From this state of things, the foundation of what is known as the science of religions did much to deliver us. When non-Christian faiths, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Mohammedanism, came to be systematically studied without preconceived hostility or desire to jeer at their absurdities, it was seen that the same atmosphere of miracle and legend had gathered round their infancy as round that of the Christian Church. Outside the regular or canonical scriptures—if the phrase may be used—of all of these faiths, there had evidently grown up a vast literature of uncertain date and authorship in which the same stories were repeated and the same episodes introduced as in the Christian Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Lives of the Saints. It began to dawn upon us that, as the human mind under the same conditions generally works in the same way, it was possible that all religions, whether true or false, might have gone through the same or similar stages of development[4]. That this view of the case was in itself a great step in advance, everyone will readily admit who can remember the horror with which any proposal to equate or even compare Christianity with any other religion was once received. It was much helped, however, by another novel hypothesis which about that time had got over its period of obloquy and was rapidly coming to the front, namely, the theory of evolution. When Darwin in his _Origin of Species_ enunciated the truth that as more animals and plants than the earth can support come into existence every year, it is only those varieties which are best fitted to their environment which survive the consequent struggle for existence, he practically gave us a new standpoint from which to contemplate Nature. Herbert Spencer, quickly grasping this principle and carrying its application much further than Darwin had ventured to do, showed that it governed the development not only of animal forms but of the intellectual and moral faculties of man, of political and social institutions, and even of what he called “ecclesiastical institutions,” which included religions themselves. With the general acceptance of this view, it followed that the success in point of popularity of any creed at any period of the world’s history was not due to any sudden or capricious exercise of the Divine will, but to the normal working of a universal and irresistible law.