belief like Mormonism should succeed in the nineteenth century.
Draper's studies of man's intellectual development led him to
declare that "man has ever been the same in his modes of thought
and motives of action, "and to assert his purpose to" judge past
occurrences in the same way as those of our own time."* So
Macaulay refused to accept the doctrine that "the world is
constantly becoming more and more enlightened, "asserting that
"the human mind, instead of marching, merely marks time. "Nothing
offers stronger confirmation of the correctness of these views
than the history of religious beliefs, and the teachings
connected therewith since the death of Christ.

* "Intellectual Development of Europe," Vol. II, Chap. 3.


The chain of these beliefs and teachings--including in the list
only those which offer the boldest challenge to a sane man's
credulity--is uninterrupted down to our own day. A few of them
may be mentioned by way of illustration. In one century we find
Spanish priests demanding the suppression of the opera on the
ground that this form of entertainment caused a drought, and a
Pope issuing a bull against men and women having sexual
intercourse with fiends. In another, we find an English tailor,
unsuccessfully, allotting endless torments to all who would not
accept his declaration that God was only six feet in height, at
the same time that George Fox, who was successful in establishing
the Quaker sect, denounced as unchristian adoration of Janus and
Woden, any mention of a month as January or a day as Wednesday.
Luther, the Protestant pioneer, believed that he had personal
conferences with the devil; Wesley, the founder of Methodism,