fight alone.  Is there not something very grand in the attitude of this solitary man, something which human nature cannot help admiring, as he stands in the gloomy hall before his inexorable judges?  No accuser, no witness, no advocate is present, but the familiars of the Holy Office, clad in black, are stealthily moving about.  The tormentors and the rack are in the vaults below.  He is simply told that he has brought upon himself strong suspicions of heresy, since he has said that there are other worlds than ours.  He is asked if he will recant and abjure his error.  He cannot and will not deny what he knows to be true, and perhaps—­for he had often done so before—­he tells his judges that they, too, in their hearts are of the same belief.  What a contrast between this scene of manly honor, of unshaken firmness, of inflexible adherence to the truth, and that other scene which took place more than fifteen centuries previously by the fireside in the hall of Caiaphas the high-priest, when the cock crew, and “the Lord turned and looked upon Peter” (Luke xxii. 61)!  And yet it is upon Peter that the Church has grounded her right to act as she did to Bruno.  But perhaps the day approaches when posterity will offer an expiation for this great ecclesiastical crime, and a statue of Bruno be unveiled under the dome of St. Peter’s at Rome.

CHAPTER VII.

Controversy respecting the age of the earth.

Scriptural view that the Earth is only six thousand years old, and that it was made in a week.—­Patristic chronology founded on the ages of the patriarchs.—­Difficulties arising from different estimates in different versions of the Bible.

Legend of the Deluge.—­The repeopling.—­The Tower of Babel; the confusion of tongues.—­The primitive language.

Discovery by Cassini of the oblateness of the planet Jupiter.—­Discovery by Newton of the oblateness of the Earth.—­Deduction that she has been modeled by mechanical causes.—­Confirmation of this by geological discoveries respecting aqueous rocks; corroboration by organic remains.—­ The necessity of admitting enormously long periods of time.  —­Displacement of the doctrine of Creation by that of Evolution—­ Discoveries respecting the Antiquity of Man.

The time-scale and space-scale of the world are infinite.—­Moderation with which the discussion of the Age of the World has been conducted.

The true position of the earth in the universe was established only after a long and severe conflict.  The Church used whatever power she had, even to the infliction of death, for sustaining her ideas.  But it was in vain.  The evidence in behalf of the Copernican theory became irresistible.  It was at length universally admitted that the sun is the central, the ruling body of our system; the earth only one, and by no means the largest, of a family of encircling planets.  Taught by the issue of