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AUTHOR: 
 
 CROMPTON 
 
 9 
 
 TITLE: 
 
 THE 
 
 PLACE: 
 
 LONDON 
 
 DATE: 
 
 1900 
 
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 RELIGION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 THE VIRGIN-MOTHER 
 
 TUK 
 
 POSITIVIST IDEAL 
 
 OP 
 
 HUMANITY. 
 
 % 
 
 txmQu 
 
 PREACHED AT THE 
 
 CHURCH OF HUMANITY, 
 
 ox 3 GUTENBERG, -1«, (16 AUGUST, 1900X 
 
 112 
 
 "I 
 "I r 
 
 BY 
 
 HENKY CEOMPTON. 
 
 CHUKCH OF HUMANITV, 
 19 CrTAPEL Street, Lamb's Conduit Street, London, W.C. 
 
 1900. 
 
) 
 
 THE VIRGIN-MOTHER. 
 
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 The celebrations and festivals of former times and of the old 
 religions were the product of the social evolution. They were 
 instituted by our f orefatliers to satisfy definite human wants, to 
 give form and expression to the instinctive feelings of mankind. 
 Though we are living in a transitional age, we are yet approaching 
 a time when our aspirations are tending to assume more definite 
 and permanent forms. The Sacraments of the Catholic Church 
 for centuries satisfied the religious needs of Western society. 
 Not the least remarkable or effective part of our religion is the 
 development of these into the nine Social Sacraments, giving 
 help and consecration to tlie principal epochs in the lives of 
 men and women. In the Catholic Festival of the Assumption 
 of the Virgin our Master saw that which he thought would have 
 a permanent value, which is based upon and harmonises all the 
 various aspects of human nature. This Festival of ours is held 
 on the same day as the Catholic celebration, that we may be as 
 far as possible in sympathy and union with the Catholic Clmrch. 
 Whether in the past or as at present existing, we wish to be in 
 sympathy with all religions, but more especially with that 
 which has been more directly effective in the development of 
 our own. We seek to establisli a permanent union among men 
 by Love and Faith ; to secure a common belief by a demon- 
 strated doctrine ; a union of hearts by the habitual culture of 
 the social feelings, whether in private and alone, or by joint 
 expression in the family and Church ; in all cases raised to the 
 best ideals we can frame, with the view of directing human 
 energies towards the noblest ends. 
 
 From this point of view I would bring the conception of to- 
 night's Festival before you. The primary purpose of Positivism 
 is to stimulate and discipline the inner life, so that the accumu- 
 lated moral force, the sacred fire within, may be translated into 
 acts without. The means of effecting this lie in two domains 
 of thought and feeling, by increased habits of synthesis and 
 sympathy. Synthesis is the faculty and method of the mind 
 by which we connect and group together the various conditions 
 and aspects of our complex existence in the world, enabling us 
 to see all round us, to grasp the relations of parts to each other 
 and to the whole, and the unity underlying the infinite varieties 
 and changes in nature. Sympathy is to feeling, what synthesis 
 
 V 
 
is to mind : the extension of feeling beyond the narrow limits 
 of onr immediate surroundings ; the natural tendency, so strong 
 in woman, and passing out m fulness to other peoples and to 
 the human race, in the past, the present and the future, and 
 finally achieving a union and unity of feeling by a common 
 adoration. 
 
 Our Provisional Calendar, in its weekly or daily use, is the 
 most effective means for our understanding and respecting all 
 that was most noble and progressive in the past human efforts 
 and accomplishment. The Abstract Calendar teaches us to 
 estimate andj reverence the materials and products by which 
 civilisation has been evolved, the material and social results, the 
 institutions which are and ever will be the foundation of social 
 and moral life in the future. The celebration to-night is 
 intermediate between the two Calendars, as the present is 
 between the past and the future. Its purport is to bring before 
 us an image, which is a condensation of our religion, becoming 
 essential for the extension and cultivation of feeling, for worship, 
 as well as to give us increased intellectual vision and to direct 
 our action to the highest moral ends. Comte compares this 
 condensation with, or rather says that it is the equivalent in 
 our religion of that given to Catholicism by the institution of 
 the Eucharist. Ours is very different and very much superior. 
 For the Catholic was almost entirely limited to the emotions ; 
 while the Positivist conception of the Virgin- Mother represents 
 at once the three constituents of human nature — feeling, thought 
 and action ; a unity which conciliates order and progress, bring- 
 ing before us the fundamental order of nature of which progress 
 is the development. 
 
