66 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



penetration of Gibbon detected this persistent element 

 at work when he describes the sequel to the futile 

 efforts of Theodosius to extirpate paganism. The 

 ancestor-worship which lay at the core of much of 

 it took shape among the Christianised pagans in the 

 worship of martyrs and in the scramble after their 

 relics. The bodies of prophets and apostles were 

 discovered by the strangest coincidences, and trans- 

 ported to the churches by the Tiber and the 

 Bosphorus, and although the supply of these more 

 important remains was soon exhausted, there was 

 no limit to the production of relics of their person 

 or belongings, as of filings from the chains of S. 

 Peter, and from the gridiron of S. Lawrence. The 

 catacombs yielded any number of the bodies of 

 martyrs, and Rome became a huge manufactory to 

 meet the demands for wonder-working relics from 

 every part of Christendom. * A sceptical feeling 

 might be aroused at the claims of a dozen abbeys to 

 possession of the veritable crown of thorns where- 

 with the majesty of the suffering Christ was mocked, 

 but it was silenced before the numerous fragments 

 of his cross, since ingenuity has computed that this 

 must have contained at least one hundred and eighty 

 million cubic millimetres, whereas the total cubic 

 volume of all the known relics is but five millions. 

 ' It must/ remarks Gibbon (Decline and Fall, end of 

 chap, xxviii.), * ingeniously be confessed that the 

 ministers of the Catholic Church imitated the pro- 

 fane model which they were impotent to destroy. 

 The most respectable bishops had persuaded them- 

 selves that the ignorant rustics would more cheer- 

 fully renounce the superstitions of paganism if they 



