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 Same g^ligbtts %B^ut8 oi 1|0sittijisnt. 
 
 A PAPEK 
 
 READ BEFORE THE 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY CHURCH SOCIETY, 
 
 On Jan. 26, 1S80. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. W. LOCK, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW OF ST. MARY MAGDALEN COLLEGE, 
 TUTOR OF KEBLE COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 PRINTED BY REQUEST. 
 
 \ 
 
 OXFORD: 
 
 PRINTED BY E. BAXTER. 
 1881.
 
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 )0nte ^eliginns ^sperts of gosilibism* 
 
 I OUGHT to apologise for venturing to read a 
 paper to you on the subject of Positivism, as I 
 must confess at starting that I have read none 
 of Comte's own works. My excuse can only be 
 (1) that I have had several opportunities lately 
 of hearing or reading some of the chief utterances 
 of English Positivists, so that I may hope not to 
 misrepresent them ; (2) that your President pressed 
 me to read a paper on some subject ; and (3) that 
 I had found on several occasions in talking 
 with undergraduates lately that the subject was 
 one about which they were interested and anxious. 
 I hope, then, that I may not be doing wrong in 
 trying to initiate a discussion on the subject to-night. 
 I will try to put before you shortly a statement 
 of what Positivism aims at doing in the religious 
 sphere ; then to see what are the strong points of 
 it ; lastly, what are the points in which it seems 
 specially open to criticism. 
 
 The point at which we can start best is perhaps 
 to remind ourselves of the fact that Positivism 
 represents a reaction against the theories of the 
 French Revolution. Comte was born in 1798, 
 and died in 1857. The Philosophy of the 18th 
 century, which based all knowledge only on the 
 sensations of the individual, and which pointed
 
 out to man as his ideal an imaginary Law of 
 
 Nature, under which all men were equal, had just 
 
 broken out into the excesses of the Revolution, 
 
 and the aim of all thinking men of the time was 
 
 to revive some social organization which should 
 
 control the individual by his voluntary submission 
 
 to it. The old order seemed to be breaking up, 
 
 and the object was to supply a new order, which 
 
 should control anarchy by organizing a perfect 
 
 society. In order to do this, Comte seems from 
 
 the first to have seen that it was necessary to 
 
 have a religion. And his conception of religion 
 
 is a high conception. Religion is with him a state 
 
 of moral health ; while the absence of it is a state 
 
 of disease*: it is ''a. harmony" — a power which 
 
 makes man at one with himself by subordinating 
 
 his whole nature to one ruling tendency — ^*^the 
 
 perfect unison between man's intellectual convictions 
 
 and his affective nature — both being devoted to a 
 
 wisely ordered activity " ; and further it is a power 
 
 which makes him at harmony with other men, and 
 
 in harmony with the world around him. Rehgion 
 
 is *' emotion inspired by knowledge into action." It 
 
 is to secure alike personal unity and social unity. 
 
 Such is the aim: how is it to be acquired? Look- 
 ing at the history of mankind, Comte argues that 
 
 a *' Toutes (religions) meme les plus imparfaites sont pre- 
 ferables, quand elles rallient, au scepticisme dispersif." And 
 again : *' L'irreligion est letat de maladie, de perturbation de 
 I'unite. ... II y a le cote intellectuel qui consiste a ne pas 
 reconnaitre la subordination de la vie humaine envers una 
 puissance superieure. ... II y a le cote morale, c'est a dire, la 
 predominance permanente ou alternative de quelqu'un ou de 
 quelqu'uns des penchants egoistes." (Comte.) 

