I need hardly say, I disclaimed any pretension to any kind of sacerdotal function. Circumstances and the importunity of fellow-believers forced us, somewhat prematurely as I thought, to open a special hall for our Positivist group. The same causes compelled me to accept the task of directing the committee nominated by our Director in Paris. Our friends insisted on some formal rite analogous to Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, and Burial, for which they could not look to any Christian Church. I neither suggested nor urged anything of the kind. I was asked to speak on each occasion. And I spoke as a layman, authorised by the central direction in Paris, to express the Positivist view of each ceremonial. The forms used were made public. They are quite rudimentary, and little more than reflections on the various aspects of familiar social events.1 In this, as in every other part I had in the Newton Hall movement, I was simply obeying an urgent call from my fellow-believers, rather than seeking to impose on them any belief of my own. The group formed itself spontaneously, and somewhat against my advice. When it was formed, I did not feel that I could in honour stand aside. The presidency of it was indeed thrust on me without any act of mine. The growth and development of its institutions was also spontaneous, not due to any initiative from me. I avoided any idea of enrolling nominal or casual adherents. My incessant care was to prevent a small group of men and women who thought alike, and chose to live by a common. 1 These "services," to use a conventional but incorrect term, have been frequently held in Newton Hall and in Clifford's Inn. Besides these occasions the Marriage form was used by myself at the wedding of Dr. Stanton Coit, and it has been adapted by Dr. Washington Sullivan. The burial service was used or adapted by myself at the death of Mr. Cotter Morison, of Mr. Frey, a Russian exile, of Mr. George Macdonnell, and of Mr. Grant Allen and others. ideal of life, from ever crystallising into an exclusive congregation from coming near to anything that could be called "a sect." In this I entirely succeeded. FAITH IN MAN It is now more than thirty years since I have found rest in perfectly settled convictions of spiritual life; for nearly the whole of that time I have endeavoured to teach principles of the Human Faith, and I have been before the world as a leader in the Positivist movement. When I ventured to take up a task so grave and responsible I was well past middle life; was happily married to a wife who shared my convictions and joined in my work; we had a growing body of fellow-believers and were bringing up our family in the spirit of our common faith. All through that period no shadow of doubt in general principles has ever crossed my mind, however much many things of practical application still remain for me ideals for the future to solve. Nor have I known in the same period any shifting of the ground in the foundations; and I have taken every precaution to have my belief respected by those I shall so soon leave behind me. I feel that I possess a real, vital, sustaining, unfailing, and inseparable religion:- part of my daily life; responding to every appeal; inspiring each act and thought hour by hour; making clear every moral and spiritual problem. This is no metaphysical thesis about the Origin of the Universe, but the present sense of touch with a Providence that enters into every side of daily life. It speaks in every true word which inspires, warns, or consoles us; when we are in doubt, or weary, or in distress; whether by the still whisper of memory, or by the clear voice of our fellow-beings; whether of the living or the dead. Our Providence is no Sabbath visitant; we need no Church or Chapel to contain it; it requires neither priest, nor congregation, nor ritual to manifest its will; it can be found and heard in the busiest crowd about us, in the commonest intercourse of trade, or society, even of artistic enjoyment; nor does it summon us to enter into the silent communion of our chamber, with clasped hands and bended knees. The Human Providence stands ever there about our daily life, instant by instant. No word that is uttered, no sight that is seen, can be wholly and absolutely beyond its ken, or apart from its interests and its sympathies. This is that ever-present religion such as, at times, Bernard, À-Kempis, Theresa, may have known- but which current Theology cannot enable man or woman to-day to know in active life of the twentieth century. And, as we live ever in presence of the real Providence, which it is our happiness to serve, to obey, and to honour, without whose help and guidance we are but waifs and strays in the world so we live ever in the presence of a future life, wherein our feeble span in the flesh will be continued as a living force till it is incorporated in the great Being which knows not death. We do not live in habitual presence of death, but of life — of a life perfectly continuous with our visible and sensitive life; entirely commensurate with that life, analogous to that life, plainly intelligible and obviously real. The moral and religious effect of so restoring to man the sense of a true immortality of the soul becomes manifest. In the days of our darkness, when we were still under the thraldom of the Old Adam, we could not feel this deep incentive to life and ground of hope. Taught to regard the life on earth as a pilgrimage in a vale of tears, there was little to do in it which could affect an immortality in Heaven unless it were prayers, hymns, and religious "exercises." We now feel that every hour of every day in some minute degree is still shaping for each of us that immortality on earth, which we are fashioning step by step whilst breath endures, and which must remain to bless or to condemn our memories whether we know it or not whether we desire it or not. This living and abiding sense of our real immortality on earth, as our active lives are carried on by our fellow-beings, not only in memory and in love and gratitude, but in act and in practical conduct; not only by those who have known and loved each of us, but by those unknown ones, even in a distant future, whom even remotely, however slightly, our own lives have influenced, comforted, or aided this sense of a real immortality is no fantastic dream of a neurotic mind, but is a solid fact realised habitually by a congregation of men and women. And in a later page may be read an address which on the Day of all the Dead was given by myself and accepted by them, as a summary of our inmost hopes. It should be understood that the Thoughts and Memories collected in this volume represent not merely the personal beliefs of a single writer, but they are the settled convictions and habitual experiences of a body of men and women associated for some thirty years together, convictions and experiences by which they have striven to live and to work; in which they have trained up their children; resting in which they have been content to die, and to lay their departed loved ones in the grave. These convictions and hopes are best embodied in a volume entitled The Service of Man · Hymns and Poems (1890 and 1905), a collection of verses which for some twenty years have been used by the choir of our friends at Newton Hall and elsewhere. It was compiled by my wife, who organised and directed the choir.. And I can best condense the present apologia by citing a few lines which she signs: In sorrow and humility, Great Human Heart we fly to Thee, To gather comfort from thy store, And strength and love to serve Thee more. And there all meaner thought laid by, With mind and heart uplifted high The soul is purged in love's pure fires. It may be that this Providence is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, but most imperfect, often erring, like any one of us. But then, for that very reason, it is so close to us, so much akin to us in every want, so perfectly in sympathy and touch with us. It is no purely ideal symbol of perfection. It is the most undeniable fact we know: it is the largest living power on earth. A thousand desires which no reasonable man or woman would venture to address to the Absolute Almighty are well within the interests and the guidance of Humanity. The Humanity of Christ Jesus was a beautiful and spiritual dream; which, so long as we could hold to its historic reality, was a conception as stimulating as it was magnificent. But those to whom it has become a mere religious utopia fall back on the solid presence of the Humanity of Man. The providential character of the sum of civilisation is a positive, not a negative conclusion. It denies nothing, excludes nothing, interferes with nothing. There is no Atheism in recognising the benefits which civilisation has bestowed on the human race; in cherishing the great truth. that the human race has been continually rising into a nobler civilisation. The sublime mysteries presented to us by the spectacle of the Universe, its infinite powers, its boundless |