88 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



of science to suffering mankind. To Luther, the 

 descent of Christ into hell, which modern research 

 has shown to be a variant of an Orphic legend of 

 the underworld, was a real event, Jesus going thither 

 that he might conquer Satan in a hand-to-hand 

 struggle. 



Therefore, freedom of thought, as we define it, 

 had the bitterest foe in Luther, although, in his con- 

 demnation of " works," and his fanatical dogma of 

 man's " justification by faith alone," which made 

 him reject the Epistle of James as one " of straw," 

 and as unworthy of a. place in the Canon, he unwit- 

 tingly drove in the thin end of the rationalist wedge. 

 The Reformers had hedged the canonical books with 

 theories of verbal inspiration which extended even 

 to the punctuation of the sentences. They thus ren- 

 dered intelligent study of the Bible impossible, and 

 did grievous injury to a collection of writings of vast 

 historical value, and of abiding interest as records 

 of man's primitive speculations and spiritual devel- 

 opment. But Luther's application of the right of 

 private judgment to the omission or addition of this 

 or that book into a canon which had been closed by 

 a Council of the Church, surrendered the whole posi- 

 tion, since there was no telling where the thing might 

 stop. 



Copernicus waited full thirty years before he ven- 

 tured to make his theory public. The Ptolemaic 

 system, which assumed a fixed earth with sun, moon, 

 and stars revolving above it, had held the field for 



