The four Gospels were compiled from earlier materials which have perished, and the dates when they first appeared in their present form are given as follows:--Mark, certainly after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70; Matthew, about 119 A. D.; Luke, between 100 and 110; and John, between 132 and 140. The question of the genuineness of the Pauline Epistles, is now far from being so clear as was once universally supposed. Advanced criticism, Professor Van Manen tells us in his elaborate article on "Paul", has learned to recognize that none of these Epistles are by him, not even the four generally regarded as unassailable. They are not letters to individuals, but books or pamphlets emanating from a particular school. We know little, in reality, of the facts of Paul's life, or of his death: all is uncertain. The unmistakable traces of late origin indicate that the Epistles probably did not appear till the second century. The strange book of Revelation is not of purely Christian origin. Criticism has clearly shown that it can no longer be regarded as a literary unit, but it is an admixture of Jewish with Christian ideas and speculations. Ancient testimony, that of Papias in particular, assumed the Presbyter John, and not the Apostle, as its author or redactor. The Epistles of Peter, James and Jude are none of them held to be the work of the Apostles. They probably first saw the light in the second century; the second Epistle of Peter may even belong to the latter half of that period. All the above conclusions are summarized, as nearly as may be, in the words of the authors of the respective articles. Their significance is surely enormous. Right or wrong, eminent Christian scholars here proclaim results in complete antagonism to the ideas usually accepted as forming the true basis of the Christian faith. They amount, in fact, to a complete and unconditional surrender of the whole dogmatic framework which has hitherto been held as divinely revealed, and therefore divinely true. Thomas Paine was a Deist. As such he believed that nature may be compared with a clock and God with its maker. As the clock maker, under normal conditions, has but little to do with his handiwork, so it has been with the Creator and his universe. The theists of every name (Christian, Jew, Mohammedan and Buddhist), not to speak of others, believe that the universe, with all which therein is, lives, moves and has its being as the result of the willings of their respective gods. Though I have my god, indeed two gods, one god in the world of my physical existence--a trinity: matter, force and motion, and another god in the world of my moral existence--a trinity: fact, truth and life, yet if the rejection of both deism and theism is atheism, I am an atheist. But assuming for the sake of argument that there is a conscious personal being who has had and is having something to do with making things what they are, I set my seal to this arraignment: