have formed the national life. A hearty belief in the principle that "Progress can only arise out of the development of order" is not a "note" of Comtism. It is the hereditary faith of English Liberalism.

I may say more. "Comte's great aphorism" is a roughly accurate expression of the law which has determined the action of Christianity on political institutions, and on the social order. Christianity has sought revolutionary ends by Conservative means. There are many indications in the New Testament that the earliest Christian converts resented the contrast between the actual organization of society and the genius and principles of the Christian faith. The characteristic spirit of the Church was irreconcilably hostile to the order of the ancient world. It was a revolutionary spirit, and the apostles watched with keen solicitude, and even with alarm, the restlessness and impatience of some of their converts. How could slavery be reconciled with that idea of human brotherhood, which was one of the most energetic forces in the life of the Church, or with the present relations to God and the infinite hopes of the obscurest of mankind which held so conspicuous a place in the Christian Gospel? What claim had the political authorities of a world "lying in wickedness" on the obedience of those who had passed into a Divine kingdom, and who were the sons of God? The sagacity and firmness of the leaders of the new movement averted a collision with the institutions of the Pagan world which would have wrecked the Christian Church and destroyed the chances of the rise of a Christian civilization. They insisted that "there is no power but of God," and that "the powers that be are ordained of God." They taught Christian enthusiasm to recognize a Divine presence in the secular order of society. The emperor, the proconsuls, the magistrates-Pagans though they were-had an authority which appealed to the Christian "conscience;" every one of them was "a minister of God;" they were discharging wisely or unwisely, justly or unjustly, the functions of a Divine "Service." Even the intolerable institution of slavery was not to be destroyed by violence; but Christian slaves and Christian masters were taught to cherish a spirit which would alleviate the injustice of the institution while it existed, and at last compel a reorganization of industry on new and more equitable principles. Slaves were told that they were to serve their masters "with good will," "knowing that whatsoever good thing each one doeth, the same shall he receive again from the Lord, whether he be bond or free." Masters were charged to act towards their slaves in the same spirit, and to "forbear threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in Heaven, and there is no respect of persons with Him."

I think that Mr. Harrison himself would acknowledge that English Liberalism, when most completely penetrated by Christian faith and

Christian passion has been most conspicuous for the blending of patience with enthusiasm, of reverence for law with a devotion to freedom. I may be pardoned, perhaps, for saying that, in my judgment, the reconciliation of "Progress" with "Order" in the political life of England during the last two hundred years has been largely owing to the great influence which religious faith has exerted on those who were the strength of the Whigs in the last century and now constitute the strength of the Liberal party. With occasional aberrations, the Nonconformists have been the consistent supporters of a policy of political and social reform; but their religious instincts have prevented them from breaking violently with the traditions of the nation. M. Comte's aphorism might be taken as the political device-not merely of English Liberalism generally -but of that section of English Liberalism which is most intensely Christian.

Nor was there anything that necessarily identified M. Gambetta with the political ideas of Comtism in his endeavour to add strength to the central government of France. I happened to be in the Chamber on that damp and cold Saturday afternoon in the middle of January last year when he submitted his project for the revision of the Constitution; and the manner in which the proposal to adopt the scrutin de liste was received by the Deputies, the coldness of the great Minister's own supporters, and the demonstrative and insulting derision of his opponents, justified the profoundest anxiety for the future of the Republic. There was nothing in the scrutin de liste to create distrust in an English Liberal, or in any intelligent friend of Parliamentary Government. It had become clear that no Ministry could rely on a firm and steady support from a Chamber returned under the present electoral system. As long as that system lasts, the local and personal claims of candidates are almost certain to have undue weight with the electors. Local influence and local services which might constitute admirable reasons for making a man member of a municipality will continue to secure his election to the Chamber. If elections are to turn upon large political questions, and if the interests of the nation are to take precedence of the interests of the locality, it is necessary that the constituencies should be greatly enlarged. It was objected that had M. Gambetta's scheme been accepted, he would have secured the command of an enormous number of seats. No local organization for the selection of candidates existed, and the Republicans throughout France would have voted according to directions issued by a Central Committee in Paris, in which M. Gambetta's influence would have been supreme. With his genius for political strategy, and with his immense personal popularity in nearly every part of the country, he might have been able to return two-thirds of the Chamber, and would have held the fortunes of the French people in his hands. Perhaps so. But if he

