e of which only was due to the theological principle itself; while the
other was due, partly to the practical instinct of its priests, which
led them to modify the logical results of that principle in conformity
with the social wants of man; and partly also to their subordinate
position, which obliged them to use the spiritual means of conviction
and persuasion instead of the ruder weapons of material force. To
criticise fully this position would be to re-write Comte's history of
religion. It will be sufficient here to point out that his view of
modern history begins in a false interpretation of Christianity, and
ends in an equally false interpretation of the Protestant Reformation.

Christianity from its origin has two aspects or elements; and if we
compare it with earlier religions, we may call these its Pantheistic and
its Monotheistic elements. But these elements are not, as Comte asserts,
joined together by a mere external necessity. They are necessarily
connected in the inner logic of the system; nor can we regard one of
them as more or less essential than the other. In the simplest words of
the Gospels we find already expressed a sense of reconciliation with
God, and therefore with the world and self, which is alien to pure
Monotheism, though there is some faint anticipation of it in the later
books of the Old Testament. For a spiritual Monotheism, while it awakens
a consciousness of the holiness of God, and the sinfulness of the
creature, tends to make fear prevail over love, and the sense of
separation over the sense of union. The idea of the unity of the Divine
and the human--an original unity which yet has to be realized by
self-sacrifice--and the corresponding idea that the individual or
natural life must be lost in order to save it, were set before humanity,
as in one great living picture, in the life and death of Christ. And
what was thus directly presented to the heart and the imagination in an
individual, was universalized in the writings of St. Paul and St. John:
in other words, it was liberated from its peculiar national setting, and
used as a key to the general moral history of man. The Messiah of the
Jews was exalted into the Divine Logos, and the Cross became the symbol
of an atonement and reconciliation between God and man, which has been
made "before the foundation of the world," yet which has to be made
again in every human life. The work of the first three centuries was to
give to this idea such