 Theology rendered to mankind the service of creating images 
 and types which have been of great value and effect in pro- 
 moting the advance and development of religions. The gods 
 and goddesses and heroes of the polytheistic religions represented 
 the different aspects and forces of social existence, and of the 
 external world in its influence on man. The manufacture of 
 mental pictures, enlarging the mind and stimulating the affective 
 qualities of the soul, has been the process by which mankind 
 has striven onwards and upwards. 
 
 The Greeks, in the spirit of a military age, attributed the 
 principal influence of parents on children to the father ; whereas 
 now the tendency is to ascribe as much or more to the productive 
 power of the mother, apart from the impress given by her care 
 and providence to the child after birth and during childhood. 
 In the great drama of the Fmnes, ^^schylus, by 'the voice of 
 Apollo and with the sanction of Minerva, assigns the superiority 
 
 i) 
 
 j^.. 
 
 \ 
 
 to the father : citing, as a supreme instance, the fabled fact of 
 Minerva's birth; she being the type and representation of 
 Wisdom issuing direct from the head of Jove, the immaculate 
 conception of intellect as the Catholic of Love. The later 
 conceptions of these goddesses are types of extreme beauty, 
 promoting a higher and grander idea of woman's nature — 
 Pallas Athene, Diana, Demeter or Ceres. I know no image of 
 woman, of the mother, more beautiful and impressive than the 
 Greek statue of Demeter in the British Museum. These 
 creations were the work of the consummate artists of this 
 wonderful epoch ; but they did not seem then to have a pro- 
 found effect upon the Greek life, in the sense of elevating 
 women or advancing their position and importance in actual 
 life. A far greater progress in this respect was achieved in the 
 middle ages, whether by the culture of manners and customs 
 due to chivalry, or to the more noble and lasting influence of 
 • the Catholic evolution, which promoted both the freedom of the 
 working classes and the social functions of women. The 
 honour paid to them is recorded by the beautiful illustrations of 
 the missals and religious books, by the efligies and statues, by 
 the canonisation of woman saints, by the convent life, by the 
 great offices they were allowed to hold. 
 
 In the South of Europe, there arose a worship of the Virgin 
 Mary, the Mother of God, based on the true, if instinctive, 
 insight as to woman's nature ; a worship freed from all terror, 
 regarding her as the compassionate intercessor for man with 
 God ; a worship which seems to have been preferred to, if not 
 to supersede that of God. Positivism does ample justice to 
 the types created by Catholicism; the morality embodied in 
 Thomas k Kempis' immortal poem, " The Imitation of Christ," 
 and the image portrayed by the great painters of the post- 
 mediseval times ; and accepts in the same spirit, as far 
 more valuable in the future, the ideal of the Virgin-Mother, 
 the combination of purity and love. Both Jesus and the Virgin 
 Mary are subjective creations by man, very different from the 
 saints in the Positivist Calendar of men and women, in which 
 
 they are not included. 
 
 Because of our complex civilisation, of the immense variety 
 of human capacities and social occupations, no one man or one 
 type can by any possibility embody all the various and multi- 
 form human qualities. Jesus was not a model of the profound 
 philosopher or man of science, of the military commander, the 
 statesman, poet, artist, capitalist, or workman. We obtain the 
 best instances of these special excellencies from history, from 
 the lives of the great men who have made definite and important 
 

 contributions to the evolution of mankind in tlie respective 
 stages and modes ef social progress. Veneration for men of 
 real greatness forms an essential preparation for the veneration 
 we should feel towards Humanity. 
 
 Possibly for some in the West, Jesus may remain as an 
 example of humility and tenderness, the Cross as a symbol of 
 suffering and sacrifice, though our Calendar gives us other and 
 in some respects more striking instances of self-sacrifice and 
 devotion. Divested of divinity and the belief in the self- 
 immolation and atonement by God for man, the chief beauty 
 of this ideal is shorn away ; and it seems best that it should 
 remain, for us, a picture of what has had a mighty influence 
 over Western development in the past, rather than as an 
 example for the future. Be this as it may, our position is that 
 of adopting a system of commemoration and veneration of the 
 great representatives of Humanity, Her servants and instru- 
 ments, by bringing them in orderly succession before our eyes, 
 and so training ourselves to reverent submission to the great 
 existence, at once our real Providence and the whole Being of 
 which we are parts. Humanity may be partially represented 
 by any of Her true servants, each according to the principal 
 attribute he possesses. The totality can only be represented 
 by that which unites and connects and governs the whole — by 
 reference namely to sympathy and altruistic feeling : so that 
 we naturally look to woman, as better fitted than man by the 
 qualities she possesses, to impress the conception of Humanity 
 upon us. Therefore, and since religion must have one central 
 and supreme ideal, we deliberately choose the female, rather 
 than the male type: without in the least depreciating the 
 grandeur of such creations as Jove or Jehovah or Allah. 
 