was really the trusted chief of the nation,-if, as soon as the electors were liberated from local attachments and began to think of the interests of France, they thought only of him, the principles of representative government required that this immense and unique influence should be expressed and organized in the Representative Chamber. Parliamentary institutions are worthless if the statesman whom the nation desires as its ruler cannot command a parliamentary majority, and while this anomaly continues, no Government relying on parliamentary institutions can have any real authority and force. M. Comte was in the right when he recognized the exceptional importance of the personal influence of statesmen at times when national institutions have not lasted long enough to root themselves deeply in the affection and veneration of the people, and when the national life is not penetrated by common traditions and common principles. While he lived M. Gambetta held France together. For several years before his death he was the only statesman who kindled the imagination and commanded the confidence of the great majority of the French people, and parliamentary institutions in France would have been greatly strengthened if M. Gambetta had been supported in the Chamber of Deputies by a majority which fairly represented his power in the nation.

His authority would have been surrounded and limited from the first by very strong checks. It would have been qualified by the keen, and brilliant, and merciless criticism both in the Chamber and in the press with which every French Ministry has to reckon; and the electoral system which gave him ascendency would probably have created, in a very few years, checks of another kind, which would have been of inestimable value to French political life. For a time, no doubt, a Central Republican Committee might have controlled the Republican party throughout the country, but this would have been only for a time. The great provincial constituencies would not have consented to submit permanently to the direction of Paris. Local political organizations would have been called into existence to select candidates and to secure their return, and these organizations would have developed and disciplined political intelligence and political earnestness throughout France. A universal interest in national-as distinguished from local-affairs is indispensable to the strength of representative institutions.

There was nothing distinctively Comtist in the policy symbolized by the scrutin de liste; it might have been accepted as frankly

* "Le besoin social de ménager toute puissance réelle, surtout l'ascendant moral, plus rare et plus important qu'aucun autre, s'aggrave beaucoup de nos jours, par le prix exceptionnel qu'acquièrent les personnes en un temps où il ne peut encore exister de veritables principes."-Discours sur l'ensemble du Positivisme, preface, xi. The extract is from a letter to M. Littré in which M. Comte expresses his regret for having made an attack on M. Arago. The letter is dated February 27, 1848, three days after the outbreak of the Revolution which overthrew Louis Philippe. It might have been written at any time since 1870. It might be written now.

by a Christian statesman as by a Positivist. Nor is there any reason, as far as I know, to suspect that this policy was only the mask of designs which M. Gambetta could not avow. I have been accustomed to believe in the sincerity of his loyalty to Parliamentary Government. He wanted to rule France, but he wanted to rule her by the free consent of a Chamber which was a true representative of the national mind and temper. It was one of the chief elements of his force that he felt himself akin to the people. Their passions, their hopes, their fears were his. He spoke their language, and what gave volcanic energy to his eloquence was his consciousness that he was speaking, not for himself merely, but for them. He trusted himself

and his fortunes to the French nation without fear, as a strong swimmer trusts himself to the sea. All that he asked for was an Assembly that really expressed the political spirit and the political will of the nation. With his whole heart he was persuaded that such an Assembly had a right to determine who should rule the country. This, at least, is my own estimate of M. Gambetta's political spirit and aims. He did not, like M. Comte, regard parliamentary institutions with distrust and hostility. He did not hope for the time when the functions of the Chamber might be limited to the periodical voting of the necessary taxes. He did not believe that representative government would soon be discredited in France as being necessarily incompetent to the direction of national policy, and necessarily inconsistent with national security and order. The surprising political scheme developed in the fourth volume of the Politique Positive was inconsistent with all that was noblest and most energetic in his political temper. The suppression of political freedom, the concentration of supreme power in the hands of a personal ruler uncontrolled by representative institutions, and the ultimate supremacy of a financial triumvirate unchecked except by the moral influence of "the spiritual power," and invested with authority to appoint their successors-this was surely not the programme of M. Gambetta. His political methods and his political ideals-unless France and Europe grossly misunderstood him-were very remote from the political methods and political ideals of M. Comte.

