The mythical background of Christianity was thus again attacked. The
struggle was violent and bitter. Christians were so accustomed to the
primitive myth of man's creation in a Garden of Eden, as narrated in
the Old Testament, that they refused for a long time to consider any
other view. Bishops and laymen denounced Huxley and Darwin and their
supporters, and often resorted to parodies of their position in order
to awaken the prejudices of the mass of the people. It was affirmed
that they believed that man was descended from an ape or monkey. But
the clergy were waging a losing fight, as is always the case when the
facts are overwhelmingly against an old dogma. The educated people of
to-day accept some form of the theory of evolution as naturally as they
accept the automobile and electric street-car. They see no reason to
believe that {106} primitive people who made no study of animal life
knew more about its origin than those who have devoted their time to
careful and earnest investigation. Facts speak for themselves and
conquer what opposes them no matter what traditions bolster it up.

The refuge which Christianity has taken is the usual one resorted to by
religions which find themselves in conflict with views more adequate
than those they hold. The myths are either allegorized or thrust into
the background. Allegorization of myth is only a work of fancy, but it
always implies a tendency to self-deception. So long as we see tales
like the stories of creation in a sanely historical way, we realize
that these men of the past were stating their own naive beliefs and
were not teaching our own views in the guise of a poetic version. The
only way to be true to ourselves is to give up any attempt at
compromise and acknowledge that the account of man's creation given in
"_Genesis_" has simply been outgrown.

Thus, step by step, the framework of nature and man's place in it as
taught by Christianity has come in conflict with more thoroughly
founded views and has had to give way. Before science arose, man
guessed at things and appealed to the gods at every step. The gods, as
superhuman powers capable of doing anything, were naturally introduced
to account for origins and mysterious events. Such an agent seemed a
sufficient answer to any problem. How did man arise? God created him.
How did the earth come to be? God created it. But science has come to
see that an agent which answers every question in this eas