reach far away beyond the earth and its destinies, and connect him with
some timeless and holy mystery.

Thus theism, whether it be true or no, can give a logical and a full
account of the supposed nature of the moral end, and of its supposed
importance. Let us turn now to positivism, and consider what is its
position. The positivist, we must remember, conceives of the moral end
in the same way, and sets upon it the same value. Let us see how far his
own premisses will give him any support in this. These premisses, so far
as they differ from those of theism, consist of two great denials:
there is no personal God, and there is no personal immortality. We will
glance rapidly at the direct results of these.

In the first place, they confine all the life with which we can have the
least moral connection to the surface of this earth, and to the limited
time for which life and consciousness can exist upon it. They isolate
the moral law, as I shall show more clearly hereafter, from any law or
force in the universe that may be wider and more permanent. When the
individual dies, he can only be said to live by metaphor, in the results
of his outward actions. When the race dies, in no thinkable way can we
say that it will live at all. Everything will then be as though it never
had been. Whatever humanity may have done before its end arrives,
however high it may have raised itself, however low it may have sunk
itself,

_The event
Will trammel up the consequence, and catch
With its success surcease_.

All the vice of the world, and all its virtue, all its pleasures and all