﻿of a Deity whom we thought to be like a quadruped ; or as people even 

 now make for themselves images the better to enable them to worship their 

 God, whom they vainly imagine to be like unto a biped. It is time that 

 if we know not the nature of a thing we should confess our ignorance. 

 It is time that we taught our children something that we could give a 

 reason for ; and that we did not teach them as though they were so many 

 parrots to be taught. It is time that we "took stock" of our reasoning 

 powers, to know whether they be not slipping through our fingers in the 

 headlong race after sensation. It is time people were told that they are 

 being misled; that the "proofs" which are given them of the Earth's 

 rotundity would tremble and fall if submitted to strict investigation, and 

 that, in' fact, if untold rewards were offered for a genuine proof of this, the 

 primary astronomical dogma, it would never be forthcoming. It is time 

 for people to know that astronomers have never before been in so great a 

 labyrinth of theories as that in which they now find themselves. It is 

 time for people to know that he who professes to believe the Bible and 

 Theoretical Astronomy too, is either utterly ignorant of the nature of the 

 one or the other, or else he is worse than ignorant — deceitful: for, as the 

 one is in diametrical opposition to the other, reconciliation is out of the 

 question. And it is high time for intelligent, Truth-loving, firm, young 

 England to lead the way to a Reformation which shall have for its end the 

 downfall of a so-called system of astronomy in which its very professors 

 have no confidence, and the establishment of a Natural System of 

 Astronomy which shall be in unison with all of Nature's established laws, 

 and which shall neither shame its professors nor be antagonistic to the 

 well-known requirements of "COMMON SENSE." 



It is, in the nature of things, disagreeable to us to entertain ideas which 

 are opposed to " Common Sense," for the simple reason that we like to be 

 right, even though we are prone to do wrong. Over the times and cir- 

 cumstances of our birth we have no control ; and, as a rule, we believe 

 everything that we are taught to be the right thing. Amongst the 

 thousands of antagonistic Beliefs concerning one thing or another, we 

 consider none that we habitually entertain as at all likely to be wrong. 0, 

 no. All that we are taught to believe, is right, because — we are taught to 

 believe it. Three hundred years ago, our forefathers were taught that 

 the Earth was, as a whole, a level plane, that it had no motion ; that when 

 they rested in their beds, they rested altogether, beds and all ; that all the 

 rivers flowed gently down the slopes of the continents to the level of the 

 seas and oceans ; that the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Stars travelled round 

 the Earth, just as people imagined when the Bible was written ; and, in 

 fact, that they could believe their senses. Poor, deluded mortals ! They 

 should have lived in these times. Why, they have lost all those vast stores 

 of knowledge which were opened up to us by Copernicus, in 1543. How- 

 ever, let us hope that they have found more in a better world. Copernicus, 

 we are told, " was not satisfied" with Nature going on in this easy kind of 

 manner. Hear what Fontenelle, the astronomer, says of him : — " Copernicus, 

 "seized with a noble frenzy, took the Earth, and sent her far from the centre 

 * " of the Universe, where she had been placed; and, in this centre, he placed 

 "the Sun, to whom this honour did with greater justness belong. The 

 Planets," says the French astronomer, "no longer revolved round the Earth 

 as the centre of their motion," but, "the whole immediately turn round the 

 Sun; the Earth herself does the same;" and so M. Fontenelle goes on 

 speaking of the vast improvements effected by Copernicus in the arrange- 

 ment of all the heavenly bodies with the exception of the Moon, which 



