Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/18

 which he has no means of knowing to be worthy of worship. We must be content, if theism be destroyed, to bid farewell to religion for good and all, and, in company with Mr. Huxley rather than Mr. Spen- cer, to look upon all speculations and thoughts connected with it as of no more practical concern to us than the politics of any supposed inhabitants of the moon. At this point, however, as we give ut- terance with a sigh to this conclusion, we observe a strange look copie over Mr. Harrison's face. " I am sure the Un- knowable will not afford a rational reli- gion," he says in effect. We readily assent, and allow the point to have been proved by him. "Ah! but I am quite certain it cannolht the real religion," he continues, "because I know that the wor- ship of Humanity is the real religion." " I am Philip of Macedon, and I know that is not my son." We are startled beyond description. He continues — and we can listen to the explanation as given in his own words, "The religion of man in the vast cycles that are to come wmII be the reverence for Humanity as supported by Nature." His hearers are inclined to in- terrupt him: "Prune down your capital letters, at all events. Let us examine your statements on their own merits — as they are in themselves, and without the clothing of enthusiasm. You have been ruthlessly undressing the Infinite Eternal Energy; you have knocked all assumed dignity out of the Unknowable; you have laughed at it because it has managed to get itself spelt with a capital U; in com- mon fairness, then, do the same by your own gods. Let us see calmly, and by careful and sober analysis, what humanity supported by nature comes to, in itself, and without unction or capitals; and how far it will be able to serve us as a reli- gion." But we must hear Mr. Harrison out. "The final religion of enlightened man, he continues, "is the systematized and scientific form of the spontaneous religion of natural man. Both rest on the same elements : belief in the Power which controls his life, and grateful reverence for the Power so acknowledged. The primitive man thought that Power to be the object of Nature as affecting man. The cultured man knows that Power to be Humanity itself, controlling and con- trolled by Nature according to natural law." This is certainly a marvellous col- lapse of the critical and cautious spirit by which the earlier portion of Mr. Harri- son's paper was distinguished. How hu- manity controlled by nature can hear our prayers any better than xn-^ how we can be grateful to it if it is an abstraction; how it can deserve gratitude if it is the net result of human and natural forces on an unhappy world; how it can comfort us in sickness, or give us hope on the bed of death any better than the Unknowable, — these difficulties, which naturally arise, Mr. Harrison does not explain. Con- sistency and sobriety of reasoning vanish directly he touches on his monomania, and enthusiasm and capitals are the order of the day. In company with Mr. Spen- cer, he has relentlessly pursued the path of negation, until they have arrived at the common conclusion that all that is known is phenomenal nature in its operation on mankind. Here, then, is the exhaustive division of all things — Phenomenal Na- ture and the Unknown. But at this point comes before us the truth of the saying, Naturain expellas fiircd tatnen usqtte reairret. All that need of something to reverence which George Eliot lays down as a primary demand of our nature, the satisfaction of which is essential to hap- piness, comes in full force upon both. It matters not that their reason has de- cided that nothing exists to satisfy the need. A starving man has been known to endeavor to appease his hunger by eat- ing a pair of boots, in default of any more attractive species of food; and in like manner the Positivist and the Agnostic, finding in reach only nature and the un- known, make a desperate effort to satisfy their religious cravings with these very unpromising objects. The Positivist takes one boot, the Agnostic the other. The former takes nature, the latter the un- known; and by a mental process which can only be characterized as monomania, they contrive to enjoy a sort of religious Barmecide's feast. The truth seems to be that these phi- losophers having conspired together to kill all real religion — the very essence of which is a really existing, personal God, known to exist, and accessible to the prayers of his creatures — and having, as they suppose, accomplished their work of destruction and put religion to death, have proceeded to divide its clothes between them. By the clothes of religion I mean those ideas and corresponding emotions with which we invested the objects of religious faith, and which were their nat- ural and due adornment, and the phrases which had become associated with reli- gious feelings and belief. The saying of the Psalmist, which was applied to other slayers of their God, may be used of these