which can be measured by the foot rule, and the small number
of our anxieties which may be resolved by an equation, if by
mathematical accuracy be meant anything more than tolerable correctness,
or by mathematical demonstration a very high degree of probability,
mathematical certainty is all a fable.

2. _Astronomy._

The omniscience and prescience of the human intellect have been largely
glorified by some Infidel lecturers, upon the strength of the accuracy
with which it is possible to calculate and predict eclipses, and to the
disparagement of Bible predictions. And this glorification has been
amazingly swollen by Le Verrier's prediction in 1846 of the discovery of
the planet Neptune. But the prediction of some unknown motion would form
a more correct basis for a comparison of the prophecies of science with
those of Scripture; such, for instance, as Immanuel Kant's prediction of
the period of Saturn's rotation at six hours twenty-three minutes
fifty-three seconds; "which mathematical calculation of an unknown
motion of a heavenly body," he says, "_is the only prediction of that
kind in pure Natural Philosophy_, and awaits confirmation at a future
period." It is a pity that this unique scientific prediction should not
have had better luck, for the encouragement of other guessers; but
after waiting long and vainly, for the expected confirmation, it was
finally falsified by Herschel's discovery of spots on the surface of the
planet, and observation of the true time, ten hours sixteen minutes
forty-four seconds.[330] This, however, was not his only astronomical
prediction. He predicted that immense bodies in a transition state
between planets and comets, and of very eccentric orbits, would be found
beyond the orbit of Saturn, and intersecting it, but no such bodies have
been discovered. Uranus and Neptune have no cometary character whatever,
their orbits are less eccentric than others and do not intersect, nor
approach within millions of miles of Saturn's orbit. The verification of
Le Verrier's prediction affords even a more satisfactory proof of the
necessarily conjectural character of astronomical computations of
unknown quantities and distances. The planet Neptune has not one-half
the mass which he had calculated; his orbit, which was calculated as
very elliptical, is nearly circular; and the error of the calculation of
his distance is three hundred millions of miles![331]

"Let us then be candid," says Loomis, "and