over all selfish objects of desire. This condition is fulfilled by the Religion of Humanity in an eminent degree, and in as high a sense, as by the supernatural religions even in their best manifestations, and far more so than in any of their others." Ibid. (Utility of Religion), pp. 107-9.

The foregoing words explain themselves. They show the narrowness, we should say rather the idiotcy, of human wisdom when it seeks an abstract conception of life and of humanity, while ignoring life itself, and rejecting the human soul. Such a religion may indeed be sufficient for thinkers like Mill, secluded from the world in abstract speculation, but how shall the people accept and understand it?-the people, a living organism held in communion only by living sentiment and conscience, and repelled by abstractions and generalities. In the people, such a religion, if it bore fruit at all, would bear fruit in reversion to paganism. The people-which we cannot conceive detached from Nature-if it forgot the faith of its fathers, would again personify the idea, either of the universe, resolving it into separate forces, or of that humanity which stands as a binding spiritual principle, resolving it also into its representative spiritual forces; and there would result so many false gods instead of one true God. It cannot be that we are condemned to suffer this?

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THE NEW RELIGION AND THE

NEW MARRIAGE

WE are told that our religion is drawing to its end, that a new faith will replace it, the dawn of which is on the point of appearing. God grant that this may be delayed, and that, if it must come, it may not be for long! For it will not be a time of enlightenment, but of darkness.

The ancient faith contains all that human nature has of sincerity-the sincerity of direct sensations and conscience, the sincerity which, from the depths of our spiritual nature, corresponds to the words of divine revelation. This is a living truth, and its roots are sunken in the souls of all. Of it was it said: Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." The ancient faith was founded on the consciousness of every man of a living soul which is immortal and one, a living soul he confounds neither with Nature nor with humanity. By this he knows himself before God and before his fellow-men, by this he wishes to live eternally. By this he enters into the free alliance of love with others, and, as he lives in his soul, so he answers for it himself. Through this the existence of his Creator is revealed as simply as his own life, and by this simple feeling, independently of reason, he maintains his faith.

The prophets of a new religion appear. Some laugh at the ancient faith, and would destroy it,

Others appear

without the will to create anew. more serious; they seek supreme wisdom, and strive to impose on us a wisdom of their own. Each offers us his own conception of truth, his favourite system of religion, for all apprehend the necessity of religion, and each would create one himself. How pitiable are these creations! They lack the power to draw the living soul and inspire it with a living idea, for not one of them sets the living spirit of God in the centre of his faith.

In recent times many various systems have appeared from the pens of philosophers, each at will attempting to construct for humanity a faith without God. Each would constitute his system on the basis of reason, by its nature an absurdity. For human reason in a straight path, ignoring and rejecting no facts of Nature or of the human soul, can never eliminate the idea of God. The true source of atheism is not in the mind but in the heart, for, as the prophet said, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." In the heart, that is, in the will, is the source of all error, however reason may seek to explain it. Error is born by the desire of the heart for full freedom, by rebellion against the commandments, and against Him who is the beginning and the end of all commandments. To free oneself of the commandments, there is no other path than to reject their supreme authority, and to replace it by the authority of self. The oldest of human histories is repeated from generation to generation, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." This has been the source of atheism from immemorial time.

It is wonderful, indeed, how reason deceives itself.

Without God it seems that there can be no religion, yet such a religion is proclaimed by atheists. They say, "In the place of these outworn tales of God let us put the truth. God is nowhere visible, while Nature and humanity are actual facts. Humanity is not only a fact, it is a force able, by the paths of reason and experience, to attain in the course of centuries unimaginable perfection. This idea of progression contains such internal force and profundity that it is enough to compensate man for religious sentiment, and to bind the race in the universal religion of humanity." Is this not the Biblical, "Ye shall be as gods"? Such are the doctrines of modern Positivist science, and of the so-called Utilitarianism.

From another side appears the celebrated apostle of the Tubingen school, the pillar of Biblical criticism, who lived to an old age in denial of the historic foundation of Christianity. This is Dr Strauss, the author of the "Life of Jesus"; the author of "The Old and the New Religion," in which he himself says he has made his confession, and given to the world the result of all his learned labours and philosophical speculations on God, on Nature, and on humanity. In youth, in the "Life of Jesus," he undertook, with some respect and caution, the analysis of those facts consecrated by the traditional belief of man, touching with tenderness the fundamental ideas of faith. In this work is seen a remnant of respect for God. But later we find a furious irritation against the Godhead, as a false and pernicious fable which has corrupted the minds of mankind.

But while rejecting God, by a strange incon

sistency of thought, he does not abandon the religious feeling. In himself he feels the necessity, and affirms the existence, of religious devotion. What is the object of this devotion, which at the same time has power to possess and inspire the soul? Not a personal divinity which exists not, but the world (Universum) which constitutes the source of all good and power-which exists by the law of pure reason. We demand, he says, for this Universe the same devout feeling as a good man of the ancient faith cherished towards God.

What is this Universe, and what its spiritual element? Answering that question, Strauss reveals himself as a disciple of the Positivist philosophy, and of the new materialism. The doctrine of Kant and of Laplace on the exclusive activity of mechanical forces in the planetary system, he applies absolutely to all the phenomena of animal and spiritual life; he regards the soul of man as nothing better than the result of the complex interaction of mechanical forces. The soul as a spiritual essence Strauss rejects. As might be expected, he accepts triumphantly the theories of Darwin on the Origin of Species, limiting not their application to the phenomena of the external world, but extending them capriciously to all the manifestations of life. The imperfection and inconsistency of Darwin's reasonings do not alarm him in the least. All doubt is eliminated by his new religion, by faith in his own hypothesis, incompatible, he tells us, with the existence of God. matters not that such abstract hypotheses as spontaneous generation remain unproven. He cannot say how or when, but without doubt some day they

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