the Christian from all other faiths dissolving before their eyes.

The general result of the advance of science, including anthropology,
has been to create a coherent view of the world, in which the Christian
scheme, based on the notions of an unscientific age and on the arrogant
assumption that the universe was made for man, has no suitable or
reasonable place. If Paine felt this a hundred years ago, it is far

[191] more apparent now. All minds however are not equally impressed
with this incongruity. There are many who will admit the proofs
furnished by science that the Biblical record as to the antiquity of man
is false, but are not affected by the incongruity between the scientific
and theological conceptions of the world.

For such minds science has only succeeded in carrying some
entrenchments, which may be abandoned without much harm. It has made the
old orthodox view of the infallibility of the Bible untenable, and upset
the doctrine of the Creation and Fall. But it would still be possible
for Christianity to maintain the supernatural claim, by modifying its
theory of the authority of the Bible and revising its theory of
redemption, if the evidence of natural science were the only group of
facts with which it collided. It might be argued that the law of
universal causation is a hypothesis inferred from experience, but that
experience includes the testimonies of history and must therefore take
account of the clear evidence of miraculous occurrences in the New
Testament (evidence which is valid, even if that book was not inspired).
Thus, a stand could be taken against the generalization of science on
the firm ground of historical fact. That solid ground, however, has
given