the thinking world has
at last been borne by the general development of a scientific atmosphere
beyond that kind of refutation.

If, in the atmosphere generated by the earlier developed sciences, the
older growths of biblical interpretation have drooped and withered and
are evidently perishing, new and better growths have arisen with roots
running down into the newer sciences. Comparative Anthropology in
general, by showing that various early stages of belief and observance,
once supposed to be derived from direct revelation from heaven to the
Hebrews, are still found as arrested developments among various savage
and barbarous tribes; Comparative Mythology and Folklore, by showing
that ideas and beliefs regarding the Supreme Power in the universe are
progressive, and not less in Judea than in other parts of the world;
Comparative Religion and Literature, by searching out and laying side by
side those main facts in the upward struggle of humanity which show that
the Israelites, like other gifted peoples, rose gradually, through ghost
worship, fetichism, and polytheism, to higher theological levels; and
that, as they thus rose, their conceptions and statements regarding the
God they worshipped became nobler and better--all these sciences are
giving a new solution to those problems which dogmatic theology has so
long laboured in vain to solve. While researches in these sciences
have established the fact that accounts formerly supposed to be special
revelations to Jews and Christians are but repetitions of widespread
legends dating from far earlier civilizations, and that beliefs formerly
thought fundamental to Judaism and Christianity are simply based on
ancient myths, they have also begun to impress upon the intellect and
conscience of the thinking world the fact that the religious and moral
truths thus disengaged from the old masses of myth and legend are
all the more venerable and authoritative, and that all individual or
national life of any value must be vitalized by them.(506)

(506) For plaintive lamentations over the influence of this atmosphere
of scientific thought upon the most eminent contemporary Christian
scholars, see the Christus Comprobator, by the Bishop of Gloucester and
Bristol, London, 1893, and the article in the Contemporary Review for
May, 1892, by the Bishop of Colchester, passim. For some less
known examples of sacred myths and legends inherited from ancient
civilizations, see Lenormant, L