Scientific Evolution. 139 



beliefs" as when it first introduced heliocentric as- 

 tronomy to the Christian world.* The primitive cosmo- 



* On this subject Dr. Newman observes : " When the Copernican 

 system first made progress, what religious man would not have been 

 tempted to uneasiness, or at least fear of scandal, from the seeming 

 contradiction which it involved to some authoritative tradition of the 

 Church and the declaration of Scripture? It was generally received, 

 as if the apostles had expressly delivered it, both orally and in writing, 

 that the earth was stationary, and that the sun was fixed in a solid 

 firmament which whirled round the earth. After a little time, how- 

 ever, and on full consideration, it was found that the Church had 

 decided next to nothing on questions such as these, and that physical 

 science might range in this sphere of thought almost at will, without 

 fear of encountering the decisions of ecclesiastical authority. Now, 

 besides the relief which it afforded to Catholics to find that they were 

 to be spared this addition, on the side of cosmology, to their many 

 controversies already existing, there is something of an argument in 

 this circumstance in behalf of the divinity of their religion. For it 

 surely is a very remarkable fact, considering how widely and how 

 long one certain interpretation of these physical statements in Scrip- 

 ture had been received by Catholics, that the Church should not have 

 formally acknowledged it. Looking at the matter in a human point 

 of view, it was inevitable that she should have made that opinion her 

 own. But now we find, on ascertaining where we stand, in the face 

 of the new sciences of these latter times, that, in spite of the bountiful 

 comments, which from the first she has ever been making on the 

 sacred text, as it is her duty and her right to do, nevertheless she has 

 never been led formally to explain the texts in question, or to give 

 them an authoritative sense which modern science may question. Nor 

 was this escape a mere accident, or what will more religiously be 

 called a providential event, as is shown by a passage of history in the 

 Dark Age itself. When the glorious St. Boniface, Apostle of Germany, 

 great in sanctity, though not in secular knowledge, complained to the 

 Holy See that St. Virgilius taught the existence of the antipodes, the 



