438 A Century of Science 



A very different verdict must be rendered in the 

 case of Mr. Edwin Johnson's book, called " The 

 Rise of Christendom," published in London in 

 1890, an octavo of 500 pages. According to Mr. 

 Johnson, the rise of Christendom began in the 

 twelfth century of our era, and it was preceded by 

 two centuries of Hebrew religion, which started in 

 Moslem Spain ! First came Islam, then Judaism, 

 then Christianity. The genesis of both the latter 

 was connected with that revolt against Islam which 

 we call the Crusades. What we suppose to be 

 the history of Israel, as well as that of the first 

 eleven Christian centuries, is a gigantic lie, con- 

 cocted in the thirteenth century by the monks of 

 St. Basil and St. Benedict. The Roman emperors 

 knew nothing of Christianity, and the multifarious 

 allusions to it in ancient writers are all explained 

 by Mr. Johnson as fraudulent interpolations. As 

 for the Greek and Latin fathers, they never ex- 

 isted. " The excellent stylist, who writes under 

 the name of Lactantius, not earlier than the four- 

 teenth century ; " " the Augustinian of the four- 

 teenth or fifteenth century, who writes the roman- 

 tic Confessions," - such is the airy way in which 

 the matter is disposed of. As for the New Testa- 

 ment, " it is not yet clear whether the book was 

 first written in Latin or in Greek." This reminds 



