f the Universe was simple, plain and
plausible. The child-mind could easily accept it, and when backed up by
the Holy Book, written at God's dictation, word for word, infallible
and absolutely true in every part, one does not wonder that progress was
practically blocked for fourteen hundred years, but the real miracle is
that it was not blocked forever.

* * * * *

Thousands of years before Christ, the Chinese had mapped the heavens and
knew the movements of the planets so well that they correctly prophesied
the positions of the various constellations many years in advance.
Twenty-five hundred years before our Christian era a Chinese Governor
put to death the astronomers Hi and Ho because they had failed to
foretell an eclipse, quite according to the excellent Celestial plan of
killing the doctor when the patient dies.

Sir William Hamilton points out the fact that the Chinese, five thousand
years ago, knew astronomy as well as we do, and that Christian astrology
grew out of Chinese astronomy, in an effort to foretell the fortunes of
men.

Fear wants to know the future, and astrology and priesthood are
synonymous terms, since the business of the priest has always been to
prophesy, a profession he has not yet discarded. Their prophecies are at
present innocuous and lightly heeded. They preach that perfect faith
will move a mountain, but energetic railroad-builders of today find it
quicker and cheaper to tunnel.

* * * * *

A certain type of man accepts a certain theory.

The Christian view of creation was practically the conception of the
Greeks before Thales. This wise man, in the Sixth Century before Christ,
taught that the earth was round, and that certain stars were also
worlds. He showed that the earth was round and proved it by the
disappearance of the ship as it sailed away. He located the earth, moon
and sun so perfectly that he prophesied an eclipse, and when it took
place it so terrified the Medes and the Lydians, who were in battle with
each other, that they threw down their arms and made peace. Thales had
explained that Atlas carried the world on his shoulder, but he didn't
explain what Atlas stood upon.

Pythagoras, one of the pupils of Thales, following the idea still
further, showed that the moon derived its light from the sun; that the
earth was a globe and turned daily on its axis.

He held that the sun was the center of the univers