ver passed over the human mind. The medieval age was tempted to
look backward for its knowledge of everything. Philosophy was to be
found in Aristotle, science in Pliny and his like. It was the ancients
who were wise; it was the ancients who had understood nature and had
known God. The farther back you went the nearer you came to the
venerable and the authoritative. As, therefore, in every other realm
folk looked back for knowledge, so it was most natural that they should
look back for their religion, too. To find philosophy in Aristotle and
to find spiritual life in Christ required not even the turning of the
head. In all realms the age in its search for knowledge was facing
backwards. It was a significant hour in the history of human thought
when that attitude began to give way. The scandal caused by Alessandro
Tassoni's attacks on Homer and Aristotle in the early seventeenth
century resounded through Europe. He advanced the new and astonishing
idea that, so far from having degenerated since ancient times, the race
had advanced and that the moderns were better than their sires. This
new idea prevailed as belief in progress grew. It met, however, with
violent opposition, and the remnants of that old controversy are still
to be found in volumes like George Hakewill's five hundred page folio
published in 1627 on "the common errour touching Nature's perpetuall
and universall decay." [3] But from the seventeenth century on the
idea gained swift ascendency that the human race, like an individual,
is growing up, that humanity is becoming wiser with the years, that we
can know more than Aristotle and Pliny, that we should look, not back
to the ancients, but rather to ourselves and to our offspring, for the
real wisdom which maturity achieves. Once what was old seemed wise and
established; what was new seemed extempore and insecure: now what is
old seems outgrown; what is new seems probable and convincing. Such is
the natural and prevalent attitude in a world where the idea of
progress is in control. Nor can the applications of this idea to the
realm of religion be evaded. If we would not turn back to Palestine
nineteen centuries ago for anything else, why should we turn back to
find there the Master of our spiritual life? In a word, our modern
belief in progress, popularly interpreted, leads multitudes of people
to listen with itching ears for every new thing, while they condescend
to all that is old in religi