30 THE SABBATH. 



earth itself. Theologians were horrified when first in- 

 formed 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 point- 

 ing downwards. I think it was Sir George Airy who 

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

 ing what we should see if we went to the edge of the 

 world and looked over. That the earth was a flat sur- 

 face on which the sky rested was the belief entertained 

 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 pheno- 

 mena and advanced by many arbitrary assumptions 

 against evident testimonies of Scripture." * New- 

 ton finally placed his intellectual crowbar beneath 

 these ancient notions, and heaved them into irretriev- 

 able ruin. 



Then it was that penetrating minds among the theo- 

 logians, seeing the nature of the change wrought by 

 the new astronomy in our conceptions of the universe, 

 also discerned the difficulty, if not the impossibility, 

 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 con- 

 temporary, Dr. Thomas Burnet, wrote with greater de- 

 cision in the same strain. The Sabbath being regarded 

 as a shadow or type of that heavenly repose which the 



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

 Cox as "the most eminent of the Independent divines." 



