Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-03-04


it possible to keepup church organization
upon his new ideas, and he could not be
brought to perceive the inconsistency Of
his position.
The primary object of all religions is
worship; worship of a Something believed
to exercise supreme control over all that
exists, and believed to possess Intelli-
gence, and therefore to be approachable
through Prayer, and capable of placation
by Alteration. This Supreme Something
has been called myriads of names by man.
kind, but the sentiment which first led
Man to worship is at bottom identical
with the sentiment which still leads him
to worship, and this feeling is called the
Religious Sentiment, and has been alleged
by some philosophers to be inseparable
from human nature. That these philoso
pliers were mistaken in their analysis of
human nature is now very effectually
shown in the rapid spread of Agnosticism,
which is state of mind logically exclu.
sive of the Religious Sentiment alto
together. There have been many defini-
lions of Agnosticism, and not few who
thought themselves Agnostics bave shown
themselves by their writings to be Pseudo
Agnostics. OF these latter Auguste Comte
must be reckoned the chief. He would
abandon the Religious Sentiment SO far
as the Supernatural is concerned, but re-
tain it in connection with Humanity ; a
proposition which proves Comte, able
thinker as he was, to have been deeply
tainted with the superstition he imagined
himself to have cast off completely.
DR.. Min has made mistake very SIM
liar to that of Comte. Having discarded
the Supernatural altogether he thought it
still possible to retain the ceremonialism
which belonged to the Supernatural alone.
He thought it possible to maintain some
kind of religious organization on the basis
of Agnosticism, and this shows how very
loosely and inaccurately even clever
men often reason. For to have a
religious organization there must be some
object of worship. A church without wor-
ship would be like theater without a
stage. But Agnosticism does not believe
in any form of worship. It processes
inability to discover anything outside
OF natural phenomena coguized by the hu-
man intellect, and it therefore cannot find
any ground for generation or alteration
Now it should seem clearly preposterOus
for company Of people to meet together
in order to affirm their persuasion of their
ignorance; yet this is what. DR.. Min
seems to have thought it possible to do.
He was too conscientious a man to try to
fuse or confuse the religion he had re-
linuuished with the irreligion he had
reached, but he nevertheless actually
did attempt the anomalous experiment of
Prayer from an Agnostic standpoint.
An Agnostic cannot pray. To him Prayer
is meaningless; mere blind form, signif.
cant only of past superstition. There is no
one and nothing of which he has any
knowledge for him to pray to. He declines
to pretend to look with awe upon what is
simply incomprehenaible to him. He re-
fuses to pay homage to darkness. He will
not admit that he owes allegiance to the
Unknowable. He can see no reason what
ever for bending his knees to any force OF
influence open to his conguition. To pro-
pose prayer to him, therefore, is a solecism.
He has no place for any such ceremony in
his intellectual equipment. DR.. Min,
however, imagined that though there was
no longer anyone or anything to pray to, ii
was worth while to keep up the form Of
Prayer. OF course the attempt was fiat
failure, and the only curious circumstance
is that he should have been unable to fore.
see this. But, as we remarked at the be.
ginning of this article, very few men really
act up to their own creed, and this nc
doubt is the explanation of DR.. Minis con.
Trajectory course. He has discovered by
! this time that in becoming an Atheist he
has stepped beyond the possibility of or.
ganization, and that henceforth he must
be content with his creed.
1t is no doubt true that there are at the
present time a great many socalled
churches which really represent only so
many attempts to square the circle, by
effecting an impossible union between Re
ligion and Agnosticism. Many of these
hold on to Deism by so slender thread
that it is not always discernible, and they
are constantly making holder excursions
towards Agnosticism. They accommodate
those advanced thinkers who have not the
full courage of their convictions, or whose
minds are SO illogical that they find no
difficulty in entertaining Numerically OPP.
posite views at the same time. Bu. it is
evident that for Agnosticism proper for
that which recognizes the full scope Of its
negations, and of its general attitude to-
wards the Supernatural, there can be no
question of organization, or of religious
action or utterance in any shape whatever.
Religion, as implying Worship, is entirely
excluded by Aguosticism, and all of rev.
erence, of veneration, OF awe, of alteration,
is banished from the Agnostic's ken. He
holds, further, that eventually the o,called
Religious Sentiment, the desire to worship
something, will die out, and that supersti-
ton of every kind will disappear, leaving
man to work out his own destiny according
to his own lights But for those who hold
these views it is clear that any kind of
religious organization must be out Of the
question.
COMET OR no COMET.
L. L. 1.