NATUEAL VERSUS SUPERNATURAL 59 



asserted, even of a diminution of the light of the 

 sun." How dormant and puerile man's scientific 

 faculties were during the early centuries of Chris- 

 tianity, when the foundations of the science of the- 

 ology were laid, is well illustrated in a work called 

 the " Christian Opinion concerning the World," by 

 the monk Cosmas, of the sixth century. Cosmas 

 taught that the earth was literally a tabernacle, be- 

 cause St. Paul speaks of it as such, and that Moses 

 exactly copied its form in his tabernacle. It is a 

 flat parallelogram, twice as long as it is broad, roofed 

 in by the sky, which is glued to the outer edges of 

 the earth. It consists of two stories, in one of which 

 dwell the blessed, and in the other the angels, etc. 

 It is from the type of mind that conceived such 

 notions of the universe as this that we inherit our 

 theology. But it may be replied, men may be 

 feeble in science but great in religion. True, the 

 fathers, many of them, were great in religion, they 

 were great on the moral and spiritual side ; but the 

 system of theology they founded aims to be a sci- 

 ence ; it deals with exact propositions ; it is not 

 the work of their subjective religious natures but of 

 their scientific faculties, and as such it is just as 

 artificial, just as puerile and unreal, as the notions 

 of the physical universe to which I have adverted. 



The whole Christian dispensation, as expounded 

 by the popular theology, is as little in keeping with 

 the physical order of the world as disclosed by sci- 

 ence, or with the natural moral order as disclosed 

 by the conscience, as Indian medicine is in keeping 



