s the testimony of history and tradition is concerned,
nothing can be more certain than that the progress of the race has
followed a very different course from that which M. Comte has traced out
for it by his grand fundamental law. The theory of a primitive state of
ignorance and barbarism, in which a rude Theology existed, in the form
of Fetishism, is opposed not more to the authority of Scripture, the
earliest record of our race, than to the unanimous voice of antiquity,
which attests the general belief of mankind in a primeval state of light
and innocence. There is a sad but striking contrast between the views
which are generally held by the Christian Theist, and those which are
avowed by M. Comte on this subject. The Christian Theist admits the
doctrine of a primeval Revelation and a pristine state of purity and
peace; M. Comte maintains the doctrine of a primitive barbarism and a
natural aboriginal Superstition. The Christian Theist believes in a fall
subsequent to the creation of man, and ascribes the ignorance and error,
the superstition and idolatry which ensued, to the perversion and abuse
of his intellectual and moral powers; M. Comte affirms that man did not
_fall_, that he did actually _rise_ by a process of slow but
progressive self-elevation, and that, in _advancing_ from Fetishism to
Polytheism, and from Polytheism to Monotheism, and from Monotheism to
Atheism, he has all along been determined by the law of his normal
development. In the view of the Christian Theist, Revelation was the sun
which shed its cheering rays on the first fathers of mankind, and which,
after having been obscured, for a time, by the clouds and darkness of
Superstition, shines out again, clear and strong, under the dispensation
of the Gospel; in the view of M. Comte, Science is the only sun that is
destined to enlighten the world,--a sun which has not yet fully risen,
but which has sent before, as the harbingers of its speedy advent, a few
scattered rays to gild the lofty mountain peaks, while all beneath is
still buried in Cimmerian darkness. The Christian Theist anticipates the
time when the true light which now shineth shall cover the whole earth;
M. Comte predicts its utter and final extinction, when Positive Science
shall have risen into the ascendant. His theory is contradicted by the
history of the past; let us hope that the events of the future will
equally belie his prediction. For Christianity is the only hope of the
world.