by resorting
to bloodshed, attempts that have been made to correct its incontestable
errors--a resistance grounded on the suspicion that the localization of
heaven and hell and the supreme value of man in the universe might be
affected.

That such attempts would be made was inevitable. As soon as men began
to reason on the subject at all, they could not fail to discredit the
assertion that the earth is an indefinite plane. No one can doubt that
the sun we see to-day is the self-same sun that we saw yesterday. His
reappearance each morning irresistibly suggests that he has passed on
the underside of the earth. But this is incompatible with the reign of
night in those regions. It presents more or less distinctly the idea of
the globular form of the earth.

The earth cannot extend indefinitely downward; for the sun cannot go
through it, nor through any crevice or passage in it, Since he rises and
sets in different positions at different seasons of the year. The stars
also move under it in countless courses. There must, therefore, be a
clear way beneath.

To reconcile revelation with these innovating facts, schemes, such
as that of Cosmas Indicopleustes in his Christian Topography, were
doubtless often adopted. To this in particular we have had occasion on a
former page to refer. It asserted that in the northern parts of the flat
earth there is an immense mountain, behind which the sun passes, and
thus produces night.

At a very remote historical period the mechanism of eclipses had been
discovered. Those of the moon demonstrated that the shadow of the earth
is always circular. The form of the earth must therefore be globular.
A body which in all positions casts a circular shadow must itself be
spherical. Other considerations, with which every one is now familiar,
could not fail to establish that such is her figure.

But the determination of the shape of the earth by no means deposed
her from her position of superiority. Apparently vastly larger than all
other things, it was fitting that she should be considered not merely as
the centre of the world, but, in truth, as--the world. All other objects
in their aggregate seemed utterly unimportant in comparison with her.

Though the consequences flowing from an admission of the globular figure
of the earth affected very profoundly existing theological ideas, they
were of much less moment than those depending on a determination of her
size. It needed but an elementary know