ideally present. Such an object Theism and Christianity offer to the
believer: but the condition may be fulfilled, if not in a manner
strictly equivalent, by another object. It has been said that whoever
believes in "the Infinite nature of Duty," even if he believe in nothing
else, is religious. M. Comte believes in what is meant by the infinite
nature of duty, but ho refers the obligations of duty, as well as all
sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once ideal and real;
the Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, including the past, the
present, and the future. This great collective existence, this "Grand
Etre," as he terms it, though the feelings it can excite are necessarily
very different from those which direct themselves towards an ideally
perfect Being, has, as he forcibly urges, this advantage in respect to
us, that it really needs our services, which Omnipotence cannot, in any
genuine sense of the term, be supposed to do: and M. Comte says, that
assuming the existence of a Supreme Providence (which he is as far from
denying as from affirming), the best, and even the only, way in which we
can rightly worship or serve Him, is by doing our utmost to love and
serve that other Great Being, whose inferior Providence has bestowed on
us all the benefits that we owe to the labours and virtues of former
generations. It may not be consonant to usage to call this a religion;
but the term so applied has a meaning, and one which is not adequately
expressed by any other word. Candid persons of all creeds may be willing
to admit, that if a person has an ideal object, his attachment and sense
of duty towards which are able to control and discipline all his other
sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to him a rule of life, that
person has a religion: and though everyone naturally prefers his own
religion to any other, all must admit that if the object of this
attachment, and of this feeling of duty, is the aggregate of our
fellow-creatures, this Religion of the Infidel cannot, in honesty and
conscience, be called an intrinsically bad one. Many, indeed, may be