-historic ages there was no harmony within man, when he was the wild untutored (it may be the noble) savage. There could be no true unity of classes under Caste, or Brahminism, under Slavery, in the ages of systematic conquest, in the moral anarchy and intellectual inequality of the Greco-Roman world. Is there harmony and unity under Islamism, was there in the feudal class system, or in the arbitrary, mystical, spasmodic era of Catholicism? Could there be any real harmony in Protestantism and Dissent, which mean divergence, dispute, conflict? Could there be unity anywhere until Science had asserted its independence of blind faith, until Industry had gained the victory over War, until the people had won their full and equal place in modern society?

Now Classes are being swallowed up in the Republic; races and nations are being brought together; industry, science, humanity, are slowly asserting their superiority. The solidarity of Peoples, the Federation of mankind, or what is foreshadowed by such terms, is an idea which grows. The 'consolidation of co-operation' is at hand. Unity of classes and races, harmony in the realm of thought and feeling are only now becoming practicable hopes. It is hardly in modern life, only indeed in the Future, that we can see as a vision, the true unity of the race, the harmonious concentration of Thought and Life.

If we mean by Religion that which makes man more complete, which makes societies united, it is plain that we are more and more converging towards this state.

Those who say, 'Leave this convergence to itself, it is not a thing to strive for; the destiny of man is one of infinite differentiation without any corresponding process of co-ordination'-such men are talking against all the facts, the experience, and instincts of human

nature.

Civilisation implies increasing co-ordination, consensus, and

sympathy of the vast human organism; though it be indeed a subtler co-ordination, a more rational consensus, a more equable sympathy.

We need not argue with those who can contemplate with patience, can actually promote, the state of discord, cross-purpose and confusion in the spirit of man; the disruption and antagonism between societies of men.

This can mean nothing but waste of our human faculties, struggle, and antipathy, not 'peace and good-will amongst men.' It is needless to argue such a theme-for every system of belief, philosophy, all schemes of society, morality, social progress, theories of civilisation, and plans of reform-all imply some discipline of our social nature-some bond to unite society.

So far we are pretty much agreed, at least all rational and serious persons are that human nature must be got to work with the minimum of waste-and society with the minimum of friction, the maximum of correlation. But then the non-theological schools of the day are for the most part content to trust for this: either to some purely intellectual doctrine or doctrines: some say Science, some Truth, some say the principle of Evolution, or logical examination; some vaguely say Free-Thought, the Spirit of Inquiry, the right of Private Judgment, some mystical gift for always being right of which we have never learned the secret.

Or, if they give up this, they practically trust to chance, and say human nature will work it all right in the end.

No doubt it will: but we must give human nature its fair chance, and accept what it demands; and if human nature calls out for Religion, religion it must have or die.

Trusting to luck, or chance, or the ultimate triumph of what is called Truth, almost all the non-theological schools, disciples of Science, of Free Thought, of Democracy, of Secularism, and the like, repudiate anything like an organised attempt to reduce life as a whole to harmony by a central principle of life; they reject systematic discipline of life: they start back from Worship, from any formal appeal to the Feelings, from the very idea of Devotion of spirit to a great Power-in a word they turn with disgust or mockery from Religion.

Not indeed that they have ever proved this to be the sum of Philosophy, or the true teaching of History. Far from it, they assume it; they affect to know it by the Light of Nature as an intuitive truth. Mention to them worship, devotion, religion, the discipline of heart and practice in the continuous service of the object of devotion-in a word utter the word Religion and they smile in a superior and satisfied way.

All the teaching of History, the entire logic of Philosophy, the perennial yearnings of the human heart, the intensest hopes of the best men and the best women, all these are against them. Philo

sophy means just putting one's thoughts into relation with each other, and with the facts and circumstances of human nature. Wherever in the story of mankind a grand epoch or movement is seen, there we have passionate devotion working with an overpowering belief at the bottom of it. Charlemagne and Alfred, Cromwell and Washington, St. Louis and Hildebrand, St. Paul, Mahomet, Confucius, Moses, were men whose whole natures were fused through and through-brain, heart, and will, all together by that which was at once to them Thought-Resolve-Love. They moved men and created epochs-not because they had got hold of some particular truth, or not merely by that, but because their mighty natures had been kindled with a high passion-because their lives were seen to be transfigured in its light.

