o, and which,
in one form or another, stir every human soul; which we may trace in
the chatterings of the poor Neapolitan crone to her Crucifix, or in the
hallelujahs of "Happy Sal" at a Salvationist "Holiness Meeting," as
surely as in the profoundest speculations of the Angelic Doctor, or in
the loftiest periods of Bossuet. Can any one, in this age of all others,
when, as the revelations of the physical world bring home to us so
overwhelmingly what Pascal calls "the abyss of the boundless immensity
of which I know nothing, and you know nothing," man sinks to an
insignificance which, the apt word of the author of "Natural Religion"
"petrifies" him, can--can any one believe that the compound of
Pantheistic Positivism and Christian sentiment--if we may so account of
it--set forth in these brilliant pages, will avail to redeem men from
animalism and secularity? But, indeed, we need not here rest in the
domain of mere speculation. The experiment has been tried. Not quite a
century ago, when Chaumette's "Goddess of Reason," and Robespierre's
"Supreme Being," had disappeared from the altars of France, La
Reveillere-Lepeaux essayed to introduce a Natural Religion under the
name of Theophilanthropy[37] to satisfy the spiritual needs of the
country over which he ruled as a member of the Directory, Chernin
Dupontes, Dupont de Nemours and Bernardin de St. Pierre constituting
with himself the four Evangelists of the new cult. The first mentioned
of these must, indeed, be regarded as its inventor, and his "Manuel des
Theophilanthrophiles" supplies the fullest exposition of it. But it was
La Reveillere-Lepeaux whose influence gave form and actuality to the
speculations of Chemin, and whose credit obtained for the new sect the
use of some dozen of the principal churches of Paris, and of the choir
and organ of Notre Dame. The formal _debut_ of the new religion may,
perhaps, be dated from the 1st of May, 1797, when La Reveillere read to
the Institute a memoir in which he justified its introduction upon
grounds very similar to those urged in our own day against "the
theological view of the universe." Moreover, he insisted that
Catholicism was opposed to sound morality, that its worship was
antisocial, and that its clergy--whom he contemptuously denominated _la
pretraille_, and whom he did his best to exterminate--were the enemies
of the human race. In its leading features the new Church resembled very
closely the system which we have just