But if he was not a Positivist in Politics, was he a Positivist in Religion? Was he-if not a Hebrew of the Hebrews-a proselyte of the gate? Mr. Harrison says:—

"He is the one European statesman of this century who systematically and formally repudiated any kind of acceptance of theology. . . . . Had his

"Par suite même de sa récente extension, le mode representatif sera sans doute bientôt discrédité en France, quand cet extrême essor aura manifesté l'insuffisance radicale et la tendance perturbatrice que lui reproche la vraie philosophie.”—Discours sur l'ensemble du Positivisme, p. 122.

+ To M. Comte the "Religion" and the "Politics" were indissolubly united. But I suppose that there may be an acceptance of the central ideas of the "Religion of Humanity" without an acceptance of the extraordinary political scheme under which M. Comte believed that the Religion would find its most natural and most complete organization.

rejection of theology been simply negative, had he been a mere sceptic like Thiers, or an empty scoffer like Rochefort, it is little that we should find to honour and respect in his secular belief. But the soul of Gambetta was not the soul of scoffer or sceptic. He had a religion in his soul, though he had neither God nor saint, though he never bowed the knee in the temple of Rimmon. His religion was France, an imperfect and but narrow image indeed of that Humanity which we meet here to acknowledge and to serve, but a part of that Humanity and an organ and an emblem of it. His religious life, like his political life, remained but a fragment and a hope. Both have closed at the age of forty-four."

any

That M. Gambetta had a passionate love for France, that the glory of France filled his imagination, that his highest ethical law was to serve France, that he would have died for France as Christian martyrs have died for Christ, is no doubt true. But what advantage is there in describing this as Religion instead of describing it as Patriotism? Even on Mr. Harrison's own principles is there not a certain peril in the description? It is a very long time since I read considerable portion of M. Comte's later writings, and the details of those immense and elaborate speculations which constitute the creed, the ethics, the cultus, and the polity of the "Religion of Humanity" have faded very much from my memory; but I have always retained the impression that in the general scheme of the Positivist faith there are many high and noble ethical elements. Since reading Mr. Harrison's article I have turned once more to the volumes of the Politique Positive; and as I have read again some of the which arrested me when I read them first, many years ago, passages the impression has been renewed. But the ethical power and dignity of the "Religion of Humanity" appear to me to depend on a frank and unreserved acceptance of its fundamental principle. Comtist "Orthodoxy" is essential to Comtist "Ethics." The true creed is necessary to the perfect life. As soon as we attribute to a single nation the supremacy belonging to the race, the very foundations of the ethics of Positivism are broken up, the test of Duty is lost, allegiance is transferred to a usurping authority. To put France in the place of the Grand Etre is to be guilty of what the old Hebrew prophets called idolatry. It is worse than bowing the knee in the temple of Rimmon; it is an actual transference of the devotion of the heart and the obedience of the life from the true God to one of. the gods of the nations. In the life of a private person this "idolatry" might not fatally, or even seriously, affect the standard of morals. For the regulation of the personal conduct of the individual, and for the ordinary functions of citizenship, the nation may stand for that Humanity of which, as Mr. Harrison says, it is an "imperfect" and "narrow image ;" but for the statesman the difference is of infinite practical importance. If a statesman has "systematically and formally repudiated any kind of acceptance of theology," and if, therefore, he does not recognize the sovereignty of a God whose will is the expression of the eternal law of righteous