We find
the stream of moral and religious evolution flowing steadily on nineteen
hundred years ago, much as we do to-day. At this point, of course, the
theologian does make a struggle with the historian. In proportion to the
imperfectness of his culture and the backwardness and conservatism of
his Church, he fights for miraculous interpositions in human events
nineteen hundred years ago. But we need not delay to examine that
difference of opinion, because the later period suffices for my purpose.
A few theologians, not well acquainted with history, see another
miraculous interposition in the fourth century, when Christianity was
established; and the Roman Catholic--in the intellectual rear, as
usual--believes in hundreds of miraculous interpositions, in small
matters, as late as the year 1914. But in order to take a broad view of
the matter we may leave these controversies with the more reactionary on
one side. The history of Europe for the last fifteen centuries at least
is now entrusted to able laymen, and it has been purged of divine
interpositions. Innumerable myths and legends, often based on what are
now acknowledged to be spurious documents, have been cast out of the
science, and we are presented with a quite continuous and purely natural
sequence of events.
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