But is it not the fact that along with the discovery of Man's utter insignificance, there has come the discovery of powers and faculties unknown and unsuspected, so that more than ever all things are in subjection to him, his dominion has become wider, his throne more firmly established? Is it not the fact that the whole realm of Nature is explored by him, is compelled to minister to his wants or to unfold its treasures of knowledge? Is it not the fact that more than ever it can be said:
The lightning is his slave: heaven's utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and, like a flock of sheep,
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on.
The tempest is his steed: he strides the air.
And the Abyss shouts from her depth laid bare
'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me: I have none.'[[2]]
Is it not the fact that deposed from his position of proud pre-eminence as centre of the universe, Man has by his labours and his ingenuity reasserted his high prerogative to be lord of the creation? The printing-press, the railway, the telegraph, how have inventions like these invested him with an influence which he did not possess before! And is it not the fact that when most conscious of our nothingness before the immensities around us, when humbled and prostrate before the Infinite of which we have caught a transitory glimpse, we are also most conscious of our high destiny, we are lifted above the earthly to the heavenly, we discern that, though we cannot claim a moment, yet Eternity is ours? 'What, then, is Man! What, then, is Man! He endures but an hour and is crushed before the moth. Yet in the being and in the working of a faithful man is there already (as all faith, from the beginning, gives assurance) a something that pertains, not to this wild death element of Time; that triumphs over Time, and is, and will be, when Time shall be no more.'[[3]] Man's place in the universe may, according to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, be nearer the centre of things than has so commonly come to be accepted. Modern discovery, he maintains, has thrown light on the interesting problem of our relation to the Universe; and even though such discovery may have no bearing upon theology or religion, yet, he thinks, it proves that our position in the material creation is special and probably unique, and that the view is justified which holds that 'the supreme end and purpose of this vast universe was the production and development of the living soul in the perishable body of man.' And another, a convinced and ardent disciple of Evolution, the late Professor John Fiske, argues that, 'not the production of any higher creature, but the perfecting of humanity is to be the glorious consummation of Nature's long and tedious work.... Man seems now, much more clearly than ever, the chief among God's creatures.... The whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of God's handiwork, the Human Soul.'[[4]] If this be so, this conclusion arrived at by those who do not hold the ordinary faith of Christendom, then the objection that the Incarnation could not have taken place for the redemption of such a race as ours, in a world which is so poor a fraction of the infinite universe, falls to the ground; and the protest of a devout modern poet carries conviction with it:
This earth too small
For Love Divine! Is God not Infinite?
If so, His Love is infinite. Too small!
One famished babe meets pity oft from man
More than an army slain! Too small for Love!
Was Earth too small to be of God created?
Why then too small to be redeemed?[[5]]
Man may, or may not, occupy a 'central position in the universe': other worlds may, or may not, be inhabited: this earth may be but a minute and insignificant speck amid the mighty All, this at least is certain, that not by mere magnitude is our rank in the scale of being to be decided, and that in the spirit of man will be found that which approaches most nearly to Him who is Spirit. 'The man who reviles Humanity on the ground of its small place in the scale of the Universe is,' according to Mr. Frederic Harrison, 'the kind of man who sneers at patriotism and sees nothing great in England, on the ground that our island holds so small a place in the map of the world. On the atlas England is but a dot. Morally and spiritually, our Fatherland is our glory, our cradle, and our grave.'[[6]]
III
Hence, one of the ablest attempts to supersede Christianity is that which goes by the name of Positivism or the Religion of Humanity, which sets Man on the throne of the universe, and makes of him the sole object of worship. 'A helper of men outside Humanity,' said the late Professor Clifford, 'the Truth will not allow us to see. The dim and shadowy outlines of the Superhuman Deity fade slowly away from before us, and, as the mist of His Presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure, of Him who made all gods and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depths of every soul, the face of our Father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in His eyes, and says, "Before Jehovah was, I am." The founder of the organised Religion of Humanity was Auguste Comte, who died in the year 1857. He held that in the development of mankind there are three stages: the first, the Theological, in which worship is offered to God or gods; the second, the Metaphysical, in which the human mind is groping after ultimate truth, the solution of the problems of the universe; the third, the Positive, in which the search for the illusive and the unattainable is abandoned, and the real and the practical form the exclusive occupation of the thoughts. On Sunday, October 19, 1851, he concluded a course of Lectures on the General History of Humanity with the uncompromising announcement, 'In the name of the Past and of the Future, the servants of Humanity, both its philosophical and practical servants, come forward to claim as their due the general direction of this world. Their object is to constitute at length a real Providence, in all departments, moral, intellectual, and material. Consequently they exclude, once for all, from political supremacy, all the different servants of God, Catholic, Protestant, or Deist, as being at once behindhand and a source of disturbance.' All religions were banished by the truly 'uncompromising announcement': they were all condemned as futile and unreal. The best that could be said of the worship of the past was that it directed 'provisionally the evolution of our best feelings, under the regency of God, during the long minority of Humanity.'
