SCIENCE AND RELIGION AS ALLIES. 693 



Perfect Being, without parts, without partiality, and without shadow 

 of turning, to be worshiped only in spirit and in truth. 



Science, to be sure, in this process of purification, has destroyed a 

 great deal that has been very dear to Faith. It has uprooted old ideas 

 and pulled down about our ears accepted systems both physical and 

 spiritual systems. The chajige in our views of the world has been 

 most radical. 



What was the conception of the world held by the orthodox 

 churchman of the middle ages ? The earth was a square plain, at 

 whose outer edges rose mountain-walls, supporting the vault of 

 heaven. This vault was a solid crystal roof, wherein the fixed stars 

 were set, and over which moon and sun were pulled to and fro by the 

 angels. Above this firmament, separating the waters which are 

 above from the waters which are below, was the celestial cistern 

 through whose windows the rain fell. Above this, again, the seven- 

 storied heaven, in whose highest story dwelt Jehovah himself, seated 

 on his throne of glory, surrounded by angels and saints. 



To-day, how has science stretched out this little cosmos! The 

 astronomer has turned his telescope upon that adamantine firmament, 

 and it has dissolved into thin air. The total solid particles that the 

 blue expanse contains, it has been estimated by Tyndall, might prob- 

 ably be packed into a lady's traveling-bag. The glittering points 

 that gemmed its surface have expanded into enormous sums thou- 

 sands of times as large as our own globe. The circumscribed heaven 

 of the Apocalypse, 12,000 furlongs each way, has spread out, from 

 that one-hundredth part of the cubic dimensions which we now know 

 our own earth to have, into an immensity of space which puts us so 

 far from the nearest fixed star that a locomotive could not reach it in 

 700,000 centuries ; and that even when we had attained this enormous 

 distance we should stand merely at the entrance of a starlight avenue, 

 down whose infinite vista come the rays from still more remote suns ! 

 Our own earth, formerly the grand, immovable stage to which the 

 wandering sun and stars were only decorations, has been shriveled 

 into a petty pellet of cosmic stuff, dislodged from its fixed and cen- 

 tral position, and sent whirling on its way as one of the smaller satel- 

 lites in the train of a central body, which central body, though as 

 much larger than it as a cart-wheel is than a pea, is yet but one of 

 more than 20,000,000 suns contained in its own part of space ; and is 

 itself not stationary, but moving with its planetary fleet at the rate 

 of 4,000 miles a day round some still larger centre. 



And in time, as well as space, has science enormously multiplied 

 the numbers. Where the Bible chronology gave sixty centuries for 

 the world's age, science demands as many millenniums. Where Gen- 

 esis granted six days for the business of creation, geology requires 

 as many aeons. Science has mined in caverns and found man's tools 

 and weapons among the bones of mammoths. It has decijjhered 



