t he has already attained it he makes of himself a god. "If I
justify myself," said Job, "mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say I
am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse." And St. John: "If we say
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." More
than this, if we seek perfection in others we deceive ourselves equally
and make gods of men. This is precisely the conclusion at which
perverted Freemasonry and the forms of Socialism deriving from it
arrive. Human nature, they say, is itself divine; what need then for
other divinities? The Catholic Church is consequently quite right in
declaring that the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature leads
to the deification of humanity in that it puts humanity in the place of
God. The Grand Orient, which definitely accepts this doctrine, has
therefore logically erased the name of the Great Architect of the
Universe from its ritual and has become an association of Freethinkers
and Atheists.

Is it necessary to point out the folly as well as the crime of this
delusion--the ludicrous inconsequence of men who divinize humanity yet
revile what they call "society"? All the evils of the world, they
declare, are not to be found in nature but in "man-made laws," in the
institutions of "society." Yet what is society but the outcome of human
wills, of human aspirations? Society may be, and no doubt is, in need of
reformation, but are not its imperfections the creation of imperfect
beings? It is true that to-day the world is in a state of chaos,
industrial chaos, political chaos, social chaos, religious chaos.
Everywhere men are losing faith in the causes they are supposed to
represent; authority questions its own right to govern, democracy is
rent with divisions, the ruling classes are abdicating in favour of
unscrupulous demagogues, the ministers of religion barter their faith
for popularity.

And what has brought the world to this pass? Humanity! Humanity, that
all-wise, all-virtuous abstraction that needs no light from Heaven.
Humanity that was to take the place of God! If ever there was a moment
in the history of the world when the futility of this pretension should
be apparent it is the present moment. All the ills, all the confusion,
what are they but the outcome of human error and of human passions? It
is not Capitalism that has failed, nor yet Democracy, nor yet even
Socialism as a principle, it is not monarchy that has broken down, nor
Republica