But the fact that Religion will not be banished, that it must somehow find expression, never received fuller verification. We do not dwell upon the private life of Comte, its eccentricities and inconsistencies, but this at least cannot be omitted: he practised a course of austere religious observances, he worshipped not only Humanity at large, but he paid special adoration to a departed friend such as hardly the devoutest of Roman Catholics has ever paid to the Virgin Mary. Positivism became, what Professor Huxley called it, 'Catholicism minus Christianity.' Comte laid down for the guidance of his disciples, who are potentially all mankind, rules which no existing religious communion can surpass in minuteness. The Supreme Object of Worship is the Great Being, Humanity, the Sum of Human Beings, past, present, and future. But as it is only too evident that too many of these beings in the past and the present, whatever may be said about the future, are not very fitting objects of worship, Humanity, the Great Being, must be understood as including only worthy members, those who have been true servants of Humanity. The emblem of this Great Being is a Woman of the age of thirty, with her son in her arms; and this emblem is to be placed in all temples of Humanity and carried in all solemn processions. The highest representatives of Humanity are the Mother, the Wife, and the Daughter; the Mother representing the past, the Wife the present, and the Daughter the future. These are in the abstract to be regarded as the guardian angels of the family. To these angels every one is to pray three times daily, and the prayers, which may be read, but which must be the composition of him who uses them, are to last for two hours. Humanity, the World, and Space form the completed Trinity of the Positivist Religion. There are nine sacraments: Presentation, Initiation, Admission, Destination, Marriage, Maturity, Retirement, Transformation, Incorporation. There is a priesthood, to whom is committed the duties of deciding who may or may not be admitted to certain offices during life, of deciding also whether or not the remains of those who have been dead for seven years should be removed from the common burial-place, and interred in 'the sacred wood which surrounds the temple of humanity,' every tomb there 'being ornamented with a simple inscription, a bust, or a statue, according to the degree of honour awarded.' The priests are to receive so comprehensive a training that they are not to be fully recognised till forty-two years of age. They are to combine medical knowledge with their priestly qualifications. Three successive orders are necessary for the working of the organisation: the Aspirants admitted at twenty-eight, the Vicars or Substitutes at thirty-five, and the Priests proper at forty-two.
The Religion of Humanity has a Calendar, each month of twenty-eight days being in one aspect dedicated to some social relation, and in another to some famous man representing some phase of human progress: Moses, Homer, Aristotle, Cæsar, St. Paul, Gutenberg, Shakespeare. Each day of the year is dedicated to one or more great men or women, five hundred and fifty-eight in number, and the last day of the year is the Festival of All the Dead. 'Our Calendar is designed to remind us of all types of the teachers, leaders, and makers of our race: of the many modes in which the servants of Humanity have fulfilled their service. The prophets, the religious teachers, the founders of creeds, of nations and systems of life: the poets, the thinkers, the artists, kings, warriors, statesmen and rulers: the inventors, the men of science and of all useful arts.... Every day of the Positivist year is in one sense a day of the dead, for it recalls to us some mighty teacher or leader who is no longer on earth.... But the three hundred and sixty-four days of the year's calendar have left one great place unfilled.... Those myriad spirits of the forgotten dead, whom, no man can number, whose very names were unknown to those around them in life, the fathers and the mothers, the husbands and the wives, the brothers and the sisters, the sturdy workers and the fearless soldiers in the mighty host of civilisation—shall we pass them by? ... It is those whom to-night we recall, all those who have lived a life of usefulness in their generation, though they tugged as slaves at the lowest bank of oars in the galley of life, though they were cast unnoticed into the common grave of the outcast, all whose lives have helped and not hindered the progress of Humanity, we recall them all to-night.'[[7]]