The most trivial of our daily actions became thus invested with an immeasurable meaning.

Life was thus evidently not vanity, not an idiot's tale, not unprofitable; those who affected to think it was, were naturally disregarded as either insane or insincere: and we may thus admit that hitherto, for the progressive nations of the world, the worth of life has been capable of demonstration, and safe beyond the reach of any rational questioning.
But now, under the influence of positive thought, all this is changing.
Life, as we have all of us inherited it, is coloured with the intense colours of Christianity; let us ourselves be personally Christians or not, we are instinct with feelings with regard to it that were applicable to it in its Christian state: and these feelings it is that we are still resolved to retain.

As the most popular English exponent of the new school says: '_All positive methods of treating man, of a comprehensive kind, adopt to the full all that has ever been said about the dignity of man's moral and spiritual life._' But here comes the difficulty.

This adoption we speak of must be justified upon quite new reasons.

Indeed it is practically the boast of its advocates that it must be.