10 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
We see then that if the Holy Office had done as Galileo 
Would have had them do, as the apologists of to-day for Galileo 
would have had them do, if they had given approval to his 
views and had sent them forth with the seal and approbation 
of the Church, it would have inevitably followed that a century 
later she would have been compelled to launch her thunders 
against Sir Isaac Newton when he showed that the tides were 
due to the moon, and two centuries later against Sir William 
Herschel when he showed that not only the earth but also the 
sun was in motion. The error of the Holy Office in 1616 and 
1633 lay not that they had put the seal of the Church on the 
Wrong scientific doctrine, but that they had put it on a scientific 
doctrine at all. In a word they had confused the provinces of 
religion and of science. They used the Holy Scriptures in 
order to prove the relation of one astronomical body to another. 
It happened by a curious coincidence that, through a twofold 
ignorance, one of their decisions was verbally and superficially 
correct. Galileo’s proposition “ that the sun is the centre of 
the world” (i.e., of the universe), “and therefore immovable 
from its place,” has been condemned not only by the Holy 
Office but by the progress of science since his day. That 
coincidence in no way palliates their fault, which lay in the fact 
that they were applying Holy Scripture to a purpose for which 
it was never intended. 
Some three years ago, when Professor Silvanus Thompson was 
giving a corresponding address to that which I am privileged 
to give to-day, he gave you a brief but eloquent summary of 
the marvellous development which physical science has made 
during the last few years. A man must indeed be blind and 
deaf to all that is going on around him if he does not recognise 
how faithful that picture was. The progress that has been 
seen in every field of science within the last half century is 
amazing, and tire rate of that progress seems to be accelerated 
every year. The twentieth century has not yet seen its eighth 
birthday, yet, scientifically speaking, the nineteenth century 
has already become antiquated. If we could conceive that in 
the year 1 900 the Church had been prevailed upon to adopt 
the science of that year as its own and to put its seal upon it, 
as final truth, now, in the year 1908, we should have already 
had more than one Galilean persecution ; so far as that verdict 
of finality had been imposed, science would have been hindered, 
thwarted, sterilized, and the Church herself would again have 
been brought into dishonour as the enemy of progress and 
thought. 
