I wrote in a very early diary: "I wish
Arthur would write something striking on the Established Church,
as he could express better than any one living how much its
influence for good in the future will depend on the spirit in
which it is worked."
His mind was more critical than constructive; and those of his
religious writings which I have read have been purely analytical.
My attention was first arrested by an address he delivered at the
Church Congress at Manchester in 1888. The subject which he chose
was Positivism, without any special reference to the peculiarities
of Comte's system. He called it The Religion of Humanity.
[Footnote: An essay delivered at the Church Congress, Manchester,
and printed in a pamphlet] In this essay he first dismisses the
purely scientific and then goes on to discuss the Positivist view
of man. The following passages will give some idea of his manner
and style of writing:
Man, so far as natural science itself is able to teach us, is no
longer the final cause of the universe, the heaven-descended heir
of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his history a
brief and discreditable episode in the life of one of the meanest
of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted
a piece or pieces of unorganised jelly into the living progenitors
of humanity, science indeed, as yet, knows nothing. It is enough
that from such beginnings, Famine, Disease, and Mutual Slaughter,
fit nurses of the future lord of creation, have gradually evolved,
after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to know that
it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is
insignificant.
Pages:
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188