culative
Nihilism ... but unintentionally it creates at the same time a practical
Nihilism.... There is a mine under modern society which, if we consider
it, has been the necessary result of the abeyance in recent times of the
idea of the Church" (p. 208). In fact, as our author discerns, the
existence of civilization is at stake. "It can live only by religion"
(p. 262). "On religion depends the whole fabric of civilization, all the
future of mankind" (p. 218). The remedy which he suggests is that the
Natural Religion which we have been considering, the new "universal
religion," should "be concentrated in a doctrine," should "embody itself
in a Church" (p. 207). "This Church," we are told, "exists already, a
vast communion of all who are inspired by the culture and civilization
of the age. But it is unconscious, and perhaps, if it could attain to
consciousness, it might organize itself more deliberately and
effectively" (p. 212). The precise mode of such organization is not
indicated, but its main function it appears would be to diffuse an
"adequate doctrine of civilization," and especially to teach "science,"
in "itself a main part of religion, as the grand revelation of God in
these later times," and also the theory "of the gradual development of
human society, which alone can explain to us the past state of affairs,
give us the clue to history, save us from political aberrations, and
point the direction of progress" (p. 209). Of the _clerus_ of the new
Natural Church we read as follows:--

"If we really believe that a case can be made out for civilization,
this case must be presented by popular teachers, and their most
indispensable qualification will be independence. They perhaps will
be able to show, that happiness or even universal comfort is not,
and never has been, within quite so easy reach, that it cannot be
taken by storm, and that as for the institutions left us from the
past they are no more diabolical than they are divine, being the
fruit of necessary development far more than of free-will or
calculation. Such teachers would be the free clergy of modern
civilization. It would be their business to investigate and to
teach the true relation of man to the universe and to society, the
true Ideal he should worship, the true vocation of particular
nations, the course which the history of mankind has taken
hitherto, in order that upon a full vi