Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/68

58, he insisted that it might be divine revelation, notwithstanding its immediate source. He said that if God made Balaam's ass speak, it would also be easy for him to provide that the heathen should give correct instruction. The non-existence of Satan is not demonstrable; so it may be well to examine into subjects on which we have knowledge, such as geology and astronomy. It appears from bricks in palaces at Nineveh that the Mosaic cosmology was also obtained from the same source as the Satanic doctrine. Any revelation on the subject would in order of time have been given to, and according to all evidence was promulgated by, the cultured Assyrians, not the ignorant captives. The priority, however, is of little moment, as the revolving dish-cover theory, whether as originally noted on clay or on rolls of sheep-skin, is now obsolete. All dependence on revelations practically means that those suiting us are true and all others false. When judgment upon the truth or falsehood of an alleged revelation can be made in accordance with the prejudices of the judge, the subject becomes too eclectic and elastic to be considered by science, or indeed by common sense.

The scope of anthropology is to study within the category of humanity. If theology comes from man's conceptions, it is embraced in anthropology. If theology is of divine origin, anthropology may discuss what men think and do about it. But the truth or falsity of revelation can not be dealt with in this address. To raise that point acts as a clóture, cutting off all debate.

—Religious writers have often explained the differences in beliefs among the various peoples of the world on the hypothesis that true religious knowledge was implanted at one time in the ancestors of all those peoples, and that the divergence now found is through decay of that supernatural information. The early missionaries to America, of all denominations, were imbued with this dogma and sought, and therefore found, evidences of the one primeval faith. Sometimes they limited themselves to the similar beliefs of the Indians and the Israelites, but often they passed beyond that stage to locate the vestiges of Christianity. These they said came by the hands of Christian pre-Columbian visitors, and one explanation was by the importation of the apostle Thomas. The coincidences found were exaggerated, but when facts were opposed they were not less satisfactory, as the adverse power of Satan then appeared. Such mental predetermination nearly destroys the value of those missionary accounts.

The most generally entertained parallel between the Indians and the Israelites, repeated by hundreds of writers, was that they both believed in one overruling God. This consensus, if true, would at once establish a beatific bridge of union between the two peoples, but its iris arch vanishes as it is viewed closely.