Introd^Lctory. 43 



glowing passages from the works of Professor Tyndall 

 may well supply antiphons and suggest hymns for its 

 ritual. 



Hereafter, then, in the worship of the First Cause, 

 not as made known to us by His own act of voluntary 

 self revelation, but as manifested in the material world 

 alone, we may find a fuller development of that pagan 

 revival, which for more than three centuries has been 

 gathering life and energy. But we shall not yet have 

 reached its culmination. 



To be logical, we must not ignore any side of nature, 

 which is equally in every aspect a mode of the Un- 

 knowable. If acts prompted by the devotion of a 

 mother's love are to be reverently recognised as one 

 mode of that which alone Is, not one bit less is the 

 traffic of the courtesan another such mode ; and if the 

 chastisement of the assassin may claim ITS sanction, so 

 the assassin may also equally claim it for the act on 

 account of which he is chastised. 



The Christianity which yet remains diffused amongst 

 us, and the refinement of modern manners, render the 

 open practice of licentious and sanguinary rites as yet 

 impossible, but the spirit which prompted them finds 

 in this system its complete and logical justification, as 

 it has found in a contemporary poet its distinct lyrical 

 expression. The tendency of the movement is to ap- 

 proach little by little towards this worst phase of pagan- 



