314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a metaphor from metallurgy, the molds have been broken and recon- 

 structed over and over again, but the molten ore abides in the ladle of 

 humanity. An influence so deep and permanent is not likely soon to 

 disappear ; but of the future form of religion little can be predicted. 

 Its main concern may possibly be to purify, elevate, and brighten the 

 life that now is, instead of treating it as the more or less dismal vesti- 

 bule of a life that is to come. 



The term "nonsense," which has been just applied to the views of 

 creation enunciated by the Westminster Assembly, was used, as already 

 stated, in reference to our present knowledge and not to the knowledge 

 of three or four centuries ago. To most people the earth was at that 

 time all in all ; the sun and moon and stars being set in heaven merely 

 to furnish lamj^light to our planet. But though in relation to the 

 heavenly bodies the earth's position and importance were thus exag- 

 gerated, very inadequate and erroneous notions were entertained re- 

 garding the shape and magnitude of the earth itself. Theologians 

 were horrified when first informed that our planet was a sphere. The 

 question of antipodes exercised them for a long time, most of them 

 pouring ridicule on the idea that men could exist with their feet turned 

 toward us, and with their heads pointing downward. I think it is Sir 

 George Airy who refers to the case of an over-curious individual ask- 

 ing what we should see if we went to the edge of the world and looked 

 over. That the earth was a flat surface on which the sky rested was 

 the belief entertained by the founders of all our great religious sys- 

 tems. Even liberal Protestant theologians stigmatized the Copernican 

 theory as being " built on fallible phenomena and advanced by many 

 arbitrary assumptions against evident testimonies of Scripture." * New- 

 ton finally placed his intellectual crowbar beneath these ancient no- 

 tions, and heaved them into irretrievable ruin. 



Then it was that penetrating minds, seeing the nature of the 

 change wrought by the new astronomy in our conceptions of the uni- 

 verse, also discerned the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of accepting 

 literally the Mosaic account of creation. They did not reject it, but 

 they assigned to it a meaning entirely new. Dr. Samuel Clarke, who 

 was the personal friend of Newton and a supporter of his theory, 

 threw out the idea that " possibly the six days of creation might be a 

 typical representation of some greater periods." Clarke's contemporary, 

 Dr. Thomas Burnet, wrote with greater decision in the same strain. 

 The Sabbath being regarded as a shadow or type of that heavenly 

 repose which the righteous will enjoy when this world has passed 

 away, " so these six days of creation are so many periods or millen- 

 niums for which the world and the toils and labors of our present 

 state are destined to endure." f The Mosaic account was thus reduced 



* Such was the view of Dr. John Owen, who is described by Cox as " the most emi- 

 nent of the Independent divines." 

 f Cox, vol. ii, p. 211, note. 



