A third intellectual evolution has been effected in our own time by the advent of the Historical Method. This has completely upset the traditional view of the history of mankind. Floods of new light have been poured upon the prehistoric and historic races of man. Modern criticism and exegesis have given us an entirely new view of the origin and contents of many parts of the Old and New Testaments. In every department of knowledge the historic method has made the point of view of evolution possible and victorious. It is in vain to oppose it, for it is the law of life. Those who cling to the doctrine of dogmatic immutability, whether in the Catholic or the Protestant Churches, are exactly in the position of the Romish cardinals who covered Galileo with anathemas and protested energetically against the rotation of the earth. Neither their protests nor their anathemas prevented the earth from turning round, and the cardinals along with it. In Protestantism, a resistance so blind would be the grossest of inconsistencies. Dogmatic revision is always alive, both in principle and in fact, in the Churches of the Reformation: in principle, because all Confessions of Faith are relative, and subordinate to the Word of God; in fact, because the spirit of research, of criticism, and free discussion has never ceased to breathe in Protestant Theology, and breathes to-day more ardently than ever. The work will therefore be completed; I am sure of it. We may lack the faith and courage to carry it on, but, failing us, God will not fail to raise up other fellow-workers with Himself in this great enterprise. Christianity cannot perish; it has never failed to adapt itself to the state of mind of ages past; in the future, it will find and make new forms in which to express and propagate itself, forms adapted to the coming times.... "One day, the monk Sarapion, a man of deep piety and ardent zeal, was told by the priest Paphnutius and the deacon Photinus that God, in whose image man had been created, was a purely spiritual being, without body, without external figure, without sensible organs. Serapion was convinced by the ascendancy of Catholic tradition and by the arguments that had been employed. The assistants rose to render thanks to God for having rescued so holy a man from the wicked heresy of the anthropomorphists. But, in the midst of their devotions, the unhappy old man, feeling the image of the God to whom he had been accustomed to pray vanishing from his heart, was deeply moved, and bursting into sobs and tears, he threw himself upon the ground, and cried out: 'Woe is me! Unhappy man! They have taken away my God. I have no one now to cling to and invoke.'"[2] [2] J. Cassanius, abb. Massil.: Collatio, X. c. III.