Of the remaining tenth, a great proportion,
perhaps, will turn away from anything which calls itself by the name of
religion at all. Between the two, it is difficult to find an audience
who can be induced to listen to M. Comte without an insurmountable
prejudice. But, to be just to any opinion, it ought to be considered,
not exclusively from an opponent's point of view, but from that of the
mind which propounds it. Though conscious of being in an extremely small
minority, we venture to think that a religion may exist without belief
in a God, and that a religion without a God may be, even to Christians,
an instructive and profitable object of contemplation.
What, in truth, are the conditions necessary to constitute a religion?
There must be a creed, or conviction, claiming authority over the whole
of human life; a belief, or set of beliefs, deliberately adopted,
respecting human destiny and duty, to which the believer inwardly
acknowledges that all his actions ought to be subordinate. Moreover,
there must be a sentiment connected with this creed, or capable of being
invoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it in fact, the authority
over human conduct to which it lays claim in theory.
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