NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 469 



clinches all by insisting that God showed at Mount Sinai his purpose 

 to startle the body before impressing the conscience. 



While the theory of diabolical agency in storms was thus drooping 

 and dying, very shrewd efforts were made at compromise, such as we 

 always see in the history of every science when its victory is fully in 

 sight. The first of these attempts we have already noted in the effort 

 to explain the efficacy of bells in storms by their simple use in stirring 

 the faithful to prayer, and in the concession made by sundry theolo- 

 gians, and even by the great Lord Bacon himself, that church-bells 

 might, under the sanction of Providence, disperse storms by agitating 

 the air. This gained ground somewhat, though it was resisted by one 

 eminent church authority, who answered shrewdly that, in that case, 

 cannon would be even more pious instruments.* Still another argu- 

 ment used in trying to save this part of the theological theory was 

 that the bells were consecrated instruments for this purpose, " like the 

 horns at whose blowing the walls of Jericho fell." 



But these compromises were of little avail. In 1766 Father Ster- 

 zinger attacked the very groundwork of the whole diabolic theory. 

 He was, of course, bitterly assailed, insulted, and hated ; but the Church 

 thought it best not to condemn him. More and more, the " Prince of the 

 power of the air " retreated before the lightning-rod of Franklin. The 

 older Church, while clinging to the old theory theoretically, was finally 

 obliged to confess the supremacy of Franklin's theory practically ; for 

 his lightning-rod did what exorcisms, and holy water, and processions, 

 and the Agnus Dei, and the ringing of church-bells, and the rack, 

 and the burning of witches, had failed to do. This was clearly seen, 

 even by the poorest peasants in Eastern France, when they observed 

 that the grand spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which neither the sacred- 

 ness of the place, nor the bells within it, nor the holy water and relics 

 beneath it, could protect from frequent injuries by lightning, was 

 once and for all protected by Franklin's rod. Then came into the 

 minds of multitudes the answer to the question which had exercised 

 for ages the leading theological minds of Europe, namely, " Why 

 should the Almighty strike his own consecrated temples, or suffer Satan 

 to strike them ? " 



Yet even this practical solution of the great question was not re- 

 ceived without opposition. The first lightning-conductor upon a church 

 in England was not put up until 1762, ten years after Franklin's dis- 

 covery. The spire of Saint Bride's Church in London was greatly in- 

 jured by lightning in 1750, and in 1764 a storm so wrecked its masonry 

 that it had to be mainly rebuilt ; yet for years after this the authorities 

 refused to attach a lightning-rod! f The Protestant Cathedral of Saint 

 Paul's in London was not protected until sixteen years after Franklin's 

 discovery, and the tower of the great Protestant church at Hamburg 



* See Gretna's " De Bencdictionibus," lib. ii, c. 46. 

 f See Priestley, " History of Electricity," p. 407. 



