There was but too much reason for Bossuet's interpretation. The prohibition of this, one of the most simple and beneficial principles in political and economical science, was affirmed not only by the fathers, but by twenty-eight councils of the Church (six of them general councils), and by seventeen popes, to say nothing of innumerable doctors in theology and canon law.'

But about the middle of the eighteenth century the evil could be endured no longer-a way of escape must be found. The army opposed to the Church had become so formidable, that the Roman authorities saw that a concession must be made. In 1748 appeared Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws; in it were concentrated twenty years' study and thought of a great thinker on the necessities of the world about him. In eighteen months it went through twenty-two editions, and it was translated into every civilized language; this work attacked, among other abuses, the position of the Church regarding interest for money.

The Church authorities had already taken the alarm. Benedict XIV. saw that the best thing for him-nay, the only thing-was a surrender under form of a compromise. In a brief he declared substantially that the law of the Church

1 See citation from Concina in Lecky; also, acquiescence in this interpretation by Mr. Dickinson, in Speech in Senate of New York, above quoted.

!

was opposed to the taking of interest on loans; and then, after sundry non-committal and ambiguous statements, he hinted that there were possible exceptions to the rule.

Like the casuistry of Boscovich in using the Copernican theory for "convenience in argument," while acquiescing in its condemnation by the Church, this casuistry of Benedict broke the spell. Turgot, Adam Smith, Bentham, and their disciples, pressed on, and science won for mankind another great victory.

Yet in this case, as in others, insurrections against the sway of scientific truth appeared among some over-zealous religionists. When the Sorbonne, having retreated from its old position, armed itself with sundry new casuistries against those who held to its earlier decisions, provincial doctors in theology protested indignantly, making the old citations from the Scriptures, fathers, saints, doctors, popes, councils, and canonists. And even as late as 1830, when the Roman court, though declining to commit itself on the doctrine involved, decreed that confessors should no longer disquiet lenders of money at legal interest, the old weapons were again furbished and hurled by the Abbé Laborde, Vicar of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch, and by the Abbé Dennavit, Professor of Theology at Lyons. Good Abbé Dennavit declared that he refused absolution to those

who took interest, and to priests who pretend that the sanction of the civil law is sufficient.1

But the peace on this question is too profound to be disturbed by such outcries. The Torlonia family at Rome, to-day, with its palaces, chapels, intermarriages, affiliations, and papal favor, all won by lending money at interest, and by devotion to the Roman See, is a growth on ramparts long since surrendered and deserted.

INDUSTRIAL SCIENCES.

Did time permit, we might go over other battle-fields no less instructive than those we have seen. We might go over the battle-fields of Agricultural Progress, and note how, by a most curious perversion of a text of Scripture, many of the peasantry of Russia were prevented from raising and eating potatoes, and how in Scotland at the beginning of this century the use of fanning-mills for winnowing grain was denounced as contrary to the text "the wind bloweth where it listeth," etc., as leaguing with Satan, who is 66 prince of the powers of the air," and as sufficient cause for excommunication from the Scotch Church.2

1 See Réplique des douze Docteurs, etc., cited by Guillaumin and Coquelin.

Burton, History of Scotland, vol. viii., p. 511. See, also,

We might go over the battle-fields of Civil Engineering, and note how the introduction of railways into France was declared, by an Archbishop, to be an evidence of the divine displeasure against country innkeepers who set meat before their guests on fast-days, and now were punished by seeing travelers carried by their doors; and how railroad and telegraph were denounced from noted pulpits as "heralds of Antichrist." And then we might pass to Protestant England and recall the sermon of the Curate of Rotherhithe at the breaking in of the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life and property, declaring that "it was but a just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of mortal man."i

VARIOUS SCIENCES.

We might go over the battle-fields of Ethnology and note how, a few years since, an honored American investigator, proposing in a learned society the discussion of the question between the

Mause Headrigg's views in Scott's Old Mortality, chapter vii. For the case of a person debarred from the communion for "raising the devil's wind" with a winnowing-machine, see Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. Those doubting the authority or motives of Simpson may be reminded that he was, to the day of his death, one of the strictest adherents of Scotch orthodoxy.

1 See Journal of Sir I. Brunel, for May 20, 1827, in Life of I. K. Brunel, p. 30.

origin of the human race from a single pair and from many pairs, was called to order and silenced as atheistic, by a Protestant divine whose memory is justly dear to thousands of us.'

out

Interesting would it be to look over the field of Meteorology-beginning with the conception, supposed to be scriptural, of angels opening and shutting "the windows of heaven" and letting 66 the waters that be above the firmament upon the earth-continuing through the battle of Fromundus and Bodin, down to the onslaught upon Lecky, in our own time, for drawing a logical and scientific conclusion from the doctrine that meteorology is obedient to laws.'

We might go over the battle-fields of Cartography and see how at one period, on account of expressions in Ezekiel, any map of the world which did not place Jerusalem in the centre, was looked on as impious.'

1 This scene will be recalled, easily, by many leading ethnologists in America, and especially by Mr. E. G. Squier, formerly minister of the United States to Central America.

? The meteorological battle is hardly fought out yet. Many excellent men seem still to entertain views almost identical with those of over two thousand years ago, depicted in The Clouds of Aristophanes.

These texts are Ezekiel v. 5 and xxxviii. 12. The progress of geographical knowledge, evidently, caused them to be softened down somewhat in our King James's version; but the first of them reads, in the Vulgate, "Ista est Hierusalem, in medio gen