30th September. fne lecture given some time ago by Mr. J. L. Scott at the ¥. M.C. A. rooms cannot fail to have served a double purpose, in the imparting of information of a most interesting and valuable kind, and the stimulation of desire to Know more on the part of many hitherto wrapped in contented ignorance. The heavens are infinite in more senses than one, infinite in boundless expanse, infinite in duration of time, infinite in surprises, and infinite in complex simplicity, But to man himself there is anearer wonder yet, the wonder of astronomical achievement in the face of almost superhuman difficulty. Magna est veritas, ct prevalebit. In no department of human endeavour has this fact been more fully demonstrated. The discovery of astronomical truth has difficulties of its own even when freed from all avoidable hindrances. It hus been no child's Fenventy bodies, their size, weight, lay to find out the distances of the
and motion; but as if there were not enough obstacles naturally in the way of man's knowledge he handicapped himself by starting out with false premisses, und even permitted authority to make it a capital offence to question them. Who that has read the touching story of Copernicus and the merciful death that saved him from the clutches of his Holy Mother Church of Giordano Brane, hunted from clime to clime to be trapped at last in Venice, burnt at the stake, and only in these latter days honoured as a martyr to science should ko; of Gali-leo, brow beaten, humbled, execrated, and imprisoned as a denier of "the truth of Holy Writ of Kepler; of our own Newton; of all in short who in their search for Truth as it is came into conflict with the power of Tradition as it was; who, we repent, that has read these things can fail to see that, wonderful as are the frets of astronomical science, there is one fact more wonderful yel, viz, thit man, poor puny may, threatened with disgraceful death in this world and hell fire in the next, should buld'y have faced both and conquered. It depths, 1s a story that stirs the soul to il
Popular belief in Protesiant lands lays the awful disgrace of this n: rative upon the Roman Catholic Church, and in the Inquisition sees an instrument in which the incarnate erucliy of a frightened faith tried to find a fence for its doomed infallibility, And it is doubtless trae that nothing which Protestant historians and divines have written has, or could have, exaggerated the guilt of those who refused to be convinced even by demonstrative proofs, who persisted in persecution, in calumny in crafty perversion of all antagonistic evidence, and who, finally, when proof hud been heaped upon proof and demonstration on demonstration, turned round and in the face of all the world, denied that they had done what they had done.. The "viceigerents of God upon earth" are seen century after century taking up position after position in the long-drawn battle over: Galilee and his discoveries, only, however, to abandon each in turn jas untenable, or to see it stormed by the triumphant soldiers of science, The story is painful and humiliating. Is has kept alive names that should, and otherwise would, have gone down To the vile dust from whence they sprung Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.
But fur the story of Galilee, who, now, would kno" anything of the Popes who condemned him, of Paul V, Urban VII, of Cardinal Bellarmin, and others, or coming down to our very own times, for the final scene in the is but of yesterday, of Monsignor Marini, who with 'a wiliness all too characteristic gave to the world a garbled version of the archives of the case as late as 1850? It remained for M. l'Epinois, himself Catholic, to do justice to the noble story of Galilee. " Like Marini, VEpinois was devoted to the Church, but unlike Marini, he could not lie." So the truth at last came out.
But though Protestantism, as we have said, is prepared to give all the discredit to the Church of Rome, candour must confess that such generosity is hardly honest, much less praiseworthy." Unvarnished history shows that it is a case of six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, There is a Catholic Index Expurgatorvusin which are catalogued such works as are forbidden to the hful of the Roman communion." It is hardly too much to say that nearly every great book that has ever been written has been found in it. But there no Protestant Index? Are students of the Church of England r-lor of any of the Free Churches permitted, we will not say encouragsed, to read even now the greatest of contemporary works? What has been the experience of the' last fifty years respecting Darwin, Spencer, H ux'ey, Draper, Lecky, and others? Is it not notorious that they have met with the same reception at Protestant hands in modern times as Copernicus, Galilee, and Newton did in theirs? Itis the custom even to-day to place " safe" books only in the hands of the young, and in these untanned books it would be useless tg look either fur the newest truth or the oldest tradition. unless it squared with certain dogmatic rulings of a bygone day, are basing these remarks upon the "wonders of the heavens," and so may pertinently ask, did any Christian teacher ever, in any Good Friday service, in referring to that alleged wonder, the darkness that fell upon the land at the Crucifixion, tell his pupils that this sume wonder is said to have marked the deaths of Prometheus, Hercules, Alexander the Great, Romulus, and many more mythical and historical personages? Or with regard to that beautifal legend, now drawing near its annual revival, of the Star in the Eust which led the way to Bethlehem, will our local Sunday-school teachers be openly honest and tell the whole truth about it, viz. that it has done duty, not only for Jesus, but for Krishna, for Buddha, for Abraham and Moses, for the Chinese Vu and Laotso, for Esculupius, for various Cwsars, and we know not how wany more? And not, why not? Has not the time come when religion should once for all cut adrift from fetters which bind 1 not to but from the truth? Would it not be wise, in China for example, where for the first time myriads are being brought within Christian influences to avoid placing upon converts burdens too grievous to be borne? Is it right to take advantage of credulity? Would it nos be better frankly and definitely t" abandon old errors so that the new heaven and the new earth may shine forth nobly in new light
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.