Worse than that, the well-meaning defenders of the faith had wrought into the very fibre of the European heart that most unfortunate of all ideas, the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion. Like the landsman who lashes himself to the anchor of the sinking ship, they had attached the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin, to these mistaken ideas in science, and the advance of knowledge had wellnigh engulfed them.

On the other hand, what had science done for religion? Simply this: Kopernik, escaping persecution only by death; Giordano Bruno, burned alive as a monster of impiety; Galileo, imprisoned and humiliated as the worst of misbelievers; Kepler, hunted alike by Protestant and Catholic, had given to religion great new foundations, great new, ennobling conceptions, a great new revelation of the might of God.

Under the old system we have that princely astronomer, Alfonso of Castile, seeing the poverty of the Ptolemaic system, yet knowing no other, startling Europe with the blasphemy that if he had been present at creation he could have suggested a better ordering of the heavenly bodies. Under the new system you have Kepler, filled with a re ligious spirit, exclaiming, "I do think the thoughts

of God."

The difference in religious spirit between these two men marks the conquest made in this, even by science, for religion.

But we cannot leave the subject of astronomy without noticing the most recent warfare. Especially interesting is it because at one period the battle seemed utterly lost, and then was won beautifully, thoroughly, by a legitimate advance in scientific knowledge. I speak of the Nebular Hypothesis.

The sacred writings of the Jews which we have inherited speak literally of the creation of the heavenly bodies by direct intervention, and for the convenience of the earth. This was the view of the Fathers of the Church, and was transmitted through the great doctors in theology.

More than that, it was crystallized in art. So have I seen, over the portal of the Cathedral of Freiburg, a representation of the Almighty making and placing numbers of wafer-like suns, moons, and stars; and at the centre of all, platter-like and largest of all, the earth. The lines on the Creator's face show that He is obliged to contrive; the lines of his muscles show that He is obliged to toil.

1 As a pendant to this ejaculation of Kepler may be cited those wondrous words of Linnæus: "Deum omnipotentem a tergo transeuntem vidi et obstupui."

2 For papal bull representing the earth as a flat disk, see Daunou, Études Historiques, vol. ii., p. 421.

Naturally, then, did sculptors and painters of the mediæval and early modern period represent the Almighty as weary after labor, and enjoying dignified repose.

These ideas, more or less gross in their accompaniments, passed into the popular creed of the modern period.

But about the close of the last century, Bruno having guessed the fundamental fact of the nebular hypothesis, and Kant having reasoned out its foundation idea, Laplace developed it, showing the reason for supposing that our own solar system, in its sun, planets, satellites, with their various motions, distances, and magnitudes, is a natural result of the diminishing heat of a nebulous mass-a result obeying natural laws.

There was an outcry at once against the "atheism" of the scheme. The war raged fiercely. Laplace claimed that there were in the heavens many nebulous patches yet in the gaseous form, and pointed them out. He showed by laws of physics and mathematical demonstration that his hypothesis accounted in a most striking manner for the great body of facts, and, despite clamor, was gaining ground, when the improved telescopes resolved some of the patches of nebulous matter into multitudes of stars.

The opponents of the nebular hypothesis were overjoyed; they sang pæans to astronomy, because,

as they said, it had proved the truth of Scripture. They had jumped to the conclusion that all nebulæ must be alike-that if some are made up of systems of stars, all must be so made up; that none can be masses of attenuated gaseous matter, be

cause some are not.

Science, for a time, halted. The accepted doctrine became this: that the only reason why all the nebulæ are not resolved into distinct stars is because our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful. But in time came that wonderful discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum analysis, and this was supplemented by Fraunhofer's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited gaseous body is discontinuous, with interrupting lines; and this, in 1846, by Draper's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited solid is continuous, with no interrupting lines. And now the spectroscope was turned upon the nebulæ, and about one-third of them were found to be gaseous.

Again the nebular hypothesis comes forth stronger than ever. The beautiful experiment of Plateau on the rotation of a fluid globe comes in to strengthen if not to confirm it. But what was likely to be lost in this? Simply a poor conception of the universe. What to be gained? A far more worthy idea of that vast power which works in the universe, in all things by law, and in none by caprice.'

1 For Bruno's conjecture (in 1591), see Jevons, vol. ii., p. 299.

CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

The great series of battles to which I next turn with you were fought on those fields occupied by such sciences as Chemistry and Natural Philosophy.

Even before these sciences were out of their childhood, while yet they were tottering mainly toward childish objects and by childish steps, the champions of that same old mistaken conception of rigid Scriptural interpretation began the war. The catalogue of chemists and physicists persecuted or thwarted would fill volumes.

The first entrance of these sciences, as a well

For Kant's part in the nebular hypothesis, see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. i., p. 266. For value of Plateau's beautiful experiment very cautiously estimated, see W. Stanley Jevons, Principles of Science, London, 1874, vol. ii., p. 36. Also, Elisée Réclus, The Earth, translated by Woodward, vol. i., pp. 14-18,for an estimate still more careful. For a general account of discov eries of nature of nebula by spectroscope, see Draper, Conflict between Religion and Science. For a careful discussion regarding the spectra of solid, liquid, and gaseous bodies, see Schellen, Spec. trum Analysis, pp. 100, et seq. For a very thorough discussion of the bearings of discoveries made by spectrum analysis upon the nebular hypothesis, ibid., pp. 532-537. For a presentation of the difficulties yet unsolved, see article by Plummer, in London Popular Science Review for January, 1875. For excellent short summary of recent observations and thought on this subject, see T. Sterry Hunt, Address at the Priestley Centennial, pp. 7, 8. For an interesting modification of this hypothesis, see Proctor's recent writings.