30 THE SABBATH. 



entertained regarding 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 towards us, and with their heads 

 pointing downwards. I think it was Sir George Airy 

 who referred to the case of an over-curious individual, 

 asking 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 enter- 

 tained by the founders of all our great religious 

 systems. The growth of the Copernican theory in 

 public favour filled even liberal Protestant theologians 

 with apprehension. They stigmatised it as being ' built 

 on fallible phenomena and advanced by many arbitrary 

 assumptions against evident testimonies of Scripture.' * 

 Newton finally placed his intellectual crowbar beneath 

 these ancient notions, and heaved them into irretriev- 

 able ruin. 



Then it was that penetrating minds among the 

 theologians, 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 impossi- 

 bility, of accepting literally the Mosaic account of 

 creation. With characteristic tenacity they clung to 

 that account, 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 



1 Such was the view of Dr. John Owen, who is described by Cox 

 as the most eminent of the Independent divines.' 