 
 I 
 
 man is divided between two tendencies — a strong 
 selfish instinct making him care for himself, and 
 a weak social tendency making him subordinate 
 himself to others; and it is obvious that his hap- 
 piness has been secured whenever the latter has 
 triumphed over the former. But how is this triumph 
 to be secured ? Hitherto it has been secured by 
 behef in God, in a strong power outside man who 
 is on the side of unselfishness. First, the heathen 
 had his fetich ; then came polytheism ; then the 
 highest form of monotheism — one God controlling 
 and directing all the world, and to this man's heart 
 could bow. But unfortunately his intellect rejects 
 such a Being now. For men's minds have passed 
 through three stages of growth in this matter : first, 
 the theological stage, in which separate Gods or 
 one God were supposed by acts of their personal 
 will to direct each event ; then such arbitrariness 
 was denied, and there followed the metaphysical 
 stage, in which men attributed such power to ab- 
 stractions, such as a first cause ; and, finally, even 
 that broke down, and then came the positive stage, 
 in which men acknowledge that they cannot know 
 God or first causes, but only can know phenomena, 
 actual facts and the laws which regulate them. 
 God cannot be known : we can only know facts. 
 But what then are we to worship ? The mere 
 observance of external law might evoke our sub- 
 mission : it could not evoke our love ; and would 
 only make religion an obedience of irresistible 
 fatalism. 
 
 The intellect and the heart are at variance : how 
 are they to be reconciled ? This Comte thinks
 
 he has performed by discovering that the realm of 
 law exists not only in lower inorganic nature, but 
 in human life ; the study of history reveals a growth, 
 a progress in humanity ; the actual efforts of real 
 living men in the past have constituted laws ; they 
 have shewn, for instance, that " to live for others " 
 is the true source of happiness; "Humanity" then 
 is a hving power, which has been controlling men, 
 controlling nature to man's use, overruling history ; 
 and so it is a power which can not only excite 
 our submission, but our love, and which at the 
 same time calls forth all our activities, because 
 even yet it has not attained its perfection : there 
 is much yet to be done to make human hfe perfect. 
 The principle of Positivism as a rehgion is therefore 
 Affection — living for others : the foundation of it 
 is order, — obedience, that is, to the laws of Nature 
 as revealed by Science : the end of it is progress, 
 the perfection of human hfe. The powers which 
 act upon each man are also three-fold : first, there 
 is the family in which the child gets his first 
 training ; in it the woman, the noblest part, becomes 
 the servant of the whole, and she in her turn becomes 
 the object of worship, whether as wife, mother, or 
 daughter : next, the city controls men's common 
 life, and duty to it carries on the work of self- 
 subordination : finally, the Church presides over all, 
 and its priests direct the activities of the whole 
 body, and organize the worship which is devoted 
 to the whole spirit of Humanity, past, present, and 
 future. 
 
 The religion as organized at the end of his life 
 by Comte is most elaborate, and is an almost
 
 absurd travesty of Catholicism : it has its Calendar, 
 its Pontiff, its Trinity, its Madonna, its seven Sacra- 
 ments, its method of crossing itself, and many other 
 minutiae ; but these are not necessary for our purpose. 
 I have said enough to shew what is the main prin- 
 ciple of the religion ; how it professes to rest simply 
 upon ascertainable facts, the lives of the great and 
 good of the past and the spirit that animates them, 
 and gains its strength and inspiration from meditation 
 upon these lives. I will read two extracts from 
 Positivist writers, in order to avoid any danger of 
 misrepresentation. 
 
 " This new science reveals to us the laws of a 
 Force towards which we can feel the highest 
 sense of Sympathy, to whose service we can 
 devote ourselves, whose mighty Power over us 
 we cannot gainsay, whilst we must accept it with 
 Love and Reverence. That Force is the vast 
 and overwhelming consensus of all human lives, 
 the complex movement through the ages of human 
 civilisation and thought. Before this crucial dis- 
 covery of human Intelligence it was impossible 
 to feel that the truths of science and our noblest 
 sympathies had a common object or field. One 
 might wonder at the Firmament of Stars and 
 delight in our study of the Planets ; but it was 
 idle to love the Planets, or to feel ourselves 
 inspired by the Milky Way. It was marvellous 
 to track the secrets of electricity, or the analysis 
 of gases ; but the lives of men and women were 
 never ordered by profound affection for electricity 
 or gas. The study of all the forms of life upon 
 the earth enlarged our minds, and the physiology
 
 of the human frame shewed us how fearfully and 
 wonderfully we are made ; but no man could 
 love the Vegetable or Animal kingdoms as a whole. 
 Nay, Anatomy, or even Vivisection itself, were not 
 found altogether conducive to a reverential and 
 sympathetic state of Mind. 
 
