story of humanity, these glorious poets have a lasting claim on our reverence, and a truly religious use in making us comprehend the height and the depth of the human soul. To understand this, to be inspired by it, to work towards it as towards a 'new life,' is religion. This is to live: In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn Certainly, the main aim of the Newton Hall addresses has been to illustrate, explain, and enforce the essential maxims and principles of a religion of Human Duty, to awaken the sense of man's dependence on the human Providence which surrounds him from the cradle to the grave, and to comprehend the material environment in which his life is cast. And for this end no means of rousing the emotions to a devotional spirit has been neglected, short of any attempt to invoke the creatures of our own imaginations, to persuade ourselves of the reality of things of which we can have no certain knowledge. And, accordingly, we have collected a small volume of well-known hymns and poems which were sung by a trained choir with an organ accompaniment. Although containing nothing theological or superhuman, it had pieces by Cardinal Newman, George Herbert, Archbishop Trench, C. Wesley, and by Goethe, Wordsworth, Carlyle, Shelley, Browning, G. Eliot, Blake, and Tennyson. It has also hymns written by our own members for such special occasions as Birth, Marriage, Death, Morning, Evening, the Day of All the Dead, and New Year's Day. A word now about those special occasions which Comte called Sacraments. This grand old word, the military oath, adopted by the Church from the Roman army, properly means nothing but the public pledge to fulfil some sacred duty, and Comte borrowed it to denote a religious ceremony which might give a public consecration to some critical epoch of life. There was nothing mystical or fanciful about this. The idea of Positivism is to connect each typical event in the life of the individual with the interests of society at large by a public profession of duty under some visible external sanction. The presentation of a child, and the public promises of its parents and sponsors, answer to Baptism. Initiation, at the entrance on systematic education, is the same as Confirmation. Admission is the entrance on adult manhood or 'coming of age.' Destination is the public adoption of a profession or career. Thus, when one of our body went out to his office as Consul in the East, he was publicly reminded in a special address of the duties he had undertaken, and he publicly pledged himself to fulfil them in the service of humanity. I suppose no other religious community ever dealt with a diplomatic official in this way, or would exactly know how the Christian formularies could be adapted to such a purpose. To the Positivist this is easy and natural, and of really great importance. Would that Lord Milner and Lord Curzon could have taken such a Sacrament and listened to such admonition, when they went to assume their Vice-regal functions! The most common of these Sacraments, of which Comte proposed nine, are Marriage and Burial. These have been constantly celebrated in Newton Hall with appropriate forms. They are published, and any one who looks into the books will see that they come quite naturally out of the Positivist scheme of life and religion. For Marriage, it borrows from the Church the admirable question and answer which the Church borrowed from the Stipulatio of Roman Law. The ring, and mutual promises of husband and wife, are the inheritance of monogamic civilisation. The exhortation naturally avoids the gross and monkish crudities of the Church service, and the ceremony concludes with a discourse on the history, meaning, and duties of marriage, and hymns by the choir. Indeed, a wedding at Newton Hall is usually pronounced to be both a graceful and an impressive ceremony, bringing home to bride and bridegroom the tremendous responsibilities of married life, calling on them to make serious pledges of duty face to face with their families and their fellow-believers, and dedicating their lives, not only to each other but to the community in which they live. It is no longer an affair of clothes, simpering, and idle jollification, such that the conventional phrases of the bishop and his assisting priests are lost in the chatter of a dressy mob and the contemplation of costly' presents. The Funeral or Memorial Address for the dead has always been a central interest to Positivists, and for twenty years has been in practice with the Newton Hall body. Comte instituted nothing in the way of ritual for this or any other sacrament, nor have we attempted to found any formal ceremony. At times beside the open grave, or at the crematorium, or in a mere memorial address after interment, the religion of humanity affords abundant scope for fitting thoughts. The funeral discourses that I have given for J. Cotter Morison, George Macdonell, Grant Allen, and others have been published. And the reader can judge how deeply abhorrent to Positivism is the thought that the grave is the end of man, how real are the consolations it finds in the presence of death, and all that death should mean to those who survive. On the last night of each year we have been wont to commemorate those whom we have lost, those who, of late, have been lost to the world, and above all the countless host of the unknown and unnamed dead by whose toils we live, who in us continue to live again. The simple story of the humble experiment which we sought to make during our tenure of Newton Hall should suffice to satisfy any candid mind how unfounded is the gibe that anything to be seen or heard there was a parody of Catholicism or showed an indifference to science. With all modern historians, Comte recognised the high ideal of Medieval Catholicism. But we