The value of certain of his fundamental doctrines may be questioned, equally with the ruling ideas of his religion, his Messianic role, and his priesthood. But there is nevertheless something sublime in the teaching that individual and social happiness depends upon the degree of affection and goodwill manifested in the human heart. This is no doubt one reason why the adherents of the Positivist Church are so often distinguished by their high morality and their spirit of self-sacrifice. In addition to purely local sects and religions, France has always harboured a number of _Swedenborgians_, whose beliefs have undergone certain modifications on French soil. For instance, thaumaturgy was introduced by Captain Bernard, and healing by means of prayer by Madame de Saint-Amour. But Leboys des Guais, the acknowledged leader of the sect about 1850, reverted to the unalloyed doctrines of the founder, and thanks to Mlle. Holms and M. Humann, and their church in the Rue de Thouin, the Swedenborgian religion still flourishes in France to-day. The _Irvingites_, founded in Scotland towards the end of the eighteenth century, also made many French converts. Irving preached the second coming of Christ, and believed that the Holy Ghost was present in himself. He waited some time for God the Father to endow him with the miraculous gifts needed for establishing the new Church, and then, finding that many of his followers were able to heal the sick with surprising success, he concluded that heaven had deigned to accept him as the "second Saviour." He organised a Catholic Apostolic Church in London, and proclaimed himself its head; while in Paris the principal church of the sect, formerly in the Avenue de Segur, has now been moved to the Rue Francois-Bonvin. Woman is excluded from the cult, and consequently the name of the Virgin is omitted from all Irvingite ceremonies, while the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Virgin are denied. But many other sects exist in addition to those already mentioned. Often their life is short as a summer night, and they appear and disappear, leaving no trace behind them save a passing exaltation in the hearts of their followers. Those who join them seem for a time to be satisfied with dreams and illusions, but usually end by returning to the bosom of the established Church--or by being confined in an asylum. These innumerable sects with their illusory pretensions serve to demonstrate the truth of our thesis--that the most ardent desire of present-day humanity is for the renewal or transformation of the faith to which it has grown accustomed.