 " But when we passed into Social Science and 
 found how all the other sciences had their issue 
 and meaning in the Science of Man, when we 
 found how they all served as the instruments 
 and materials for the glorious human Fabric, when 
 we learned how the long succession of ages had 
 developed man's mind and powers, how civilisation 
 was advancing with sure and widening progress, 
 how the efforts of the human race stood round 
 each of us from the cradle to the grave, how the 
 thoughts of the wise, and the works of heroes, 
 and the influence of every noble life made us 
 what we are — then we felt at last that the Realm 
 of Law was become the Realm of Love. There 
 was now a human Providence which watched over 
 us, taught us, guided us, ruled us ; there was a 
 supreme Power which we might serve, but which 
 we could not contend with ; there was a Cause 
 to which to devote our lives, and which could 
 inspire all the warmth of our souls. That cause 
 was the onward march of the human race, and 
 its continual rising to a better mode of life^." 
 
 And, again : 
 
 "By thought and by feeling we seek to enter 
 into the presence of that assemblage of noble 
 lives, who, from the earliest ages until now, have 
 ^ Science and Humanity, by F. Harrison, p. 23, 24.
 
 laboured for the benefit of men, and have left a 
 store of material and spiritual good, from which 
 all the blessings of our present life have issued. 
 Before the resistless power of this unseen host 
 we bow in thankful submission ; knowing well 
 that of ourselves we are insufficient, either to see 
 or to do what is right. Whatever wider thoughts 
 or generous impulses prompt us to rise above 
 ourselves, and to live unselfishly, come to us 
 from a higher source. They are the free gift 
 of Humanity. 
 
 " We commemorate, therefore, with thankful 
 hearts the service rendered by the countless gene- 
 rations of men, from the earliest ages till now, 
 who lived and died unknown, but whose labours 
 are our inheritance ; the love that bound them 
 to a common hearth ; the loyalty that knit them 
 together in danger ; the gentle courage that brought 
 the higher animal races into friendly service ; the 
 subtlety of hand and eye that mastered the first 
 arts of peaceful union ; the simple beliefs that 
 fostered the first germs of reverence : for these 
 things are at the root of human progress, the 
 starting-point in the struggle upwards to a higher 
 life\" 
 
 These quotations will shew the real strength and 
 importance of this religious power. And perhaps 
 we may say that the chief point which we should 
 single out for praise is its high conception of religion, 
 that harmony of all man's powers, and of man with 
 
 c Prayer and Work, by J. H. Bridges, p. 4, 5.
 
 8 
 
 all around him ^ : and this grandeur of conception 
 is gained in three ways : 
 
 (i) It insists that religion shall be a thing based 
 ON FACTS, moulding this life, and not a mere aspi- 
 ration about a future world. This is surely of 
 the very essence of the Gospel message : " This 
 is eternal life to know Thee the only God, &c.;" 
 "The kingdom of Heaven is come among you;" 
 and the like. It is almost marvellous how men 
 of the ability of these writers wholly misunderstand 
 Christianity in this way. No doubt much of the 
 blame must be laid upon our own misrepresentation 
 of it ; and yet, when we have made all allowances, 
 it is hard to be patient with such a caricature as 
 this : " Theology says (and it may say truly) its 
 Principle too is Love. Yes! it is the Love of God. 
 But there it stops. It does not pretend to say 
 that its Foundation is Order (i.e. positive knowledge 
 of real things), still less can it say its End is 
 Progress — physical, material, intellectual, as well 
 as moral, progress. It can only ejaculate that 
 its foundation is a Divine Order, a thing ever 
 shifting, vague, and purely hypothetical ; its end 
 is a transcendental Progress to a supersensuous 
 crown of glory. To positive science, to practical 
 human improvement, it has nothing whatever to 
 
