Every conflict between science and theology since the days of Copernicus has resulted in an unequivocal victory for the former. Both churches resisted the truth of the rotundity and movement of the earth as though their existence depended upon it. They fought each question as it arose in the same spirit. The Mosaic account of the creation, the age of the world, the deluge, the length of man’s sojourn upon the earth, are questions as effectively settled adversely to the “truths of scripture” as the one for which Galileo suffered. And yet Christianity lives, and will continue to live and flourish, solely on account of the inherent and increasing affinity of the human heart as civilization advances for the precepts and example of its founder. If Christianity were destined to fall by the undermining of its legends it would fall now with the recent destruction of one upon which its existence appeared to depend, which has, more than any other, shaped its course and laid the foundation of its rituals. The doctrine of evolution now established as a truth is the most serious and apparently destructive one that theology ever met. The fact that man has ARISEN from a condition of brutality, instead of FALLEN from a state of perfection is, to ecclesiasticism, a raking blow from stem to stern, compared with all previous battles with science as the shot of a modern thirty-two pounder with old fashioned ordinance. The legend of the fall of man, compared with all others, is the vilest. It was brought from Assyria, by the Hebrews, who obtained it during their captivity, from a barbarous people, among whom it was current for ages, and was thus inserted in our Sacred Book, proofs of which have recently been found in deciphering the Ninevite records. A suspicion is not entirely without warrant that it may have been adopted with a purpose of creating miseries and sorrows in the multitude for the profitable occupation of a divinely authorized few in the business of consoling them, and right well has it fulfilled its mission. It has changed the facial expression of Christendom. It has deepened the furrows of sorrow upon old age, and fixed lines of care upon the features of youth. It has brought the undeserved dejection of criminality, and the downcast of shame, where of right belongs the reflection of hopefulness and the light of expectancy. It has incalculably multiplied the sorrows of life, and created for each death a nightmare of imaginary horrors. This legend is the foundation and inspiration of most of the evil and cruelty that Christianity has inflicted on human kind. Fabulous itself, it has been the parent of unrealities, witchcraft and magic for instance, from which millions of innocent victims have been sacrificed to torture and death. It has transformed reasonable enjoyments of life into crimes by the invention of a word, which with the latitude given its definition, has kept in trembling uncertainty the innocent and harmless.