nvestigation.
Many a bold navigator, who was quite ready to brave pirates and
tempests, trembled at the thought of tumbling with his ship into one of
the openings into hell which a widespread belief placed in the Atlantic
at some unknown distance from Europe. This terror among sailors was one
of the main obstacles in the great voyage of Columbus. In a medieval
text-book, giving science the form of a dialogue, occur the following
question and answer: "Why is the sun so red in the evening?" "Because he
looketh down upon hell."

But the ancient germ of scientific truth in geography--the idea of the
earth's sphericity--still lived. Although the great majority of the
early fathers of the Church, and especially Lactantius, had sought to
crush it beneath the utterances attributed to Isaiah, David, and
St. Paul, the better opinion of Eudoxus and Aristotle could not be
forgotten. Clement of Alexandria and Origen had even supported it.
Ambrose and Augustine had tolerated it, and, after Cosmas had held sway
a hundred years, it received new life from a great churchman of southern
Europe, Isidore of Seville, who, however fettered by the dominant
theology in many other things, braved it in this. In the eighth century
a similar declaration was made in the north of Europe by another great
Church authority, Bede. Against the new life thus given to the old
truth, the sacred theory struggled long and vigorously but in vain.
Eminent authorities in later ages, like Albert the Great, St. Thomas
Aquinas, Dante, and Vincent of Beauvais, felt obliged to accept the
doctrine of the earth's sphericity, and as we approach the modern period
we find its truth acknowledged by the vast majority of thinking men. The
Reformation did not at first yield fully to this better theory. Luther,
Melanchthon, and Calvin were very strict in their adherence to the exact
letter of Scripture. Even Zwingli, broad as his views generally were,
was closely bound down in this matter, and held to the opinion of the
fathers 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.

The main scope given to independent thought on this general subject
among the Reformers was in a few minor speculations regarding the
universe which encompassed Eden, the exact character of the conversation
of the serpent with Eve, and the like.

In the times immediately following the Reformation matters we