Scientific Lectures. 211 



cords of logic which they could spin, they had attached the great 

 fundamental doctrines of Christianity to these mistaken ideas in 

 science, and the advance of knowledge had engulphed them. On the 

 other hand, what has science done for religion ? Simply this, 

 Kopernik, escaping persecution only by death ; Jordano Bruno burned 

 alive as a monster of impiety ; Galileo tortured and humiliated as the 

 worst of misbelievers ; Kepler hunted alike by Protestants and Catho- 

 lics, had given to religion great newfoundations, great new ennobling 

 conceptions, a great new revelation of the might of God. Under 

 the old system we have that princely astronomer, Alphonso of Cas- 

 tile, seeing the poverty of the Ptolemaic system, yet knowing no 

 other, startling Europe with the blasphemy, that if he had been 

 present at creation he could have suggested a better order of the 

 heavenly bodies. Under the new system you have Kepler, filled with 

 a religious spirit, exclaiming, " I do think the thoughts of God." 

 The difference in religions spirit between these two men marks the 

 conquest gained in the war by science for religion. 



The next great series of battles to which I would turn with you 

 were fought on those great fields occupied by such sciences as Chemistry 

 and Natural Philosophy. Even before tliese sciences were out of 

 their childhood — while yet they were tottering mainly toward child- 

 ish objects and by childisli steps — the champions of that same old 

 mistaken conception of rigid Scripture interpretation began the war. 

 The catalogue of chemists and physicists persecuted or thwarted would 

 fill volumes. 



Otuek Battle-Fields. 

 There are many other battle-fields of science for which we have no 

 time. Interesting would it be to look over the field of meteorology, 

 beginning with the conception, supposed to be Scriptural, of angels 

 opening and shutting the windows of heaven, and letting out the waters 

 above the firmament upon the earth, continuing through the battle of 

 Fromundus and Bodin, down to the onslaught upon Lecky in our own 

 time, for drawing a logical and purely scientific conclusion from the 

 doctrine that meteorology is obedient to laws. 



Anatomy and Medicine. 

 But I pass to fields of more immediate importance to us, those of 

 anatomy and medicine. It might be supposed that tlie votaries 

 of sciences like these would be suffered to escape attack. Unfor- 

 tunately they have had to stand in the thickest of the battle. As far 



