REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 391 



marked ability, as leading to Atheism or Materialism. 

 But similar charges have also been made against 

 other theories and generalizations which are now 

 universally acknowledged as true. 



Anaxagoras, it will be remembered, was con- 

 demned as a heretic for asserting that the sun, the 

 great god Helios, was but a mass of molten matter. 

 Spectroscopy has vindicated him, and shown that 

 his accusers were in error. Aristarchus was accused 

 of impiety for having taught that the earth revolves 

 round the sun, and for having anticipated a theory 

 independently discovered and developed eighteen 

 centuries later by Copernicus. The Samian astrono- 

 mer was charged with having "disturbed the repose 

 of Vesta," and the worshippers of the offended god- 

 dess accordingly suppressed or destroyed his sacrile- 

 gious works. 



Newton's great laws of universal gravitation, 

 when first promulgated, were looked upon with sus- 

 picion, and, in some instances, denounced as atheis- 

 tic. Even so great a mathematician and philosopher 

 as Leibnitz, did not hesitate to condemn Newton's 

 grand discovery, " not only as physically false, but 

 as injurious to the interests of religion." 



All are familiar with the absurd objections urged 

 against the heliocentric theory as advocated by Ga- 

 lileo. Lord Bacon rejected it with contempt, and 

 even the distinguished astronomer, Tycho Brahe, 

 notwithstanding all the evidence offered in favor of 

 the Copernican system, invented one of his own 

 which was but a modification of Ptolemy's and no 

 less complex and cumbersome. 



