Scientific Lectures. ' ^07 



Fire bursts out at times to destroy the attacked party. They are 

 poisoned weapons. They g-o to the heart of loving women ; they 

 alienate dear children; they injure the man after life is ended, for 

 they leave poisoned wounds in the hearts of those who loved him best 

 — fears for his eternal happiness, dread of the divine dis])leasure. 

 Tiie battle-fields of science are thickly strewn with these. They have 

 been used against almost every man who has ever done anything for 

 liis fellow-men. The list of those who have been denounced as infi- 

 del and atheist includes almost all great men of science — general 

 scholars, inventors, philanthropists. The deepest Christian life, the 

 most noble Christian character has not availed to shield combatants. 

 Christians like Isaac Newton and Pascal, and John Locke and John 

 Howard, have had these weapons hurled against them, Nay, in 

 these very times we have seen a noted champion hurl these weapons 

 against John Milton, and with it another missile which often appears 

 on these battle-fields — the epithets of " blasphemer " and " hater of 

 the Lord." Of course, in these days, these weapons, though often effec- 

 tive in disturbing the ease of good men, and, though often powerful 

 in scaring women, are somewhat blunted. - Indeed, they not infre- 

 quently injure assailants more than assailed. So it was not in the 

 days of Galileo, These weapons were then in all their sharpness and 

 venom. The first champion who appears against him is Bellarmine, 

 one of the greatest of theologians and one of the poorest of scientists. 

 He was earnest, sincere, learned, but made the fearful mistake for the 

 world of applying direct literal interpretation of Scripture to science. 

 The consequences were sad, indeed. Could he with his vast powers 

 have taken a different course, humanity would have been spared the 

 long and fearful war which ensued, and religion would have been 

 saved to herself thousands on thousands of the best and brightest men 

 in after ages. The weapons which men of Bellarmine's stamp used 

 were theological. They held up before the world the dreadful conse- 

 quences which must result to Christian theology were the doctrine to 

 prevail that the heavenly bodies revolve about the sun, and not about 

 the earth. 



Science and the Bible. 

 Their most tremendous theologic engine against Galileo was the 

 idea that his pretended discovery vitiated the whole Christian plan 

 of salvation. Father Le Gazre declared that it cast suspicion on the 

 doctrine of the Incarnation ; others declared that it upset the whole 

 basis of theology ; that if the earth is a planet, and only one among 



