moon is first, then Mercury, then Venus, then the Sun. Afterward come Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. No Uranus or Neptune had as yet appeared. Eighth were the fixed stars, ninth the immovable prime mover and, surrounding all the universe, was the tenth, the empyrean, where was the throne of the Triune God who dwelt in a light that no man could enter while the music of the spheres, rising from the universe below, mingled with the anthems of the angels. Of these the seraphim and cherubim and thrones chanted His holy praises eternally in the empyrean; the dominions received his commands; the powers hurried the heavenly bodies to and fro, and the empires guarded others as they did His will among the sacred seven; the principalities protected the spirits of the nations; the archangels received the prayers of the saints and the angels busied themselves according to His will with earthly matters. No longer in the earth but below it was hell, inhabited by all the enemies of His will, of whom Lucifer was prince. From its sufferings some of these evil spirits escaped at times, among them Satan himself, to tempt men, to cause calamitous storms and pestilences and famines. Into its terrors the sinner entered at death to return no more forever. Above its door was written, "Leave hope behind all ye who enter here." This was the cosmogony of the middle ages. It was the last result of orthodox geocentric theology. It was the final word of God, revealing to mankind the form of his universe. who denied it was an infidel.

He

But the ancient word of Pythagoras would not die. More than five hundred years before Christ he had divined the revolution of the planets around a central sun, and Aristarchus had been saved from exile only by the intervention of Pericles because he taught the same theory although he maintained that the central fire was as large as the whole Peloponessus. In the writings of other unbelievers, the same heresy had persisted sporadically but without affecting the main stream of the holy faith until the tragic day, May 24, 1543, when Nicholas Copernicus gave to the world his book on the "Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies." Followed "starry Galileo and his woes," whose tiny telescope in the year 1610 revealed the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus with consequences which seemed to all the orthodox theologians to be destructive of the Christian faith. Giordano Bruno had already been burned at the stake in Rome on the Campo di

The Medieval conception of hell portrayed by Civetta upon the walls of Ducal Palace of Venice. The sphere in the upper central part of the figure is the earth from which sinners are being tossed downward into the tortures of the "bad place."

not the

Fiori in the year 1600 for maintaining that the sun was a star, and Galileo, threatened and persecuted until the fear of death was upon him, found safety only in perjuring himself and denying the truth of nature that the "Truth of the Bible" might not be questioned. So far the Catholic church. But the terrible fear for the ark of God gripped Protestantism also. Hear Martin Luther as he stretches out his hand to steady it: "An upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon this fool wishes to reverse the entire science of Astronomy. The sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth." And the mild and scholarly Melancthon: "The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours. But certain men . . . . . have concluded that the earth moves and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves . . . . . Now it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth by God and to acquiesce in it . . the earth can

be nowhere if not in the center of the universe." John Calvin asked, "Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Scripture?" And John Wesley maintained that the Copernican theory "tended toward infidelity." Did not Scripture say that "the sun runneth about from one end of the heavens to another?"

The conflict grew more bitter as it engulfed all thinking men. The church utterly condemned the new theory. The Christian institutions of learning first forbade and then boasted that this "Pagan doctrine of the moving planets" was not permitted to be taught within their walls. At its best it was only an unproved theory. It was not in Aristotle. It plainly contradicted Scripture. To teach it and the plain facts revealed by the ever increasing number of telescopes was forbidden at all great universities; at Oxford and Cambridge, at Louvain, Pisa, Salamanca, at Wittenburg, the University of Luther and Melancthon. Father Clavius declared that "to see the satellites of Jupiter men had to make an instrument that would create them." And as to the valleys of the moon shown by Galileo's tiny telescope such wild statements plainly contradicted Scripture which positively declared that the moon was a great light. When the despised telescope revealed the spots on the sun whose motion suggested the rotation of that body, the astronomer of the University of Inn

the father to mention it to his students. Little by little it was made clear among the orthodox that this monstrous Copernican theory vitiated the whole Christian plan of salvation. If it were once admitted that there were other planets, then there must be other Adams and floods and Noahs and Saviors. Also, had not Jesus ascended to Heaven and Iwould he not return in like manner to judge the quick and the dead? Did not God "sit upon the circle of the heavens" and did not Paul state that he had been "caught up to the seventh heaven where he heard things that it was not lawful for men to utter?

Finally, in 1615, Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition at Rome and forced to recant. Subsequently, Pope Paul V decreed that "the doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false and entirely contrary to Scripture," and ordered that this opinion must neither be taught nor advocated. He further condemned "all writings which affirm the motion of the earth." But it was too late. As Castelli said: "Nothing that can done can now hinder the earth from revolving." Little by little the new revelation of God won

be

The Mediæval conception of heaven as

portrayed by Tintoretto on the walls of the Ducal Palace of Venice.

and the new theory "repugnant to Holy Scripture and to the Catholic interpretation of it" begun to be taught "not as an hypothesis but as an established fact."

Thus were the windows of heaven opened and the rain of starry truths began. Soon Kepler and Newton and Herschel had come and then Newcomb and Schiaparelli and Young and Flammarion and Lowell. Now we are upon modern days and the heritage of nearly half a millenium of astronomical toil is ours. We find ourselves weighing the sun, measuring the stars, analyzing the nebulæ. Verily with Etana we have ascended to the Heaven of Anu.