invariable consequent of some antecedent
condition, or combination of conditions, accepts fully the positivist
mode of thought: whether he acknowledges or not an universal antecedent
on which the whole system of nature was originally consequent, and
whether that universal antecedent is conceived as an intelligence or
not." [1]

I need not say that to us who believe in Mind as the necessary
antecedent to all things, the positivist spirit, so defined, is
essential truth. We believe in the Great Being revealed in the eternal
order of the physical worlds and in the eternal order of the moral law.
Our worship of God is therefore a worship of goodness or morality, an
ideal of justice, as seen in the lives of only the elect spirits of the
race, and thus "the worship of Humanity" is also the worship of God.
For where is God revealed as _worshipful_ except in the lives of the
great and good? And if religion be defined to be morality as taught in
the lives of the holiest servants of mankind, in what do we differ
essentially from the ennobling conceptions of Auguste Comte? The
service of man is seen to be the service of God, for we know nothing of
God until we have learnt to serve goodness and minister to our brother
man. The day will come when Comte will be honoured in the universal
Church as an apostle of true religion, because, like Kant, he showed
men that there is nothing holier or diviner on this earth than a life
consciously conformed to the obedience of august laws. Comte, no less
than his brother philosopher, is a servant of humanity, and therefore a
servant of God, and we conceive that both thinkers have laid mankind
under an immeasurable debt by showing us that that emotion of reverence
which all men instinctively feel towards a Power greater than man,
cannot be worthily satisfied except by a conscious endeavour to live as
befits our rational nature, and to serve "the brethren" out of love.

[1] _Auguste Comte and Positivism_, p. 15.

XIII.

THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW

AS SEEN IN _HELBECK OF BANNISDALE_.

Cynical observers of the tendencies of the age tell us that, like the
Athenians of Paul's days, we are "lovers of new things". Doubtless we
are, for this century, this "wonderful century," as it has recently
been described, is a new age or there never was one. Hence, just as
Spinoza saw everything _sub specie aeternitatis_, we may very well have
a tendency to see many things _sub specie novi_.