 Accepting the fact of the impossibility of one ideal directly 
 including all the quaUties and faculties man possesses ; starting 
 from the acknowledged necessity that the developed religious 
 systems must group themselves round one vivedly conceived 
 object or external Power ; that the only Power and centre of 
 the religion of the future is Humanity ; we hold that a far 
 more perfect representation of Humanity is to be got through 
 idealised woman than was or is possible to be drawn from the 
 male character. Several consiclerations strongly support this 
 view. The biological type, human or animal, is that of the 
 male. The active type is that of a man, but the moral is 
 generally drawn from woman. If we would depict physical 
 or active perfection, strength and agility combined, it is by 
 reference to the male figure. If we would represent moral 
 perfection, we seek it by idealising the feminine qualities of 
 
 V 
 
 w 
 
 > \ 
 
 devotion, tenderness, purity, and love. Jesus is not the father, 
 as the Virgin Mary is the mother. Woman has always been 
 the mediator between the weak and the powerful. She was the 
 priestess of polytheism, the inspired mouthpiece of the Oracle, 
 Saint of the middle ages, even the priestess or sorceress of 
 the midnight mass to propitiate the powers of evil and darkness, 
 the worship of the Devil so common in Europe at one time, 
 during a period of extreme anarchy and misery of the people. 
 
 Shakespeare always puts the appeal for and description of 
 the quality of mercy into the mouth of a noble woman, Portia, 
 Isabel, Volumnia. Still more is the Virmn-Mother of Catholi- 
 cism the intercessor for the weak and oppressed. She stood 
 between men and God. From the earliest dawn of life woman 
 is the provider and protector, giving sustenance from her 
 breast, with a care, self-sacrifice and love which are implied 
 and expressed by the sacred word mother. Purity from the 
 most distant times has been clothed in female form, whether of 
 a goddess like Diana, or the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, or 
 its exquisite description in Milton's " Oomus." The very word 
 Virgin is used in J]nglish and other European languages as an 
 adjective to emphasise purity. Thus the conception we form 
 of the central fact of our religion, the portrayal of Humanity 
 by the idealisation of Her highest qualities, is the outcome of the 
 whole past, the completion and development of that which was 
 the spontaneous natural expression and aspiration of man, 
 towards purity and love, the Virgin-Mother. The adoration of 
 man turning from the manifestation of material power, 
 concentrated itself in the type of innocence, purity, and love. 
 The moral ideal portrays the pre-eminence of feeling and love 
 in life ; its supremacy over the rest of our nature. But it also, 
 if indirectly, embraces the intellect and the activity of man : 
 because, in passing from the theory of morals to the practice of 
 morality, the whole of human knowledge is made applicable to 
 and is required for the due regulation of man's life and its 
 adaptation to the world around us. The value of all knowledge 
 is in relation to moral ends. Under the image of Humanity, 
 all knowledge and all the experience of life are brought as it 
 were into a focus, and condensed for us in the luminous maxims 
 of our religion — Act from affection; think in order to act; Love 
 the principle and order the basis ; progress the end. 
 
 The most remarkable fact in all history is the creation of the 
 conception of the Madonna and Child, and the extraordinary 
 multiplication of pictures and eflSgies throughout Christendom 
 down to the present time, but culminating in that which is 
 universally recognised as the chef-d'oeuvre of Raphael and of 
 
 I •ll-'\ —i ■» IMMI I. 
 
8 
 
 HumanitVi the Madonna di San Sisto. When Positivists place 
 a copy 01 this dorious picture, or any other representation of 
 Mtdonna and Child, in the centre of the Temple or room in 
 which they gather together for mutual improvement and in 
 the name of Humanity, this simple act constitutes a practical 
 acceptance of the principle and idealisation, of which our 
 Festival to-night is the systematic declaration ; a Festival 
 celebrating the triumph of morality and love in nature. It is 
 and will be universal ; not always with the Catholic connections 
 and antecedents — ^those are only a part of the human past. 
 They only apply to our Western civilisation. In other countries 
 and among other races, as for instance with the group of our 
 Hindu co-religionists at Calcutta, the problem will be for them 
 to institute the Festival in accordance with their past and their 
 religious traditions. In some of the other religions of the world, 
 as in the Zendavesta, there are beautiful types of womanhood, 
 whence radiate alike moral and religious strength and beauty. 
 
