52 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
Thus was evolved the Alphonsine system, as having been 
adopted and taught by the famous king and astronomer, Alphonso 
X. of Castile (A. D. 1252-1284). Beyond this last sphere there 
was believed to exist a boundless chaotic region of immeasurable 
extent, called the Empyrean, or Heaven of Heavens, where the 
deity was enthroned, the place of eternal mysteries, which was to 
the mind unfathomable and to the imagination inconceivable. 
‘Thus the cosmogony remained until Copernicus, Kepler and 
Galileo shook the structure with swift and mighty blows, and New- 
ton, with the sledge-hammer force of his great principle of universal 
gravitation, laid it low, and the Heliocentric theory took its niche 
in the temple of eternal truth. 
When Milton returned to England from the continent he lived 
in London, and undertook the education of his two nehpews, John 
and Edward Phillips, and other sons of his intimate acquaintances. 
Amongst other subjects of a polite education, he took astronomy 
from a text book, ‘‘ De Sphcera Mundi,” which was an epitome of 
Ptolemy’s Almagest. This book was written in the 13th century, 
and was so popular that it went through forty editions. When 
Milton taught his pupils the principles of astronomy from it that 
text book was four hundred years old. Do you know of any school 
or university which has on its curriculum of science books four 
hundred years old, or indeed even forty years old, saving, perhaps, 
Newton’s Principia? But Newton’s Principia is sacred ; it is the 
Bible of mathematical truth. This was, however, in the darkness of 
the middle ages, when the lamp of knowledge burned dimly. 
We shall find that Milton’s knowledge of astronomy was com- 
prehensive and accurate. He was familiar with its technicalities, 
and ready with all the arguments in support of the old and the new 
theory, from both scientific and theological points of view. He had 
a mind which, notwithstanding all his early and later manhood 
training in the Alphonsine theory, was not darkened by tradition, 
but was open to the sunbeams of truth. If he had lived in later 
days he would have made an intelligent and reverend higher critic, 
both scientifically and theologically. ‘‘Custom,” says the Chelsea. 
philosopher, ‘‘makes dotards of us all,” but it made no dotard of 
John Milton. Most men are too anxious to get Truth on their own 
side, rather than to get themselves on the side of Truth. It is 
