der threats of torture and
imprisonment by command of Pope Urban a truth which, in this day, is
taken for granted by the youngest of children. Galileo was then kept in
exile for the rest of his days, died, and was buried ignobly, apart
from his family, without fitting ceremony, without monument or epitaph.

As late as 1873 there was published, in St. Louis, a work by a president
of a Lutheran teachers' seminary in which he stated that the earth is
the principal body of the universe, that it stands fixed, and that the
sun and moon only serve to light it.

Astronomy brings forth a noble array of men who have, by their intense
desire for the truth, persevered against the Church, and in spite of the
vilest opposition of that Church, brought to the attention of man laws
that have given a meaning and order to our universe.

Copernicus escaping persecution only by death; Bruno burned alive;
Galileo imprisoned; Kepler reviled, and Newton bitterly attacked. In
this manner has religion aided astronomy!

CHAPTER IX

RELIGION AND GEOGRAPHY

The ancient Greeks, especially the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle,
had evolved theories of the earth's sphericity, which, while vague, were
basic for subsequent accurate ideas that developed later.

When Christianity sprang into existence Eusebius, St. John Chrysostom,
and Cosmos evolved a complete description of the earth. They considered
the earth as a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas, as a
kind of house, with heaven as its upper story and the earth as its
ground floor. To the north of the earth was a great mountain; at night
the sun was pushed into a pit and pulled out again in the morning, with
heaven as a loft and hell as a cellar. In the Atlantic Ocean, at some
unknown distance from Europe, was one of the openings into hell, into
which a ship sailing to this point, would tumble. The terror of this
conception was one of the chief obstacles of the great voyage of
Columbus. Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Zwingli held to the opinion
that a great firmament, or floor, separated the heavens from the earth;
that above it were the waters and angels, and below it, the earth and
man.

During the time that the sphericity of the earth was still undecided,
another question arose that was considered of far greater importance,
namely, the conception of the antipodes and the problem of deciding
whether human beings existed on the earth's opposite side. It was
Lactant