THE system of M. Auguste Comte is based upon the discovery of what he calls the law of human progress, viz.: "That each of our leading conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive." The first stage he regards as the necessary point of departure of the human understanding; the third, as its fixed and definite state; while the second, which is bat a modification of the first, is only necessary as a bridge over which the understanding passes from the first to the third. He looks upon theology, therefore, as only fit to occupy the attention of children, while men, fullgrown in understanding, are to be concerned alone with positive science.

      Without pretending to give, in this place, the results of a somewhat careful examination of this system, we may be permitted to say that, to our mind, it appears to be a continual, though perhaps unconscious, perversion of history to the establishment of a foregone conclusion. Even if we should admit that human progress is regulated by the law we have mentioned, would it follow that the last stage must necessarily be free from all the elements which distinguish the first? What does the history to which appeal is made really prove? This, in our judgment, [317] namely: 1. That men, in the infancy of the world, or the beginning of their advancement, account for phenomena by referring them immediately to God, without the intervention of law. 2. That, in the next stage, they abstract phenomena from the control of a superintending deity, and deify the forces supposed to be inherent in them. 3. That they finally perceive that God governs and controls all things through the intervention and instrumentality of law. This law they recognize as positive, because they believe that its author is wise and unchangeable, and not, like M. Comte, because they believe it has no author. We, therefore, regard him as standing upon the same ground with the metaphysicians whom he ridicules, in that he virtually deifies law, while they virtually deified a capricious force.

      History, then, teaches us that the theological or first stage, reappears in the scientific or last, which is built, and necessarily built upon it. Admitting, then, the law of M. Comte, which is true under certain important limitations, he has erred, as we think, from his inability to connect things which are naturally and positively associated. He seems determined to believe in the existence of active forces and unchanging laws, without admitting their only possible cause. Hence, he speaks of "the illusion of an illimitable power residing above;" "the positive philosophy, as free from monotheistic as from polytheistic or fetich belief;" of "fetichism as no theological aberration, but the source of theology itself," etc. etc.--See Cours de Philosophie Positive, passim.

      Our opinion of Swedenborg and his system is drawn from a patient examination of his Vera Religio Christians, which [318] embraces the sum of his theological system--"continens universam theologiam Novæ Ecclesiæ." We have also consulted his "Heaven and Hell," "Apocalypse Revealed," and "Arcana Cœlestia." It is not pretended that the text exhibits his position in any other light than as it is presented to the subject of hermeneutics; and, although it may be difficult to comprehend his system of theology, we feel sure that we have not misrepresented him as an interpreter, nor his system in its bearings upon exegesis.

      On the mutations of human creeds, the reader will allow us to quote some remarks from Isaac Taylor. "This same period," he says, "this sixty years--which has made us so much more liberal, and, in a sense, more serious too than were our fathers, and in which refinement and discretion have done so much for us--has touched, not our creeds indeed, so as to remove any one article from them, but it has touched the depths of our convictions as to the whole, and as to several points of our belief. There is little, perhaps, in the cycle of our predecessors' confession of faith which, if challenged to relinquish it, we should consent to see erased. But, whether we be distinctly conscious of the fact or not, there has come to stand over against each article of that belief a counterbalance--an influence of abatement, an unadjusted surmise, an adverse feeling, neither assented to nor dismissed, but which holds the mind in perpetual suspense. The creed of this time is--let us say--word for word the creed of sixty years ago; but, if such a simile might be allowed, these items of our 'Confession' now fill one side of a balance sheet, on the other side of which there stands a heavy charge which has not yet been ascertained or agreed to. If this alleged state [319] of the case be resented--as it will, by some--it will be tacitly assented to by the more thoughtful and ingenuous reader." Wesley and Methodism, p. 19.

      Again, page 17, he says: "The Methodism of the eighteenth century has, we say, ceased to have any extant representative among us." To this remark he refers on page 189: "METHODISM we have spoken of as that which has long ago accomplished its purpose, and has passed away; to other moods and modes of thinking it has given place; and with its nominal representative--the modern Wesleyan Methodism--we have no more to do, in these pages, than with any other existing religious body."

      So with all other isms--that which they nominally represent has passed away, and that which they now are is passing away. Shall we continue to rest satisfied with any system whose very nature is transient and mutable, when we may, if we please, find that which is permanent and unchangeable?

