361 
Ballot Acts, of the disestablishment of Churches and the legal- 
ization of Trades-Unions, we are forced to admit that & the 
motive force of such legislation, whether rightly or wrongly 
applied in any given instance, is the desire to do to others^s 
we would have them do to us, the desire to remove any 
grievance which is supposed in any way to press unfairly upon 
any member or members of the body politic. 
13. And if it be denied that this growth of kindly feeling and 
mutual consideration is due to Christianity, we may safely ask 
the question to what else is it due ? Not to civilization, for a 
high civilization existed in a very early period of the world's 
history ; and it ever tended, not to progress, but to decay. Not 
to philosophy, for ancient philosophy found its highest realiza- 
tion in the doctrines of Plato, and they have been found 
incapable of regenerating the world ; while modern philosophy 
owes the best of its doctrines to the Christianity which it 
endeavours so vainly to supersede, while it has only just begun 
to attempt to emulate Christian beneficence. Not to a law of 
progress impressed upon humanity, for the onward movement 
| n Egypt; in Assvi’ia, in Persia, in Greece, in Borne, carried with 
it the seeds of its own destruction, and the last collapse, that of 
the Roman Empire, seemed the most final and fatal of all. Not 
to any rival form of religion, for Buddhism, Brahminism, Con- 
fucianism, Mohammedanism, have all had their turn of regene- 
rating the world, and they have all been conspicuous failures. 
Men may sometimes for their pleasure maintain the paradox 
that Christianity has failed to produce better men than 
heathendom; but we may safely ask them whether it is to 
China or to Japan, to India under Akhbar, or to Turkey under 
her present rulers, that they would point us for an example of 
what humanity should be. Heathendom has, at best, produced 
but the stagnation of the whole and the wretchedness of the 
many ;* at its worst, it lias produced vice in its most hideous 
wu eCtS ' and “ i ® er 7 in its sadclest and most degrading forms. 
Whereas Christianity has never for a moment faltered in its 
onward advance. From the moment -when it assumed the 
control of man's destinies to the present time — a period of 
eighteen centuries — it has never ceased to produce a steady 
progress in everything which tended to the true welfare of man. 
ut, at last, it is threatened with a rival. Positivism, or, as it is 
called, the religion of humanity, has ventured to contend with 
hnstianity on its own ground. It is the first system of 
octrine beside Christianity which has made the welfare of 
* As in China. 
