_Ranke_ is perfectly right in saying that “it behoves the dignity of science to confess that it knows nothing of the origin of man” (Thuermer V, 1902, I. Heft). A century ago or so, ridicule was heaped in the name of science on the description in the Bible of the last day: “The stars shall fall,” “and the powers of heaven shall be moved,” “the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth shall be burnt up” (Matt. xxiv. 29 _seq._; Luke xxi. 25 _seq._; Mark xiii. 24 _seq._; 2 Pet. iii. 10). Then the assertion that stones could fall from the skies caused a smile, but now science has come to the general knowledge that this is not only possible, but perhaps really will be the end of all things, if once our earth on its journey through unknown spaces of the universe should collide with a comet or get into a cosmic cloud of large meteors. (Cf. the graphic description in _K. Braun_, Ueber Kosmogonie, 3d ed., 1905, p. 381 _seq._) An example of another kind: It is not so long since Protestant, liberal Bible-criticism and its history of early Christian literature, in the endeavour to remove everything supernatural from the beginning of Christianity, regarded the New Testament and the oldest Christian documents as unreliable testimony, even forgeries, and for this reason placed the date of their origin as late as possible. But now they have to retrace their steps. _A. Harnack_ writes: “There was a period—the general public is still living in it—when the New Testament and the oldest Christian literature were thought to be but a tissue of lies and forgeries. This time has passed. For science it was an episode in which much was learned of which much must be forgotten. The result of subsequent research over-reaches in a ‘reactionary’ effect what might be termed the central position of modern criticism. The oldest literature of the Church is in the main and in most details true and reliable, that is, from the literary and historical point of view.... I am not afraid to use the word ‘retrogressive’—for we should call a spade a spade—the criticism of the sources of the earliest Christianity is beyond doubt moving retrogressively towards tradition” (Chronologie der Alt-Christ. Literatur I, 1897, VIII). In a more recent work the same savant writes: “During the years from 30 to 70 all originated in Palestine, or, better, in Jerusalem, what later on was developed. This knowledge is steadily gaining and replacing the former ‘critical’ opinion that the fundamental development had extended over a period of about a hundred years” (Lukas der Arzt, 1906, Vorwort). This retrogression is continued still farther in his later work, “Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostolgesch. u. zur Abfassungszeit der synopt. Evang., 1911,” in which _Harnack_ draws very near to the Catholic view regarding