738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the absurd error of allowing a text-book and sundry review 

 articles to appear which grossly misstate the Galileo episode, with 

 the certainty of ultimately undermining confidence in her teach- 

 ings among her more thoughtful young men, she has kept clear 

 of the folly of continuing to tie her teachings, and the acceptance 

 of our sacred books, to an adoption of the Ptolemaic theory. 



Not so with American Lutheranism. In 1873 was published 

 in St. Louis, at the publishing house of the Lutheran Synod of 

 Missouri, a work entitled Astronomische Unterredung, the author 

 being well known to be a late president of a Lutheran Teachers' 

 Seminary. 



No attack on the whole modern system of astronomy could be 

 more bitter. On the first page of the introduction the author, 

 after stating the two theories, asks, " Which is right ? " and 

 says : " It would be very simple to me which is right, if it were 

 only a question of human import. But the wise and truthful 

 God has expressed Himself on this matter in the Bible. The 

 entire Holy Scripture settles the question that the earth is the 

 principal body {Hauptkorper) of the universe, that it stands fixed, 

 and that sun and moon only serve to light it." 



The author then goes on to show from Scripture the folly not 

 only of Copernicus and Newton, but of a long line of great as- 

 tronomers in more recent times. He declares : " Let no one un- 

 derstand me as inquiring first where truth is to be found^n 

 the Bible or with the astronomers. No, I know that beforehand — 

 that my God never lies ; never makes a mistake ; out of His 

 mouth comes only truth, when He speaks of the structure of the 

 universe, of the earth, sun, moon, and stars. . . . 



'* Because the truth of the Holy Scripture is involved in this, 

 therefore the above question is of the highest importance to me. 

 . . . Scientists and others lean upon the miserable reed (Eohrstab) 

 that God teaches only the order of salvation, but not the order of 

 the universe." 



Very noteworthy is the fact that this late survival of an 

 ancient belief based upon text-worship is found not in the teach- 

 ings of any zealous priest of the mother Church, but in those of an 

 eminent professor in that branch of Protestantism which claims 

 special enlightenment.* 



Nor has the warfare against the dead champions of science 

 been carried on by the older Church alone. 



* For the amusing details of the attempt in tiie English Church to repress science, and 

 of the way in which it was met, see De Morgan, Taradoxes, p. 42. For Pastor Knak and 

 his associates, see the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1868. For the recent Lutheran works 

 against the Copernican astronomy, see among others Astronomische Unterredung zwischen 

 einem Licbhaber der Astronomic und mchreren beriihmten Astronomer der Neuzeit. 

 J. C. W. L. St. Louis, 1873. 



