HARLAN T. STETSON 229 



denial of theologians than could the incoming tide by 

 the gesticulations of King Canute. One's religious 

 ideas, however, had become so entwined with a cos- 

 mology, made more sacred by Milton and Dante than 

 by the Scriptures themselves, that for science to alter 

 the one seemed the ruin of the other. 



Inevitable changes of religious Ideas, however, must 

 ultimately come about through changes in the concep- 

 tion of Deity, made necessary through the scientific 

 development of the cosmic scheme. Man, once In the 

 center of a flat earth at the focus of divine favor, 

 gradually gave way to man as a miscroscopic organism 

 Inhabiting a dust grain attached by gravitational 

 forces to a second or a third rate sun caught in a 

 cosmic whirl having a galactic system of such dimen- 

 sions as to surpass the intellect of the profoundest 

 thinker. No longer could Deity be conceived as the 

 immediate progenitor of mankind, the king of a fav- 

 ored tribe, the worker of magic, or a sort of divine 

 Santa Claus bestowing good gifts upon those most 

 solicitous of his favors. Thus as science changes the 

 conception of God, science has changed religion. 



As soon as the story of creation began to be read 

 In stars and rocks, the supposed historic accounts of 

 creation In the sacred books came to be relegated to 

 myths and folk-lore, calling for a revaluation In the 

 books of religion on bases other than that of revela- 

 tions. The greatest minds however, soon mastered 

 the art of historic criticism and have done much to re- 

 store confidence in the scriptural books as records of 

 religious experience rather than as stenographic ac- 

 counts of doings of the Almighty sprung full grown 



