all the limits of the Catholic system, expressed itself theoretically in Rousseau and Voltaire, and practically in the French Revolution. The hope of mankind, however, lies in the new synthesis of Positivism, which alone can give due value to the innate altruistic sympathies of man, and which therefore alone can place on a permanent scientific basis that social order which the mediæval Church attempted in vain to found on the essentially egoistic and anarchic doctrine of Monotheism. The fundamental conception, then, which underlies Comte's view of progress is, that every past religion, with the partial exception of Fetichism, has been an amalgam of two radically inconsistent elements, one of which only was due to the theological principle itself; while the other was due, partly to the practical instinct of its priests, which led them to modify the logical results of that principle in conformity with the social wants of man; and partly also to their subordinate position, which obliged them to use the spiritual means of conviction and persuasion instead of the ruder weapons of material force. To criticise fully this position would be to re-write Comte's history of religion. It will be sufficient here to point out that his view of modern history begins in a false interpretation of Christianity, and ends in an equally false interpretation of the Protestant Reformation. Christianity from its origin has two aspects or elements; and if we compare it with earlier religions, we may call these its Pantheistic and its Monotheistic elements. But these elements are not, as Comte asserts, joined together by a mere external necessity. They are necessarily connected in the inner logic of the system; nor can we regard one of them as more or less essential than the other. In the simplest words of the Gospels we find already expressed a sense of reconciliation with God, and therefore with the world and self, which is alien to pure Monotheism, though there is some faint anticipation of it in the later books of the Old Testament. For a spiritual Monotheism, while it awakens a consciousness of the holiness of God, and the sinfulness of the creature, tends to make fear prevail over love, and the sense of separation over the sense of union. The idea of the unity of the Divine and the human--an original unity which yet has to be realized by self-sacrifice--and the corresponding idea that the individual or natural life must be lost in order to save it, were set before humanity, as in one great living picture, in the life and death of Christ. And what was thus directly presented to the heart and the imagination in an individual, was universalized in the writings of St. Paul and St. John: in other words, it was liberated from its peculiar national setting, and used as a key to the general moral history of man. The Messiah of the Jews was exalted into the Divine Logos, and the Cross became the symbol of an atonement and reconciliation between God and man, which has been