SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY. 319 



principle the statement may pass, but it is certainly 

 wrong when we look to its practical side. The 

 deliberate and indiscriminate attacks of the ultra- 

 montane Church on science, supported by the apathy 

 and ignorance of the masses, are, on account of its 

 powerful organization, much more severe and 

 dangerous than those of other religions. 



In order to appreciate correctly the extreme 

 importance of Christianity in regard to the entire 

 history of civilization, and particularly its funda- 

 mental opposition to reason and science, we must 

 briefly run over the principal stages of its historical 

 evolution. It may be divided into four periods : 



(1) primitive Christianity (the first three centuries), 



(2) papal Christianity (twelve centuries, from the 

 fourth to the fifteenth), (3) the Reformation (three 

 centuries, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth), and 

 (4) modern pseudo-Christianity. 



I. PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. 



Primitive Christianity embraces the first three 

 centuries. Christ himself, the noble prophet and 

 enthusiast, so full of the love of humanity, was far 

 below the level of classical culture ; he knew nothing 

 beyond the Jewish traditions ; he has not left a single 

 line of writing. He had, indeed, no suspicion of the 

 advanced stage to which Greek philosophy and science 

 had progressed five hundred years before. 



All that we know of him and of his original teaching 

 is taken from the chief documents of the New Testa- 

 ment — the four gospels and the Pauline epistles. As 

 to the four canonical gospels, we now know that they 

 were selected from a host of contradictory and forged 