 ^ " The intellectual side includes the adequate conception of 
 the general laws of physics, of life, of society, to which our 
 feelings and our actions are subordinated. The moral part 
 by discipline, regulates our conduct at once public and private, 
 and under the shape of worship guides and intensifies our 
 feelings." Westcott : The Gospel of the Eesurrection — Ap- 
 pendix, (in which will be found a very sympathetic account 
 of the religious sides of Positivism.)
 
 say, except "set not your thoughts and affections 
 on this world." In doing this. Theology withdraws 
 from human nature. It says to the heart. Worship, 
 love, obey. To the Intellect, to the Character, it 
 has nothing to say at all, but a pious hope that 
 they will both act to the honour and glory of 
 God : and both put their own interpretation on 
 that\" 
 
 (ii) This grandeur is also gained by the insistance 
 on the need of hioivledge ; treated as a religious 
 act, and a necessary condition of real religious 
 work. " Society cannot be touched without know- 
 ledge." 
 
 (iii) It emphasizes the social character of religion. 
 Here perhaps we are most to blame, for our mis- 
 representations of Christianity. In the autumn 
 I heard Dr. Congreve lecture on Positivism, and 
 he then stated that the reason why Christianity 
 must fail to meet the needs of the present age 
 was, that its message was simply that of a personal 
 salvation given by a personal Saviour. Now no 
 doubt Christianity proclaims that, and so pre- 
 serves the eternal individuality of each life in a 
 way in which Positivism does not. But at the 
 same time how little is this a full representation 
 of Christianity! for how does the individual get 
 his salvation ? Only by incorporation into a body, 
 into the Church : he is only one member of a 
 large whole, and gets his full life only when that 
 has its full life, suffering when it suffers, and 
 rejoicing when it rejoices. It may be said that 
 the Church is a narrow exclusive body ; but this 
 « Science and Humanity, p. 10.
 
 10 
 
 again is surely a misunderstanding. The Church 
 is essentially Catholic ; that is to say, it is as wide 
 as Humanity, and is open to all men who submit 
 to the necessary purification which human nature 
 requires for its perfection ; and it is never satisfied 
 until it has become Catholic. In respect of mere 
 external Communion the Church as a body is at 
 least far wider than Positivism as a body. In 
 respect of sympathy with goodness and truth 
 outside that body, the Church is exactly in the 
 same position as Positivism ; she recognises all 
 elements of good in heathen rehgion, sympathizes 
 with them, draws inspiration from them, and holds 
 out the ideal that all alike will hereafter be united 
 in one fold under one Shepherd. 
 
 But while this is so, we must confess that this 
 side of teaching has been much ignored in England, 
 and that we need to make our teaching more 
 definite about the Saints, as stimulating sources of 
 strength and life to us ; and about the Church, as 
 a great body moving onward, drawing in all that 
 is good and consecrating it, and sweeping it on to 
 ultimate harmony and perfection. Further, we need 
 to emphasize what St. John meant by the doctrine 
 of the Word, and St. Paul by insisting on the Pre- 
 existence of Christ and his work in Creation ; viz. 
 that there was in all life, all development of human 
 nature, an underlying work of God, which is not in 
 antithesis to, but only culminates in, the Incarnation. 
 
 But I must pass to the points where it seems 
 to me Positivism lies most open to criticism. 
 
 (i) On the intellectual side. The law of the 
 three stages is one point. That has often been
 
 11 
 
 criticised as really a confusion : it does not re- 
 present three distinct epochs of time : it really 
 represents three aspects of looking at the world — 
 the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific, 
 — all of which have always existed side by side, 
 and which do not exclude each other ; nay, rather 
 the conception of God and the metaphysical unity 
 of thought and its object has grown fuller instead 
 of weaker with the revelation of law. To discover 
 law is not to lose sight of God. 
 
