SCIENCE IN " BONDAGE" 99 



tells us, he wrote a book to prove that when the 

 sudden act of creation took place the world came 

 into existence so constructed as to bear the 

 appearance of a place which had for aeons been 

 inhabited by living things, or, as some of his 

 critics unkindly put it, " that God hid the fossils 

 in the rocks in order to tempt geologists into 

 infidelity." Gosse had the real answer under his 

 eyes which Fallopius had not, for the riddle was 

 unread in the latter's days. Yet Gosse's really 

 unpardonable mistake was attributed to himself 

 alone, and " Plymouth Brethrenism," which was 

 the sect to which he belonged, was not saddled 

 with it, nor have the Brethren been called ob- 

 scurantists because of it. 



Of course there is a second string to the accusa- 

 tion we are dealing with. If the scientific man 

 did really express new and perhaps startling 

 opinions, they would have been much newer and 

 much more startling had he not held himself in 

 for fear of the Church and said only about half of 

 what he might have said. It is the half instead 

 of the whole loaf of the former accusation. Thus, 

 in its notice of Stensen, the current issue of the 

 Encyclopedia Britannic a says : " Cautiously at 

 first, for fear of offending orthodox opinion, but 

 afterwards more boldly, he proclaimed his opinion 

 that these objects (viz. fossils) had once been 

 parts of living animals." 



One may feel quite certain that if Stensen had 

 not been a Catholic ecclesiastic this notice would 

 have run and far more truthfully " Cautiously 

 at first, until he felt that the facts at his disposal 