 Joseph de Maistre, the famous Catholic writer, has said that 
 if you want to make men more perfect you must exalt and 
 ennoble woman. Many women shrink, and not unnaturally, 
 from the high position assigned to them in our system. But a 
 woman has no occasion and ought not to look upon herself as 
 an ideal. She has only to strive to the best of her ability to be 
 the moral rei>resentative of Humanity in the family of which 
 she is the centre. For no family is possible without woman. 
 Her efforts should be to make herself worthy of the trust and 
 duty imposed by nature upon her, a position which many women 
 do occupy and fill with complete success. If the family is the 
 essential unit and element of society, her care and supervision are 
 necessary to its health and expansion. There are none of us to 
 whom training is not necessary for our calling and the proper 
 discharge of our duties in society. It is no answer to the 
 difficult and responsible position assigned to women in the 
 Positivist system, to point to the defects in women's life and 
 training now. The question is how to exalt and ennoble woman? 
 First, by the inauguration of a systematic tribute of honour 
 and respect to be paid to woman. Secondly, by securing for 
 her the conditions which allow of the development of her 
 spiritual nature and her attaining to a higher moral level. Her 
 moral qualities have to be increased and brought out. The 
 principal condition of her spiritual life is the independence of 
 the female sex in the family. Independence and dependence 
 are not inconsistent or irreconcileable. Freedom is essential for 
 the adequate performance of function or duty. 
 
 Two of the great results of mediaeval life were the abolition 
 
 y 
 
 V 
 
 \ 
 
 V 
 
 9 
 
 of slavery and the rise of woman. The emancipation of labour 
 was a condition of the Christian evolution and the modern indus- 
 trialism. The setting woman free in the family is essential for 
 her preparation, as for the full discharge of her high office. 
 With the emancipation of labour came increasing respect and 
 honour to woman. In the future, the exaltation of woman will 
 have a profound influence on the regeneration of industry. 
 Dependence there must always be. It is a universal law, that 
 the nobler functions depend on the lower or grosser — the more 
 complex on the simpler materials — the functions of the mind 
 or soul on the nutrition and health of the animal body. The 
 freedom of woman is from material hardships and necessities, 
 which alone gives scope and opportunity for the higher life. 
 The struggles of existence press very hardly upon women. 
 They are hampered and dragged back by the many details, 
 cares, and hardships of family life. The preference at the 
 present time shown by so many women for duties outside the 
 family is proof of it. Where a woman has some special and 
 exceptional capacity, the Positivist teaching is to give it free 
 scope and opportunity, even in careers unusual for women and 
 generally distasteful to them. If scope is to be given to such 
 exceptional gifts, all the more should it be given for the general 
 function and office of woman, which is that of ministering to 
 the moral wants of society, of elevating our standard of moral 
 conduct — and that is just what every true woman can do in her 
 sphere — it needs no great intellectual or practical talent, only 
 a true heart and a pure life. 
 
 The conception upon which Comte based this ideal and this 
 festival is that of the complete independence of woman in the 
 family ; independence beyond that dreamed of by most of the 
 assertors of woman's rights. She is to be supported by means 
 of subsistence brought to the family by the men. Freed from 
 the pressure of material want, she is in no sense to be subjected 
 to the whim or passion of men. We men still shrink, with a 
 mixed remnant of ignorance, selfishness, and cowardice, from 
 the complete solution of this question, by substituting tlie idea 
 of duties in place of that of rights, which hitherto has regu- 
 lated the relation of the sexes. The marriage union is to be 
 conceived of as the most perfect of all unions and friendships, 
 in which the wife is to be materially subordinate to the husband, 
 but not his slave. The conception of the Virgin-Mother is a 
 moral ideal or limit, a statement of the greater purity which 
 will be attained when the regulation of passion passes from the 
 man to the woman. Woman is materially subordinate to man, 
 but man must accept a moral subjection to woman in the 
 
10 
 
 family. The chastity of the three months' period of betrothal, 
 which in the Positivist system follows the legal contract and 
 precedes the religious consecration, is a pledge of the moral 
 control and subordination in marriage : the subjection of the 
 passions by man to the higher feelings and ends, which by 
 marriage the wife represents for him. It is in respect of mar- 
 riage so conceived, that Positivism rises high above other 
 religions — offering to mankind a development in this respect 
 which will be one of the chief sources of strength and vitality 
 to the Religion of Humanity in the future. We have to keep 
 this conception in its integrity before mankind. 
 
