even feasible proposition. If such
a church wished to celebrate a Mass or Communion or Eucharist it would
have a great variety of rites and customs of that kind to select from;
those that were not appropriate for use in our times or were connected
with the worship of strange gods need not be rejected or condemned,
but could still be commented on and explained as approaches to the same
idea--the idea of dedication to the Common Life, and of reinvigoration
in the partaking of it. If the Church wished to celebrate the
Crucifixion or betrayal of its Founder, a hundred instances of such
celebrations would be to hand, and still the thought that has underlain
such celebrations since the beginning of the world could easily be
disentangled and presented in concrete form anew. In the light of such
teaching expressions like "I know that my Redeemer liveth" would be
traced to their origin, and men would understand that notwithstanding
the mass of rubbish, cant and humbug which has collected round them they
really do mean something and represent the age-long instinct of Humanity
feeling its way towards a more extended revelation, a new order of
being, a third stage of consciousness and illumination. In such a Church
or religious organization EVERY quality of human nature would have to
be represented, every practice and custom allowed for and its place
accorded--the magical and astronomical meanings, the rites connected
with sun-worship, or with sex, or with the worship of animals; the
consecration of corn and wine and other products of the ground,
initiations, sacrifices, and so forth--all (if indeed it claimed to be
a World-religion) would have to be represented and recognized. For they
all have their long human origin and descent in and through the pagan
creeds, and they all have penetrated into and become embodied to some
degree in Christianity. Christianity therefore, as I say, must either
now come frankly forward and, acknowledging its parentage from the great
Order of the past, seek to rehabilitate THAT and carry mankind one step
forward in the path of evolution--or else it must perish. There is no
other alternative. (1)

(1) Comte in founding his philosophy of Positivism seems to have
had in view some such Holy Human Church, but he succeeded in making it
all so profoundly dull that it never flourished, The seed of Life was
not in it.

Let me give an instance of how a fragment of ancient ritual which has
survived from the