 Further, Comte's own religion is itself inconsistent 
 with the law and his own philosophical position. 
 He rejects the knowledge of God, because we can 
 only know phenomena ; but he himself adds to 
 the phenomena an abstraction of his own. The 
 mere idea of " humanity " is never revealed to us 
 by the senses : it is not a phenomenon ; it is an 
 abstraction, an idea read into the facts by his own 
 mind. Further, the idea of " progressiveness " in 
 humanity, that again is an idea supplied by himself. 
 We do not indeed find fault with his action ; it 
 is the legitimate function of the mind ; but we say 
 that it is inconsistent with his own principles. Once 
 again, his theory has this drawback — that it leaves 
 humanity dissociated from external nature : he 
 regards external nature as a fatal environment 
 which men have to struggle against, and he invokes 
 poetry to revive the old belief in human feelings 
 animating nature. We, on the other hand, carry 
 on the legitimate function of the mind : we are 
 conscious of our power of knowing nature as well 
 as humanity : we imagine that this power implies 
 some ground of union between us and the objects
 
 12 
 
 of our knowledge ; and in this underlying principle, 
 animating and uniting all the universe, we see 
 God's will. 
 
 Christianity, no less than Positivism, aims at 
 producing a harmony between man and his en- 
 vironment ; but it is more logical, because it 
 assumes a common principle in both, while mere 
 Humanity stands apart from the Cosmos ^ 
 
 (ii) This first point of criticism is one which 
 requires some philosophical training to appreciate : 
 the next is one which is simpler, and yet it seems 
 to me equally strong. It is this : the treatment 
 of Jesus Christ. Here Positivism is condemned 
 by its own principles : it professes to worship all 
 that is great in Humanity : it denies that there 
 is a God, so that Jesus Christ on its principles 
 must have been purely human ; and certainly it 
 cannot be denied that He has had, and has now, 
 more influence upon the progress of Humanity than 
 any one other man ; and yet He is not included 
 in the Positivist Calendar. St. Paul, St. Augustine, 
 St. Bernard, all these are ranked before Him, as 
 well as all the founders of other religions. The 
 pretext is of course that St. Paul, not Jesus, was 
 the founder of Christianity ; but what a con- 
 demnation such a judgment is of the system! Any 
 Positivist to whom 1 have spoken has admitted 
 that Comte was wrong ; but if so, what a failure ! 
 how can we trust the methods and the systems 
 which, when applied to so crucial a test, produce 
 so perverse a result 1 Certainly, whatever truth 
 
 ^ Comte's intellectual inconsistency is ably treated by Prof. Caird 
 in the Contemporary Review for May, June, July, Sept. 1878.
 
 13 
 
 there is in Positivism, it will have entirely to modify 
 its attitude to Jesus Christ; and we Christians must 
 be helping on the cause of truth, by insisting on 
 His supreme claims upon the worship of mankind. 
 
 (iii) There is another point which is drawn out 
 fully by Dr. Abbott (Through Nature to Christ, 
 c. iii.) in connexion with Christ, and that is the 
 absence of any test by which to decide what part 
 of Humanity we are to worship. Evidently, we 
 do not worship all Humanity; we need some test. 
 " If we are to worship Humanity, we are not to 
 be expected to worship Humanity cannibaHzing, 
 or oppressing, or retrograding, or stagnating ; the 
 object of our worship is clearly to be Humanity 
 progressing." But then we need a test ; each 
 individual worshipper needs some test simple and 
 clear. To take one instance, which is perhaps 
 helpful. At the time of the Crucifixion, what was 
 the true object of worship to those round the 
 Cross? was it humanity crucifying, or was it the 
 Crucified ? and, if the latter, does not He supply 
 us with a test, which Humanity does not give ? 
 
