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DR. SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, F.R.S., ON 



where our forefathers stood : we have a larger heritage, we look 

 out upon a larger landscape, there are before us greater heights 

 to be climbed. Why should we feel anything but hope and 

 courage in the larger vision ? We are no longer children, and 

 must look to outgrowing many of the thoughts and even of the 

 beliefs which were accepted as final in the childhood of the 

 race. 



It is well known that one of the first-fruits of the invention 

 of the telescope was the discovery of the spots on the sun. 

 History records that the discovery was denounced as impious: 

 and the doctrine that there are sunspots was banned as 

 heretical. It is narrated, and the narrative is of significance 

 to-day, how an ecclesiastic being invited to examine for 

 himself and to see whether there were not spots on the sun, 

 refused even to put his eye to the telescope for fear that he 

 should see the spots which the astronomers asserted to be there y 

 and so discredit should be brought on the reputation of Saint 

 Thomas Aquinas. 



That same spirit which first denounces the results of 

 investigation, and then refuses even to look whether they exists 

 is by no means extinct, as the recent correspondence on Faith 

 and Reason in the columns of the Standard has shown. To 

 fear that which one does not understand may be natural ; but 

 to refuse to try to understand is a defect of character worse 

 than cowardice. Those who pin their religious faith to an 

 outward authority have had many shocks of late, and may need 

 more for their soul's health. The spirit of inquiry cannot be 

 stemmed by an appeal to the fourth century or to the sixth. If 

 men ask us to accept as final the decisions of the Council of 

 Nicea, we are bound to inquire whether that body had before it 

 all materials needful for a final judgment, whether history has 

 shown its composition to be representative and unbiased, its- 

 deliberations to be conducted in the scientific spirit of calm 

 inquiry, its decisions to be taken without heat or partisanship. 

 Nay, even if in all these respects it had been perfect — and < 

 alas ! in some of them it was a miserable failure — the question 

 would still remain why any thinking person in the twentieth 

 century should be bound by the thoughts of the fourth. The 

 fact is we are not bound by the decisions of the Council of Nicea. 

 It has closed no question which we are not at liberty to 

 reopen. Except to those who are in bondage to ecclesiastical 

 systems, there are no closed questions that a reverent mind may 

 not beneficially reconsider. We have as much right to reconsider 

 the problems of religion in the light of our own age and of its 



