e Simon of Cyrene bore it in another. Jesus gave no
answer to Pilate, says Matthew; He explains that His Kingdom was not
of the world, says John. Mary His Mother sat _(sic)_ at the foot of
the Cross, according to St. John; it was not His Mother, but Mary the
mother of Salome _(sic)_ 'who beheld Him from afar,' according to Mark
and Matthew. There was a guard set to watch the tomb, says Matthew;
there is no mention of one by the others."

At first we thought Mr. Laing must have meant _differences_ and not
discrepancies; but the following paragraph forbade so lenient an
interpretation. "The only other mention of Mary by St. John, who
describes her as sitting _(sic)_ by the foot of the Cross, is
apocryphal, being directly contradicted by the very precise statement [48]
in the three other Gospels, that the Mary who was present on that
occasion was a different woman, the mother of Salome." Even his youngest
readers ought to open their eyes at this. Similarly he thinks the
omission of the Lord's Prayer by St. Mark tells strongly against its
authenticity. [49]

II.

We must now say something about the great facts of evolutionary
philosophy which have shattered dogmatic Christianity to pieces, and
have made it impossible for any sincere man to remain a Christian. To
say that Mr. Laing is absolutely certain of the all-sufficiency of
evolutionism to explain everything that is knowable to the human mind,
that he does not hint for a moment that this philosophy is found by the
"bell-wethers" of science to be every day less satisfactory as a
complete _rationale_ of the physical cosmos; is really to understate the
case for sheer lack of words to express the intensity of his conviction.
His fundamental fact is that, however theologians may shuffle out of the
first chapter of Genesis by converting days into periods, when we come
to the story of the Noachean Deluge, we are confronted with such a
glaring absurdity that we must at once allow that the Bible is full of
myths. For history and science show that man existed probably two
hundred thousand years ago, at all events not less than twenty thousand;
also that five thousand B.C., a highly organized civilization existed in
Egypt, whose monuments of that date give evidence to the full
development of racial and linguistic differences as now existing among
men; that this plants the common stem from which these have branched
off, in an indefinitely remote pre-historic period