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E. WALTEE MADNDEi?^ F.R.A.S., ON 



at the present day. I may mention two other instances. 

 A friend once sent me a pamphlet written to prove that the 

 earth was flat. When I told her, as I was bound to do, that 

 it was rubbish, she said : " Oh ! I am so sorry to hear you say 

 that ; it seemed to me so exactly to agree with the Bible." 

 Again, I have known a Christian minister who objected strongly 

 to the practice of astronomers of assuming in their first calcula- 

 tions of the orbit of a new comet that the orbit was parabolic. 

 " They ought," he said, '' to assume that it is circular, because 

 the circle is the perfect figure." 



A great many years ago, when I was new to scientific inquiry, 

 a leading biologist, himseK a behever in Christianity, the 

 father of one of my schoolfellows, said to me, " Religion has 

 come into conflict with Science three times over; and three times 

 over Science has been the victor. Religion has had to lower 

 her flag, first to astronomy, next to geology, and now to biology.'' 

 In one respect this venerable old man stated the case wrongly. 

 In none of the three cases was it really a contest between Religion 

 and Science ; it was a contest between the Science of the Past 

 and the Science of the Present. But the rejDutation of Religion 

 suffered enormous loss, because those who stood forth to 

 champion it declared that the Science of the Past derived its 

 sanction, not merely from observ^ation and reasoning, but from 

 the authority of Holy Scripture, and that therefore it was in- 

 fallible and unchanging. 



I will not debate the questions of geology and biology ; these 

 are not my branches of science. But there is no doubt that in 

 the case of astronomy 300 years ago those \^'ho spoke in the 

 name of Christianity denounced the discoveries of Gralileo as 

 contrary to the teaching of Holy Scripture, and the condemna- 

 tion of Galileo has been made a reproach to Christianity ever 

 since. Well would it have been had they listened to the wise 

 counsel of the greatest doctor of the Church then living — 

 Cardinal Bellarmine — who laid it down that if the facts which 

 Galileo asserted were established they would have to admit — 

 not that Holy Scripture was in error — but that their interpreta- 

 tion of it had been faulty. 



Galileo taught that the Earth moved ; the Holy Office declared 

 that the opinion of the motion of the earth was contrary to the 

 Holy Scriptures. Really they had learned the doctrine that the 

 earth was immovable from the astronomer Ptolemy, who was a 

 heathen, and not from the Bible at all ; but having learned the 



