38 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



are critical and constructive ; as opposed to Bamp- 

 ton Lectures, Boyle and Hulsean Lectures, which are 

 apologetic, the speaker holding an official brief. 

 Of the Boyle Lecturers, Collins the ' Deist ' 

 caustically said that nobody doubted the existence 

 of the Deity till they set to work to prove it. 

 Religions are no longer treated as true or false, 

 as inventions of priests or of divine origin, but as 

 the product of man's intellectual speculations, how- 

 ever crude or coarse ; and of his spiritual needs, no 

 matter in what repulsive form they are satisfied. 

 For 'proofs' and 'evidences' we have substituted 

 explanations. Nevertheless, so strong, often so 

 bitter, are the feelings aroused over the most tem- 

 perate discussion of the origin of Christianity, that 

 it remains necessary to repeat that to explain is 

 not to attack, and that to narrate is not to apportion 

 \blame. For religion can only reflect the temper of 

 the age in which it flourishes. 



Let us now summarise certain occurrences which, 

 although familiar enough, must be repeated for the 

 clear understanding of their effects. 



Some sixty years after the death of Lucretius 

 there happened, in the subsequent belief of millions 

 of mankind, an event for which all that had gone 

 before in the history of this planet is said to have 

 been a preparation. In the fulness of time the 

 Omnipotent maker and ruler of a universe to which 

 no boundaries can be set by human thought,^sent to 

 this earth-speck no less a person than His Eternal 

 Son. He was said to have been born, not by the 

 natural processes of generation, but to have been 

 incarnated in the womb of a virgin, retaining his 