Wherever around us to-day we see a beautiful character and a noble life, there we see something more than a set of opinions and implicit reliance on the principle of free inquiry. What is it that we do see? We always find a passionate resolve to make life answer in fact to some end that is deeply believed to be right. We have the three things-belief enthusiasm-practice.

Why, if we really wish something to act on the lives of men, why are we to surrender any one of these agents-belief, enthusiasm, practice? We want them all. All are not enough. To neglect any one is to leave human life one-sided, maimed, and incomplete. We can all see how empty is enthusiasm without knowledge and intelligence; how dry and formal is practice without enthusiasm. How is it that we fail to see how poor a thing is knowledge without enthusiasm and without practice?

The Revolt against the old faiths has been carried out blindlytoo violently. Those who would sweep away Religion merely mean to sweep away the theological phase of religion. Those who repudiate Worship are simply dissatisfied with the old objects of Worship. To rebel against the ecclesiastical discipline of life is not to prove that life should have no discipline. To cease to venerate an unthinkable Creator and an unspeakable Mystery is not to cease to be capable of veneration towards anything. If our hearts feel void within us when we are bid to serve God, does this mean that our hearts are doomed to a void for ever? If our Faith in things supernatural is slipping from under us, does this mean that we must live for ever in this world of to-day without any Faith, with no Hope, no sense of Devotion to anything anywhere?

It is the delirium of revolt which screams out to us to cast out the faculty and the habit of faith along with the object or the form of our old faith. Besides it is cant: mere delusion to suppose it is done, or can be done. Neither enthusiasm, nor discipline, nor faith, nor reverence, nor devotion to a cause, nor love for a Power greater than ourselves, are at all dying out in the world. They are not

growing weaker. They are even in the midst of change, growing wider, deeper, more universal.

The political and social movements of our age show us as noble examples of unselfish devotion to a cause as any in history. The martyrs of science, of industry, of civilisation and progress, are of that same old stuff whose blood has of yore watered churches. Patriotism is a living passion. Our humanity deepens and widens, our sympathy grows tenderer, our earnestness to keep fresh the memory of the great dead grows more into a habit. Our civilisation is more conscious of its high destiny and its accumulating Duty.

The Schools that are the most eager to uproot all religion are themselves conspicuous for enthusiasm, devotion, self-sacrifice. No men have come nearer to the spirit of religious martyrs in our modern times than some of those devotees of the socialist, communist, democratic Gospel. The very Nihilists have shown us wonderful examples of discipline and faith. The Atheists, the Secularists, the Materialists stand almost first beyond the believers in creeds in constancy, fervour, and what a Christian would call an earnestness to save souls; and in nothing are they more conspicuous than in devoted reverence and submission to the heroes and teachers of their choice.

There is as much capacity for reverence in the world as everas much and more-scattered and incongruous as the objects of reverence have become. There is as much zeal, and force of heart, as much power of devotion as ever, as much capacity for association

as ever.

No moralist, no politician, no reformer for an instant doubts the power of ideas, the value of discipline, the temper of devotion, and none of them certainly propose to forego the appeal to these. Man does become more and more religious in the range and universality of the religious instinct.

All this capacity for religious unity is checked in the present day by the prevailing theories. What has happened is that knowledge and belief do not range with devotion; practice is out of joint with profession; and reverence itself bears the standard in Revolt.

Positivism is a scheme for bringing all these three-belief, discipline, worship-again (or rather for the first time) really into line, and training this consolidated force to bear on Life and on Society. It says: 'Man has a mind, and an enormous accumulation of knowledge. We have to satisfy that mind, and give order to that knowledge. Man has energies; we must give them a full scope, and yet keep them in due bounds. Man has a soul fitted for great devotion; we must fill that soul with a worthy object of devotion, strengthen it, purify it by constant exercise. If we leave out one of these sides, human nature is cramped, harmony is destroyed. And what is more, not only must all three sides be appealed to alike, but they must be appealed to by some great principle that can inspire them in one work.'