 (iv) Positivism may be charged with ignoring 
 parts of human nature. I do not see what its 
 teaching is about sin and the need of atonement: 
 it ignores again all the instincts which point to 
 a conscious life beyond the grave. It claims 
 indeed to be more unselfish than Christianity, be- 
 cause its idea of immortality is ''subjective"; i.e. it 
 exists only in the result of our own lives as affecting 
 the future progress of Humanity, and as living 
 enshrined in the memory of others. All of you 
 will remember George EHot's beautiful expression
 
 14 
 
 of this hope. But such an immortality is equally 
 selfish with the Christian idea, if it is regarded as 
 administering to one's own self-satisfiedness^. Really 
 either hope is equally unselfish ; but the Christian 
 satisfies our instincts more thoroughly, and cor- 
 responds to all the analogies which this life affords, 
 in which, after every act of self-sacrifice, our life 
 remains, not only in its influence on others, but 
 also in a consciousness of its own existence stronger 
 than before. In other words (to borrow from Pro- 
 fessor Westcott), while the Positivist ideal of life 
 insists on the need of totahty, continuity, and 
 solidarity, — that is to say, that no Hfe can be 
 complete unless all its parts are developed with 
 relation to the whole of the universe, unless it 
 recognises its debt to the past and its connexion 
 with the life of all other men, — the Christian ideal 
 adds the further need of infinity. Besides, it must 
 be remembered, when we estimate such hope of 
 immortality as a stimulus to action, that science 
 prevents us from looking to the everlasting progress 
 of Humanity, because it foretells the destruction of 
 the earth ; so that men are far less likely to worship 
 an object which may cease at any day, than one 
 which is infinite and can survive the destruction 
 of its present environment. 
 
 These are some of the points which I hope may 
 lead to discussion. Practically, where Positivism is 
 positive it is a gain, a new reading and emphasizing 
 of much that was in Christian theory. Where it 
 is negative there it fails, and shews an ignorance 
 
 e See the Sermon on Eternal Life in Prof. Mozley's Uni- 
 versity Sermons. 
 
 ii
 
 15 
 
 of the capacities of human powers. It says, you 
 cannot know God : we say, the human mind can 
 know such an abstraction as Humanity, and logically 
 it is quite as easy to believe in knowing the wider 
 abstraction — God. It says, God cannot interfere 
 with law : we say, partly, that we do not wish 
 Him to, that we can trace and submit ourselves 
 to Him when working through Revealed laws ; 
 partly, that what we see in Nature is not so much 
 fixed law, as the subordination of one law to others, 
 and that consistently with this God can take up 
 and control all lower laws to minister to men's 
 spiritual welfare ; He can even enable man to break 
 with the past, with the laws of sin which were 
 binding him, and start anew under the operation 
 of a new spiritual law called into operation by 
 the unique Personality of Christ. 
 
 To sum up, the strength of Positivism lies in 
 this, that it supplies a motive apparently more tangible 
 than God ; but it is weak, inasmuch as that motive 
 has not the intrinsic power (through faihng in 
 infinity), nor the same unlimited extent as that 
 of God. As yet the power of its motives has 
 not been tested : its followers are people who 
 have inherited a morality which is the outcome 
 of Christian motives : what the result will be when 
 the ideas of God and of personal immortahty are 
 generally broken down, the future alone can shew. 
 
 It contains no new truth : all that is new is 
 the denial of parts of what we accept as truth, 
 and so it does compel us to see that our religion 
 is not narrow, but all-embracing : it does compel 
 us to look to the questions which it denies, the
 
 16 
 
 possibility of knowing God and of His working 
 miracles ; and while these can be answered partly 
 on intellectual grounds, still the chief answer will 
 be that of Christian lives; if they know the influence 
 of the Spirit blowing where it hsteth, they will 
 provide the surest argument for ourselves and for 
 others* 
 
 BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.

 
 
 
 
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