neers 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 {103} 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 {104} 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 {105} 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 direc