doctrine of the sort, and the church has it no longer. It is nowhere set forth except in the writings of Auguste Comte, who obtains it not from revelation, theology, or metaphysics, but from the sciences, or the positive facts of nature studied in their synthetic relations. But unhappily, though right in asserting the necessity of a grand synthetic doctrine which shall embrace all the knowable and all the real, they forget that facts cannot be studied in their synthetic relations unless the mind is previously in possession of the grand synthetic doctrine which embraces and explains them, while the doctrine itself cannot be had till they are so studied. They must take the end as the means of gaining the end! This is a hard case, for till they get the synthetic formula they can only have unrelated facts, hypotheses, and conjectures, with no means of verifying them. They are not likely to succeed. Starting from anarchy, they can only arrive at anarchy. Only God can move by his Spirit over chaos, and bring order out of confusion and light out of darkness.

Moreover, the Positivists do not reconcile the conflicting elements; for they suppress one of the two series of terms, and relegate God, the supernatural, principles, causes, and supersensible relations into the region of the unknowable, and include in their grand synthesis only positive sensible facts or phenomena and their physical laws. They thus restrict man's existence to the first cycle, and exclude the second or palingenesiac order, in which alone reigns the moral law. The first or initial cycle does not contain the word of the ænigma. It does not exist for itself, and therefore is not and cannot be intelligible in or by itself. If they could succeed in removing the anarchy complained of, they would do so by ignorance, not science, and harmonize all intelligences only by annihilating them.

Nor is it true that the church has lost or abandoned her grand synthetic doctrine, or that her synthesis has ceased to be complete, or sufficiently comprehensive. Her doctrine is Christianity; and Christianity leaves out no ancient or modern science; has not been and cannot be outgrown by any actual or possible progress of intelligence; for it embraces at once all the real and all the knowable, reale omne et scibile. If the church fails to command the adhesion of all minds, it is not because any minds have advanced in science beyond her, or have attained to any truth or virtue she has not; but because they have fallen below her, have become too contracted and grovelling in their views to grasp the elevation and universality of her doctrine. She still leads the civilized world, and commands the faith and love of the really enlightened portion of mankind. The reason why so many in our age refuse her their adhesion is not because her doctrine or mode or manner of presenting it are defective, but because they are engrossed with the development and application of the physical or natural laws, or with the first or initial cycle, and exhaust themselves in the production, exchange, and accumulation of physical goods, which, however attractive to the inchoate or physical man, are of no moral or religious value. The cause is not in the church but in them; in the fact that their minds and hearts are set on those things only after which the heathen seek; and they have no relish for any truth that pertains to the teleological or moral order.