His theory is not merely Anti-Protestant, although it is bitterly so;[69] nor merely Anti-Christian, as opposed to all Revelation; but it is Anti-Theological, as opposed to all Religion.

It proposes to eliminate Theology from the scheme of our knowledge, by showing that it is utterly inaccessible to our faculties, and neither necessary to society nor useful to morals.[70] It anticipates the time, as being near at hand, when it shall have no existence, save on the historic page.
2.

This Atheistic theory rests entirely on a supposed discovery of M.
Comte,--the discovery of _a law of human development_, which serves at once to account for the origin and prevalence of Theological beliefs in the past, and to insure their utter disappearance in the future; a law which, like the magician's wand, can raise the apparition, and then lay it again! Now, of this law we affirm and undertake to prove that it is _utterly groundless_; that it has no solid basis of evidence on which it can be established; that it is contradicted by the history of the world, and opposed to our own experience at the present day.
It can scarcely be imagined that a man accustomed, as M.Comte has been, to the severe pursuits of Science, could give publicity to a law of this kind, and claim the credit of a great original discovery, without having some plausible reasons to plead for it; and he does assign certain reasons for his belief, which are, it may be safely affirmed, as frivolous and inconclusive as any that have ever been offered in support of the most baseless revery.

They may be reduced to THREE; the _first_, derived from our cerebral organization; the _second_, from the history of a certain portion of our species; the _third_, from the analogy of our individual experience.[71] He founds, in the first instance, on our _cerebral organization_.

He is an ardent admirer of Drs.