228 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



profounder issues. Since the Church, however she 

 may conveniently ignore the fact as concession after 

 concession is wrung from her, has never slackened 

 in jealousy of the advance of secular knowledge, it 

 was well for human progress that those subjects of 

 enquiry which affected orthodox views only indirectly 

 were first prosecuted. The brilliant discoveries in 

 astronomy, to which the Copernican theory gave 

 impetus, although they displaced the earth from its 

 assumed supremacy among the bodies in space, did 

 not apparently affect the doctrine of the supremacy 

 of man as the centre of Divine intervention, as the 

 creature for whom the great scheme of redemption 

 had been formulated ' in the counsels of the Trinity,' 

 and the tragedy of the self-sacrifice of God the Son 

 enacted on earth. , The surrender or negation of 

 any fundamental dogma of Christian theology was 

 not involved in the abandonment of the statement 

 in the Bible as to the dominant position of the 

 earth in relation to the sun and other self-luminous 

 stars. To our own time the increase of knowledge 

 concerning the myriads of sidereal systems which 

 revolve through space is not held to be destructive 

 of those dogmas, but held, rather, to supply material 

 for speculation as to the probable extension of 

 Divine paternal government throughout the universe. 

 And, although, as coming nearer home, with con- 

 sequent greater chance of intrusion of elements of 

 friction, the like applies to the discoveries of geology. 

 Apart from intellectual apathy, which explains much, 

 the impact of these discoveries on traditional beliefs 

 was softened by the buffers which a moderating 

 spirit of criticism interposed in the shape of superficial 



