578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tine seemed inclined to yield a little in regard to the sphericity of 

 the earth, but he fought the idea that men exist on the other side 

 of it, saying that " Scripture speaks of no such descendants of 

 Adam." He insists that men could not be allowed by the Al- 

 mighty to live there, since if they did they could not see Christ 

 at his second coming descending through the air. But his most 

 cogent appeal, one which we find echoed from theologian to theo- 

 logian during a thousand years afterward, is to the nineteenth 

 Psalm, and to its confirmation in the Epistle to the Romans ; to 

 the words, " Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their 

 words to the end of the world." He dwells with great force on 

 the fact that St. Paul based one of his most powerful arguments 

 upon this declaration regarding the preachers of the gospel, de- 

 claring even more explicitly that " verily their sound went into 

 all the earth, their words unto the ends of the world." Hence- 

 forth we find it constantly declared that, as those preachers did 

 not go to the antipodes, no antipodes can exist ; and therefore 

 that the supporters of this geographical doctrine "give the lie 

 direct to King David and to St. Paul, and therefore to the Holy 

 Ghost." Augustine taught the whole world for over a thousand 

 years that as there was no preaching of the gospel on the opposite 

 side of the earth, there could be no human beings there. 



The great authority of Augustine and the cogency of his 

 scriptural argument held the Church, as a rule, firmly against the 

 doctrine of the antipodes ; yet that the doctrine continued to have 

 life is shown by the fact that in the sixth century Procopius of 

 Gaza attacks it with a tremendous argument. He declares that 

 if there be men on the other side of the earth, Christ must have 

 come to save them ; and, therefore, that there must have been 

 there, as necessary preliminaries to his coming, a duplicate Eden, 

 Adam, Serpent, and Deluge. 



Cosmas Indicopleustes also attacked the doctrine with especial 

 bitterness, citing a passage from St. Luke to prove that antipodes 

 are theologically impossible. 



At the end of the sixth century comes a man from whom much 

 might be expected St. Isidore of Seville. He had pondered 

 over ancient thought in science, and, as we have seen, had dared 

 proclaim his belief in the sphericity of the earth ; but with that 

 he stopped. As to the antipodes, the authority of the Psalmist, 

 St. Paul, and St. Augustine silences him; he shuns the whole 

 question as unlawful, subjects reason to faith, and declares that 

 men can not and ought not to exist on opposite sides of the earth.* 



* For the opinions of Basil, Ambrose, and others, see Leeky, History of Rationalism in 

 Europe, New York, 1812, vol. i, p. 279, note. Also Letronne, in Revue des Deux Mondes, 

 March, 1834. For Lactautius, see citations already given. For St. Augustine's opinion, see 

 the Civ. Dei, xvi, 9, where this great father of the Church shows that the existence of the 



