OUR APE-LIKE ANCESTORS.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17973, 19 March 1930, Page 11

OUR APE-LIKE ANCESTORS.

CHALLENGE TO THE POPE. BY BISHOP OF BIRMINGHAM. The Bishop of Birmingham (Dr. Barnes), addressing a Modern Churchmen's Union meeting at Birmingham, said the progress of Modernism during the last 15 years had been amazing. It was now generally agreed that God created man from an ape-like stock, and that our ape-like ancestors were in turn derived from lower foims of life which ultimately emerged from primitive living matter, the first appearance of which upon this earth must probably be placed some 1,500,000,000 years ago. The modern theologian took such facts as the basis of his endeavour to understand God’s nature: he was thus a Modernist. The story of Adam and Eve was, of course, incompatible with modern knowledge; and the theologian set it aside. Their main assailants were Fundamentalists and Roman Catholics. Modernists knew that Papal infallibility could not possibly be true. Diet the Pope believe in evolution? The answer to that question had important theological implications. And if the Pope could give an infallible ansxver, why was he silent? Modernists alone could prevent religious decay, for they only could so present the Christian faith as to be acceptable to men educated in the new knowledge of this era.