And side by side with all this we find the extraordinary fact that many anthropologists are still deeply engaged in their attempts to establish a gradual ascent of man from ape ancestors. Ignoring these evidences, they are diligently seeking and collecting the bones of unburied wanderers. But even these bones do not bear out the theory, for the older bones are no more ape-like than the later ones. Men exist on earth today, even among civilized peoples, as backward in type as these bones. What is quite certain is that man degenerates as well as evolves. Culture moves in waves, having ebbs and flows. The so-called aboriginal peoples are the remote and degenerated descendants of civilizations.
But what is the real import of these discoveries? Are they mere subjects of curiosity and wonder? No; the interest lies in what they imply. For if there is to be any coherence in our views, we must make the rest of our ideas agree with our enlarged view of past history. And the conventional views of man and his life do not thus agree; they are too insignificant, and out of tune with increasing knowledge.
THE PARABLE OF THE CRUCIFIXION:
by Cranstone Woodhead
FOR nearly two thousand years the story of the Crucifixion which we find in the four Gospels of the New Testament has appealed in various ways to the deepest and most sacred feelings of the human heart. Yet it may possibly be questioned whether its history and deeper meaning have been entirely comprehended by more than a very small fraction of those who have fashioned the framework of their lives and aspirations upon the tragic story.
Before attempting the explanation which modern enlightenment and research have thrown upon this deeper meaning, it may be useful to consider what we really know of the origin of the gospels themselves; for the investigations of the last half century or so, have thrown much light upon this question.
It is now the opinion of most well-informed biblical critics, that the gospels, as we now know them, did not exist until about two centuries after the beginning of the Christian era. They are merely different editions of the manuscripts containing the sayings and teachings of the Nazarene initiate, which were handed round and copied by his disciples after his death, with additions and interpolations added by later writers.
It would not be profitable, nor have we time within the compass of this paper, to sketch even in outlines, the almost endless arguments which have been educed in the elucidation of the questions involved. Only a vast library could contain all the books which have been written upon the history of the gospels. Nearly all of them were written in days when the psychological influence of the ecclesiasticism of the middle ages still enthralled the judgment of even the most learned. But as time passes on, and the vast literary and archaeological treasures of the Eastern home of the gospels become more widely known, several points stand out more and more clearly from the haze of controversy and dogmatic prejudice.