e Church is too mild and gentle with such
monstrous doctrines; bewails the concessions made to science by some
eminent preachers; and foretells his own martyrdom at the hands of men
of science.

Efforts like this accomplished little, and a more legitimate attempt was
made to resist the conclusions of archaeology by showing that knives of
stone were used in obedience to a sacred ritual in Egypt for embalming,
and in Judea for circumcision, and that these flint knives might have
had this later origin. But the argument against the conclusions drawn
from this view was triple: First, as we have seen, not only stone
knives, but axes and other implements of stone similar to those of a
prehistoric period in western Europe were discovered; secondly,
these implements were discovered in the hard gravel drift of a period
evidently far earlier than that of Mena; and, thirdly, the use of stone
implements in Egyptian and Jewish sacred functions within the historic
period, so far from weakening the force of the arguments for the long
and slow development of Egyptian civilization from the men who used rude
flint implements to the men who built and adorned the great temples
of the early dynasties, is really an argument in favour of that long
evolution. A study of comparative ethnology has made it clear that the
sacred stone knives and implements of the Egyptian and Jewish priestly
ritual were natural survivals of that previous period. For sacrificial
or ritual purposes, the knife of stone was considered more sacred than
the knife of bronze or iron, simply because it was ancient; just as
to-day, in India, Brahman priests kindle the sacred fire not with
matches or flint and steel, but by a process found in the earliest,
lowest stages of human culture--by violently boring a pointed stick into
another piece of wood until a spark comes; and just as to-day, in Europe
and America, the architecture of the Middle Ages survives as a special
religious form in the erection of our most recent churches, and to such
an extent that thousands on thousands of us feel that we can not worship
fitly unless in the midst of windows, decorations, vessels, implements,
vestments, and ornaments, no longer used for other purposes, but which
have survived in sundry branches of the Christian Church, and derived a
special sanctity from the fact that they are of ancient origin.

Taking, then, the whole mass of testimony together, even though a
plausible or very strong