      We cannot refrain from requesting the reader to concentrate his attention upon the following profound and truly encouraging remarks of Isaac Taylor, to which we will add, in passing, such observations as may serve to show the connection in which they occur. This great thinker saw, as all unbiased minds must see, the necessary tendency of our imperfectly carried out Protestantism to Romanism; and he says, a time will come when "those who loathe these idolatries, and who resent this despotism, will find themselves driven in upon the only position where a stand may by any means be made, namely, the authority of Scripture; this being held as absolute, and not to be abated by admixture with any other pretended sources of belief . . . At [320] such a time there will not remain an inch of space whereon the foot may rest between these two positions; that is to say, unless, in the most peremptory manner, and to the exclusion of all reserves or evasions, the sense of Scripture, ascertained and interpreted on a true principle, be resolutely adhered to, there is nothing gross or abominable in the superstitions of Southern Europe that must not be submitted to." He goes on to say, that this contest against "Romanism and Ritualism" will be carried on by "well-taught biblical scholars, who will feel, as we of this time do not feel, the necessity, first, of defining with unambiguous explicitness, what it is they mean when they speak of the apostolic writings as 'given by inspiration of God,' and then of laying down, and of invariably adhering to, certain principles of interpretation." After speaking of the first of these preliminary labors, he proceeds:--

      "As to the second, it will flow out naturally from the first, and it will bear an analogy to the revolution that was effected in physical science by the promulgation of the BACONIAN PHILOSOPHY, and in accordance with that analogy it will effect the final EXPULSION OF METAPHYSICAL SCHEMES OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE; in the room of which will come the fearless THEOLOGY OF INTERPRETATION; offering to the eye, as it must, many of those breaks and 'faults'--those inferences--irreconcilable the one with the other--which are, and must ever be, the characteristics of a theology that is fragmentary and disjointed."

      Again, speaking of the coming movement under the name of "Methodism," in contrast with the past Methodism, be says "The past Methodism took to itself the belief which it found; but the coming Methodism must derive its belief anew from Scripture, by bringing to bear upon this difficult subject a reformed principle of biblical interpretation." Finally, he says: "Those who, through a course of years, have been used [321] to read the Scriptures unshackled by systems, and bound to no conventional modes of belief, such readers must have felt an impatience in waiting, not for the arrival of a new revelation from heaven, but of an ample and unfettered interpretation of that which has been so long in our hands."--Wesley and Methodism, pp. 286 to 290; Harper's edition, 1855.

      The reader may consult, on the subject introduced in the text, Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences; in the additions to the second volume of which, page 605, he will find a description of the interesting experiment which resulted in the final disproof of the emission theory of light, by showing that its velocity was less in water than in air.

      Since the completion of our manuscript, we have, through the kindness of the obliging librarian of the Philadelphia Library, gained access to authorities not previously within our reach; and are gratified to find that they distinctly affirm, and strongly insist upon, the important principle laid down in the text. Richardson's Dictionary--itself no mean authority--embodies what has for ages been taught on this subject by scholars of the first eminence; and it is on this very principle that the learned author seems to justify himself in making a new dictionary. He says:--

      "The great first principle upon which I have proceeded in the department of the dictionary which embraces the explanation, [322] is that so clearly evolved and so incontrovertibly demonstrated in the 'Diversions of Purley,' namely, that a word has one meaning and one only; that from it all usages must spring and be derived; and that, in the etymology of each word must be found this single intrinsic meaning, and the cause of the application in those usages.

      "That each word has one radical meaning, and one only, is not a dogma of which very modern writers have the sole right to boast. Scaliger asserts it in most explicit terms: 'Unius namque vocis una tantum sit significatio propria, ac princeps.' It is one of those many sound principles which have been met with in the writings of learned and sagacious scholars, and which have passed the not uncommon routine of being recognized and admired, neglected and forgotten. It is one of those which they themselves have employed to very little purpose, and of which we are not warranted in concluding that they saw the tendency with sufficient distinctness to appreciate justly the real value and importance.

      "Tooke is most distinct in the assertion and maintenance of these principles, (the oneness or singleness, and the source, of the meaning of words;) he adopted them as the sole sure foundation upon which philological inquiry could proceed; he, and he alone, has adhered to them consistently, and he has raised upon them an edifice to which all must look as a model, when devising the ground-plot for a superstructure of their own.--"Preface to Dictionary, section ii.

      Acting upon such principles it is no wonder that Richardson gives two distinct "Lets;" because it is evident that "to permit" cannot be the secondary sense of a word whose radical is "to hinder." His arrangement of them is as follows:--

      LET,--Goth. Lat-yan; A. S. Lat-ian, lætan; Ger. and Dut. [323] Letten; tardare, morari, impedire; to retard, to delay, to hinder, keep back or behind.

      LET,--Goth. Let-an; A. S. Lætan; Dut. Læten; linquere, sinere, permittere, pati; to leave, to give leave, to permit or suffer.

      With such authorities to support a principle, the obvious necessity and value of which would seem to establish it even without authorities, we must regard it as permanently settled.

[TOOS 317-324]