From one point of view this is part of the general scheme in virtue of which the Christian Church has given currency to the legend that the doctrines taught by it represented a tremendous advance in the development of the race. In sober truth it represented nothing of the kind. That the elements of Christian religious teaching existed long before Christianity as a religious system was known to the world is now a commonplace with all students of comparative religions, and is admitted by most Christian writers of repute. Even in form the Christian doctrines represented but a small advance upon their pagan prototypes, but it is only when one bears in mind the fact that the best minds of antiquity were rapidly throwing off these superstitions and leading the world to a more enlightened view of things, we realize that in the main Christianity represented a step backward in the intellectual evolution of the race. What we then see is Christianity reaffirming and re-establishing most of the old superstitions in forms in which only the more ignorant classes of antiquity accepted them. We have an assertion of demonism in its crudest forms, an affirmation of the miraculous that the educated in the Roman world had learned to laugh at, and which is to-day found among the savage people of the earth, while every form of scientific thought was looked upon as an act of impiety. The scientific eclipse that overtook the old pagan civilization was one of the inevitable consequences of the triumph of Christianity. From the point of view of general culture the retrogressive nature of Christianity is unmistakable. It has yet to be recognized that the same statement holds good in relation even to religion. One day the world will appreciate the fact that no greater disaster ever overtook the world than the triumph of the Christian Church.