have made no pretence of copying it by crude imitation. The best Christian aspirations have undoubtedly been to us the essence of religion and of morals. But we can accept nothing that has not behind it solid reality and usefulness on earth. The purport of the Positive scheme is nothing but this: an effort to preserve the essence of Christian ethics, in an age of materialism and of egoism, by placing them on a secure basis of scientific truth. It has visions of a time to come when, as in the Early Middle Ages, Church and School shall be, not enemies and rivals, but phases of the same force and organs of the same religion. FREDERIC HARRISON PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF CECIL RHODES I SOME CONVERSATIONS IN LONDON THE personality of Cecil Rhodes can best be revealed, if at all, by the few intimate friends who knew him well through the changes of his varied career: his actions and his place in history can be more impartially discussed by those who are entirely free from the curious attraction he exercised over all who came, for however brief a space, within the orbit of his personal influence. I have no title to speak of him in either capacity. But it happened to me, as no doubt it happened to many others, to enjoy several lengthy and rather confidential conversations with Rhodes in the course of his frequent visits to London during the last few years of his life. He left upon my mind, from the very beginning of our limited intercourse, a definite impression, which deepened each time I talked with him. And as it chanced that our conversations turned on large subjects, and were in some cases held at critical periods of his fortunes, my recollections may be worth giving, scanty and fragmentary as they necessarily are. My first interview with Rhodes dates back nearly ten years. It occurred on the 10th of December 1892. Up to that time the managing director of the Chartered Company had been to me a vague, and not altogether a sympathetic, figure. I had followed South African affairs with some attention, and I was far from enthusiastic over the methods and constitution of Mr. Rhodes's Company. I recognised the importance of keeping open the road from Cape Colony to the north, and was prepared to admit that the countries of the Matabele and the Mashona should be placed within the British sphere of influence, if only to exclude the possibility of foreign interference. But I held that if the work of conquest or annexation were worth doing, it should be done directly, with a full assumption of responsibility, by the Imperial Government itself. The delegation of the duty to a body of private adventurers, aiming primarily at their own profit, seemed to me a doubtful expedient; and the Chartered Company, with its mixture of high politics and Stock Exchange speculation, I regarded with some distrust. What I could gather of the financial arrangements of the concern did not increase my confidence; and I felt that to hand over a vast territory, containing a large native population, and marching with the frontiers of foreign States and colonies, to this characteristically modern version of the East India or the Hudson's Bay Company was a hazardous proceeding. At any rate, I did not think that such a corporation should be allowed extensive political powers and almost sovereign prerogatives, with the right to maintain and control a considerable armed force. These views I expressed in a London newspaper, the St. James's Gazette, of which I was then editor. Rhodes had his attention drawn to my articles. At all times he was extremely sensitive to the criticism of the Press. I remember calling upon him some years afterwards, when he was at the very height of his influence and popularity before the temporary eclipse of 1896. To my surprise I found the lion of the salons and idol of the pavement in a very bad temper, smarting under the sense that he was not properly appreciated in England. I endeavoured to point out that this was an error, and that, in fact, he had been praised and flattered almost to excess. Rhodes was not mollified. 'Look at your newspapers!' he exclaimed. See what Truth says about me, and the Daily Chronicle. The attacks of these two journals clearly outweighed, in Rhodes's mind, the chorus of enthusiastic approval with which he was acclaimed by almost all the rest of the English Press. To return to my first interview. I happened, shortly before the date mentioned, to meet a person much interested in the Chartered enterprise, who attempted, not very successfully, to convert me to a more favourable opinion of the project. He urged me to see Rhodes, and arranged a meeting. At the appointed time. I presented myself at the Burlington Hotel. My credentials were duly passed by some members of the little court of secretaries and retainers, whom Rhodes always had about him. He was simple enough in his personal habits, but there was something regal in his dependence upon his suite. He required his trusted favourites and henchmen to be constantly at hand, and he could scarcely write a letter without the assistance of one or other member of his private Cabinet. Eventually I found myself at the end of a large room, in front of a large man, standing before a large fire. Size was the first external impression you received of Cecil Rhodes. In whatever company you met him he seemed the biggest man present. Yet, though tall and broadly built, his stature was not really phenomenal; but there was something in the leonine head, and the massive, loose pose, which raised him to heroic proportions. He received me with a cordial smile and an invitation to sit down in one of the two comfortable arm-chairs, which flanked the fireplace. After a question or two to break the ice, he began to talk, and he went on for an hour almost without intermis |