 Stated thus barely and even curtly, it is obvious that this 
 conception, this ideal of purity, towards which others are 
 striving in a different way, involves very much beyond what I 
 have said, and goes to the root of some of the most difficult and 
 distressing evils that press on mankind at the present time. 
 The object is to gain a higlier moral level, to lift women 
 generally though by slow degrees to the height which some 
 women have already reached ; incidentally to succour the weak 
 and oppressed, and to raise up those who have succumbed and 
 fallen. The Virgin-Mother is an ideal which does for the 
 moral nature what Greek sculpture did for the physical. The 
 word moral has reference to feeling, to the control of life by the 
 social sympathies. Woman's true function is the making of 
 moral man. 
 
 I was once much struck by reading in old French characters 
 above the gate of Abbeville Cathedral, ^' Virgin, thou art the 
 Gate of Love to men.'** I thought what a loss it would be if 
 the Catholic creation could not be adopted and developed by 
 the Religion of Humanity, if it could not be placed and main- 
 tained on a basis of reason and fact. It seemed easy to me 
 when I reflected that the mother made the home, was the 
 source of purity and morality, the gate of love in the family — 
 and if so, why not for the country — for men as the Catholics 
 say, for Humanity as we say. The instinct of mankind spon- 
 taneously figures town, country, nation by a female form : even 
 such abstractions as liberty, the earth itself is always pictured 
 as the Mother-Earth. 
 
 Taking it then for granted that for all mankind, yirgin 
 signifies purity and mother love, what is the connectTon 
 between the two ? > Some may think that the more passionate 
 love between the sexes is the best assurance of the social union 
 of men together and the first germ of family life. But the 
 
 Yierge aux bumaiiis la porte d'amour estez. 
 
 11 
 
 social union of men together is more akin to, and more truly 
 based on the fraternal relation, which naturally springs from 
 the conception of one common mother. There cannot be 
 brotherhood without a common parent in the past. To my 
 mind, remembering that there must always be a basis of self 
 even in the noblest love, the maternal instinct is a better 
 egoistic foundation for our ideal, more lasting, more easily 
 purified and ennobled. Yes, purified, — that is the very essence 
 of the conception. Purity is essential to the moral ideal. 
 Purity is the means by which love is made spiritual, is turned 
 from self to others. Without love purity may be achieved, 
 ascetic and free from vice, but barren ; not the motor power 
 or impulse of life. There is truth in the beautiful idea that 
 
 " The Summer flower is to the Summer sweet. 
 Though to itself it only live and die.'' 
 
 Not the highest truth ; a passive virtue, not the moral ideal, as 
 the mother, suggesting a reserve of stored power, productive in 
 all ways ; love ready to be transferred into action and life for 
 others. The great Italian painters have used their colours to 
 represent moral qualities. The Virgin is clothed in red and 
 blue. The Magdalen in colours of red and green. Red is 
 the heart's blood, the tenderness and love ; blue the purity of 
 the deep coloured Italian sky, which can have no earthy soil 
 upon it. The Magdalen has the red, she is tender and loving; 
 though, as it is called, fallen. The green for her is the hope 
 and the victory ; hope in the new birth, in the spring ; victory 
 in the fruitful production forced by man upon the uncultured 
 fertility of the earth's surface, conquest by man over the lower 
 nature. These beautiful works of art are for us, for all men : 
 though it seems to me as if they were, more beautiful, more 
 stimulating as interpreted by our religion ; larger in the domain 
 of thought, capable of evoking more exalted emotion. The 
 Magdalen cannot be the ideal or the representation of 
 Humanity in Her future perfection, towards which mankind is 
 and has ever been advancing. That can only be by a union of 
 perfect purity with love ; love without blemish, the inspiration 
 of lofty action and noble life; love the principle and the 
 chief truth of life. Let us then attain to a higher degree of 
 worth and dignity by due submission to this the truest aspect 
 of the Providence around us : which issuing from the whole 
 religious past of the race, finds its concentration, its completion 
 and perfection, in beauty, in truth, in purity, tenderness, and 
 love, through the conception of the Virgin-Mother as the real 
 Humanity.