most illustrious names in the annals of the various religions and philosophies, and the really great politicians in all states of society. Above all, he has the most profound admiration for the services rendered by Christianity and by the Church of the middle ages. His estimate of the Catholic period is such as the majority of Englishmen (from whom we take the liberty to differ) would deem exaggerated if not absurd. The great men of Christianity, from St. Paul to St. Francis of Assisi, receive his warmest homage; nor does he forget the greatness even of those who lived and thought in the centuries in which the Catholic Church, having stopped short while the world had gone on, had become a hindrance to progress instead of a promoter of it;

such men

as Fénélon and Vincent de Paul, Bossuet and Joseph de Maistre. A more comprehensive, and, in the primitive sense of the term, more catholic sympathy and reverence towards real worth, and every kind of service to Humanity, we have not met with in any thinker. Men who would have torn each other in pieces, who even tried to do so, if each usefully served in his own way the interests of mankind, are all hallowed to him."

Humanity is composed also, not only of such men, but of all those who, known or unknown, in the past, present or future, live unselfishly, devoting themselves to the discharge of their social function. It includes all good women whatsoever, and all proletaries who, conscious of their being social functionaries, do their daily work as such. In fine, wherever human hearts have

yearned and endeavoured to realize a loftier ideal of living, there are organs of Humanity; for Humanity is a composite being, and, unlike the supreme beings of other religions, she represents human life in all its variousness, vastness and depth. Only the selfish, the vicious, the evil, the criminal have no part in Her-being regarded as parasites that impoverish Her and bring Her nothing but cause of shame. With such persons must be included those "digesting machines"— they are not men-who, as Dante says, "for themselves were only;" creatures of whom Horace said, "They were born upon the earth only to manure it."

Humanity being a great Collective Organism, all her organs, without distinction, work together for her good, to which they subordinate individual impulses. They were not always conscious that they were so working, but the truth has now dawned upon them that it is so, and it gives a consecration to their function and a sacredness to their work neither ever had before. What can be more soul inspiring than to know and feel that we are co-operating in a movement which will elevate morally, socially, and intellectually, untold millions; that we are adding our contributions to the mighty sum of human helpfulness, human hopefulness and human good? Humanity can, as Pascal said, be conceived of as an individual man ever growing and perfecting himself. Humanity has indeed grown up in the same way as the individual, and has had her childhood, youth and adolescence. Unlike the individual,

she does not grow old or die, because her organs are being constantly renewed. Our functions die with the organism, we pass away and are no longer able to render her suit and service. Others step into our places and perform our tasks. Humanity lives on though generations perish and "her years shall have no end." Is not this being, so real, so composite, so helpful in every way, more worthy of our praise and prayer than fictions and entities ? It is the only genuine providence; all others have been her regents reigning in her name. Mankind has, for ages, been offering up prayer, praise and thankfulness to mere abstractions-more or less identified with human beings, who represent certain phases of the history and development of Humanity, in order to fix the attention and stimulate devotion, -no one person or a number of persons being able even approximately to represent her in all her varied, wonderful and touching history but Herself. She now stands confessed in all her awful and pathetic beauty. Shall we any longer offer that to others which belongs solely to her? Can we doubt for a moment whose image and superscription we bear? And when the true Divinity is revealed to us, shall we be still found worshipping the false? What good can we do for abstractions and what good can they do for us? Shall we spend our strength for that which profiteth nothing? Is it we will not say wise-is it rational? The smallest service rendered to Humanity benefits both her and the server; it is twice blessed, it blesses him that gives and her who takes. To use the noble language of St. Paul, "We are helpers together with God."

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Is not this Religion of Humanity, thus roughly sketched, one adapted to the wants and necessities of all people? Cannot it "be understanded of the common people?" Cannot it be preached in the market place and by the hedgeside if need be? Would it be out of place if proclaimed in Hospitals and Gaols? Has it no message of tenderness and consolation for the sick? Can it not raise and reclaim from vice and crime those who have lapsed from chastity and honesty, by proclaiming that Humanity never gives up such as hopelessly irreclaimable, but essays again the arduous task, after a hundred endeavours and failures? Is this Religion too good for common life-its ideal too high for the reach of ordinary mortals? Let no one say this. There are around us those who have tried it—men and women, in all walks of life, who were once Christians in deed and in truth, but who are Christians no longer. And not for worlds would we exchange our condition. We have a touching regard for the old faith and a real admiration for the moral and religious discipline with which it is associated. The memory of the old services is still dear to us; its rites are amongst our most tender recollections, and even its language still haunts our tongues. But, for all this, we, like the man in the parable, have found the Pearl of great price, and for it we have parted with all other pearls and precious stones of lesser value. The peace we now know is no mystic feeling the religious satisfactions we now have are no longer imaginary but real; and what services we can, we joyfully render to a Being

who is bettered by them, and whose worship betters us. The worth-ship of this all pervading Being no one questions. Our own individual worth greatens and brightens, the more and the longer we devote to the worship of Humanity.

Is this Religion incapable of being apprehended by the poor and the destitute which throng our great cities? We cannot say how far it will be apprehended, until it has been tried. Millions of Christians do not apprehend on what data, mental and moral, Christianity rests—and are ignorant of its"Evidences "--so much the better for them. But one evidence they have of which no one can rob them-the evidence of its having brought them comfort and peace in believing and joy in the Holy Ghost. No one would wish to rob them of this. Positivism makes no appeal to them: "the whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." But to those who are not whole, who feel what an intolerable burthen life is, and can find little or nothing in Christianity that they care for-and there are millions of such-Positivism, coming as a purely human religion, offers what they seem most to need. It is to them the only religion that rests on a demonstrable scientific basis, and which lifts up human beings out of their degradation and improves them at no cost to their manliness and self respect, irrespective of other-world rewards or punishments.

We believe that the practice of the simple rites and duties of the Religion of Humanity would make squalid homes sacred places, and that, in the old language, the Gods would come to dwell with