SciE.xTiFic Lectures. 201 



religion lias done nothing for science. It has done much for it. 

 The work of Christianity has been mighty indeed. Through these 

 2,000 years it has undermined servitude, mitigated tyranny, given 

 liope to the hopeless, comfort to the afflicted, light to the blind, 

 bread to the starving, life to the dying ; and all this work continues. 

 And its work for science, too, has been great. It has fostered sci- 

 ence often, and developed it; it has given great minds to it, and but 

 for the fears of the timid, its record in this respect would have been 

 as great as in the other. Unfortunately, religious men started, cen- 

 turies ago, with the idea that purely scientific investigation is 

 unsafe ; that theology must intervene. So began this great modern 

 war. 



COSMOGKAPHT. 



The first typical battle-field to which I call attention is that of 

 Cosmography, the simplest elementary doctrine of the earth's shape, 

 surface and relations. Bear wnth me as I go over a field so well 

 known to so many of j^ou. We cannot overlook it if we arc to 

 understand other battles which ■ follow. Among the legacies of 

 thought left by the ancient world to the modern were certain ideas 

 of the rotundity of the earth. These ideas were vague ; they were 

 mixed with absurdities, but they were germ ideas, and, after the bar- 

 barian storm which ushered in the modern world had begun to clear 

 away, these germ ideas began to bud and bloom in the minds of a 

 few thinking men, and these men hazarded the suggestion that the 

 earth is round — is a globe. The greatest and most earnest men of 

 the earth took fright at once. To them the idea of the earth's 

 rotundity seemed fraught with dangers to Scripture, by which, of 

 course, they meant thei7' intej'pretation of Scripture. Among the 

 first attempts made was that of Eusebius. He endeavored to turn oft' 

 these ideas by bringing science into contempt. He endeavored to 

 make the innovators understand that he and the Fathers of the 

 Church generally despised all such inquiries. Speaking of these 

 innovators he said : " It is not through ignorance of the things 

 iidmired by them, but through contempt of their useless labor that 

 we think little of these matters — turning our souls to the exercise of 

 better things." Lactantius asserted the new ideas to be " empty and 

 false," But this attempt to "flank" the little phalanx of thinkers 

 did not succeed, of course. Even such men as Lactantius and Euse- 

 bius cannot pooh-pooh down a great new scientific idea. The little 

 band of thinkers went on. and the doctrine of the rotundity of the 



