us it seems safe to agree with her eulogists, who say that as long as Christianity remains as it is, the most vital and dominant force in the lives of many millions of English-speaking people, the name of Christina Rossetti is likely to be honored and cherished in the list of illustrious writers who have enriched the literature of Christian teaching by their consecrated genius.

THE VOLUMINOUS UNIMPORTANCE OF

POSITIVISM

We know of no modern system of thought that is at once so intellectually pretentious and of so little account as positivism. Nothing aspiring to be regarded as a religion is so ambitious in its scope, and so elaborate in its presentation, or propounded with a brow so grave and weighty, and yet withal is so unimportant, as the so-called Religion of Humanity. Both its inventor, Auguste Comte, and its apologist, Frederic Harrison, have been voluminous writers. Comte was the author of numerous volumes, of which he devoted to the setting forth of his scheme of doctrine more than a dozen: his Positive Philosophy (6 volumes), his Positive Polity (4 volumes), his Subjective Synthesis, his General View, and his Catechism. Mr. Harrison is also author of a dozen or more volumes, some of which are directly given to the exposition and advocacy of his particular version of Comte's system, and all of which take their perspective from the positivist point of view and color their atmosphere with the Religion of Humanity. His two most recent books are The Creed of a Layman and The Philosophy of Common Sense. Comte's scheme, interpreted by Harrison, purports to be a vast synthesis of knowledge equaled in inclu

siveness among ancients only by Aristotle's and among moderns only by Herbert Spencer's. Yet this ambitious and laborious scheme, offered as a substitute for Christianity, is of far less importance to the Christian world than, for example, Parseeism is indeed, its practical significance is almost microscopic.

It is certainly numerically unimportant. A census to ascertain the number of positivists in London found seventeen. Andrew Lang, commenting upon Harrison's book, The Creed of a Layman, remarks, "It is not the creed of many laymen-only about thirty-five and a half, as the irreverent say." Mr. Harrison expresses a doubt whether since the death of Auberon Spencer, Herbert Spencer has any follower. We are of opinion that Mr. Harrison has even fewer followers than Mr. Spencer. Mr. Harrison does not think it reasonable to expect that positivism should draw disciples by thousands as, he says, the gospel did in the days of the apostles. He is quite right in so thinking; and it seems proper to add just here, for the information of those who, like Mr. Harrison, appear not to know the fact, that the gospel which was so powerful in apostolic days proves itself just as mighty now, and in many lands is drawing vast multitudes to the feet of Him who was lifted up that he might draw all men unto him. It is hardly too much to say that positivism draws nobody. Its inventor was an impractical theorist but little acquainted with

human nature, its qualities or its needs. He lived and died an obscure teacher of mathematics in Paris. The intellectual atmosphere in which he worked out his theories and constructed a new religion for mankind was about as rarefied as are the regions of the differential calculus and as remote from actual human life as is the summit of Mount Kunchin-Ginga or the planet Jupiter. And it is about as attractive to the average human being as is the working out of an algebraic problem.

The attempt to get people to worship the human race meets insurmountable difficulties. To the normal man the proposition to worship humanity is simply preposterous. One trouble with positivism's worship is the obvious and extremely marked undivineness of its offered divinity. Human nature as found is not preeminently godlike. Mr. Huxley said he would as soon worship a wilderness of apes as Comte's rationalized conception of humanity. Moreover, what positivism presents for our worship is a mere abstraction. "The Great Being, Humanity"? There is, there can be, no such being; there are only men and women. No one will adore an abstraction. The worship of human beings is not unknown. Men do worship Humanity, but in sections, in very definite, individual and apprehensible sections. The old servitor in "The Flight of the Duchess," speaking of the fair young serving maid, says: "Since Jacynth was

like a June rose, why a humble adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant." Those who incline to the worship of humanity prefer to have it in a form as real, as vividly and tangibly concrete as Jacynth. No metaphysical abstraction for them.

Wholly theoretical and utterly impracticable is the Comte-Harrison positivist religion of humanity. Not of its inventor or of its interpreter will it ever be said as was said of Lord Kelvin, lofty scientist and lowly Christian, over his newly buried remains in Westminster Abbey under the shadow of Sir Isaac Newton's tomb, that he "united in extraordinary degree the speculative and the practical faculties of the human intellect": "The greatest reasoner at work in physics in his time, and at the moment of his death without dispute the greatest scientific genius in the world." A reasoner, a thinker, a mathematician, beside whom the obscure little teacher of mathematics, named Comte, was an insignificant pigmy. The scientific world proudly claims for Lord Kelvin reverence because of his matchless genius and because of gratitude for the immeasurable value of his practical services to the whole human race. He never undertook to construct or invent a new religion to take the place of Christianity; and, curiously enough, in contrast with the voluminousness of positivism's apostles, he wrote only one book, a volume on a part of analytical mechanics, and that in collaboration with Professor Tait.