The Destiny of Man. 15 



with its terrestrial paradise, and those con- 

 centric spheres of Heaven wherein beati- 

 fied saints held weird and subtle converse, 

 all went their way to the limbo prepared 

 for the childlike fancies of untaught minds, 

 whither Hades and Valhalla had gone be- 

 fore them. In our day it is hard to realize 

 the startling effect of the discovery that 

 Man does not dwell at the centre of things, 

 but is the denizen of an obscure and tiny 

 speck of cosmical matter quite invisible 

 amid the innumerable throng of flaming 

 suns that make up our galaxy. To the 

 contemporaries of Copernicus the new the- 

 ory seemed to strike at the very founda- 

 tions of Christian theology. In a universe 

 where so much had been made without dis- 

 cernible reference to Man, what became of 

 that elaborate scheme of salvation which 

 seemed to rest upon the assumption that 

 the career of Humanity was the sole ob- 

 ject of God's creative forethought and fos- 

 tering care ? When we bear this in mind, 

 we see how natural and inevitable it was 



