conduct to which it lays claim in theory.  It is a great advantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that this sentiment should crystallize, as it were, round a concrete object; if possible a really existing one, though, in all the more important cases, only 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 unable to believe that this object is capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong:  but this is exactly the point on which a doubt can hardly remain in an intelligent reader of M. Comte:  and we join with him in contemning, as equally irrational and mean, the conception of human nature as incapable of giving its love and devoting its existence to any object which cannot afford in exchange an eternity of personal enjoyment.