341 
course. So far as Positivism is founded on all the facts, tho 
Christian admits it, and claims it to be on his side. 
110. We have a right to cling, then, with pertinacity to that 
which our argument has clearly arrived at : Human Account- 
ability, imbedded in all the facts of mutual Praise and Blame : 
Human accountability constituted of action, in relation to 
antecedent right : Human accountability inseparable from 
some Freedom : Human accountability, inextricable from 
difficulty and injustice until we own a superintending Moral 
Ruler : Human accountability, co-extensive with all human 
power, and thought and action. (§§ 15-51.) 
111. Such being our present position, nothing irrelevant, 
nothing that is subsequent, can supersede it. Much indeed 
may follow. The Religions of the World contain 
facts needing analysis as connected with the 
moral life of man. Even opinions in Religion, facts, 
right or wrong, have real influence on moral 
agency. — No doubt there may be, and too often is in all 
human Society, a wide divergence between theory and fact, 
opinion and practice. This is always possible, because we 
are free : No part of Ethics can ultimately be mechanical. 
But even opinions have their significance : And a moral 
convulsion is no doubt imminent, whenever the divergence 
grows extreme and has been long-continued, between 
what men profess, and what they really do. To pretend 
to one set of principles and act on another cannot last, and 
ought not. This phenomenon is one of the most startling 
evidences of defect in popular Deontology. (And 
whether the actual conduct and pursuits of Chris- no Philosophy 
tians even approximately realize the theory of Dafects? thlcal 
Christianity, is unquestionably a matter of grave 
consideration, though not for our present argument.) We 
here insist that Religions demand attention, as attempts more 
or less to supply a need ; and that Comteism takes no account, 
and has no philosophy, of those defects in man's Probation 
which Religions of the Supernatural at least endeavour to 
supplement, by aiming at the true-always. 
112. It would be attractive to some, if we might here 
diverge into a more formal statement as to the “ true- 
always,” in opposition to the scepticism which in 
our time has so asserted the Relativity of all know- sictidflrSon 
ledge as to mean that neither of the correlatives the true * 
is anything more than a negation of the other. 
(§ 29.) 
We may add but a few words. The positive character of 
the true-always recognized by every conscious being, could 
