my the
funnel-shaped Inferno, the steep mountain of Purgatory crowned with its
terrestrial paradise, and those concentric spheres of Heaven wherein
beatified saints held weird and subtle converse, all went their way to
the limbo prepared for the childlike fancies of untaught minds, whither
Hades and Valhalla had gone before them. In our day it is hard to
realize the startling effect of the discovery that Man does not dwell at
the centre of things, but is the denizen of an obscure and tiny speck of
cosmical matter quite invisible amid the innumerable throng of flaming
suns that make up our galaxy. To the contemporaries of Copernicus the
new theory seemed to strike at the very foundations of Christian
theology. In a universe where so much had been made without discernible
reference to Man, what became of that elaborate scheme of salvation
which seemed to rest upon the assumption that the career of Humanity was
the sole object of God's creative forethought and fostering care? When
we bear this in mind, we see how natural and inevitable it was that the
Church should persecute such men as Galileo and Bruno. At the same time
it is instructive to observe that, while the Copernican astronomy has
become firmly established in spite of priestly opposition, the
foundations of Christian theology have not been shaken thereby. It is
not that the question which once so sorely puzzled men has ever been
settled, but that it has been outgrown. The speculative necessity for
man's occupying the largest and most central spot in the universe is no
longer felt. It is recognized as a primitive and childish notion. With
our larger knowledge we see that these vast and fiery suns are after all
but the Titan like _servants_ of the little planets which they bear with
them in their flight through the abysses of space. Out from the awful
gaseous turmoil of the central mass dart those ceaseless waves of gentle
radiance that, when caught upon the surface of whirling worlds like
ours, bring forth the endlessly varied forms and the endlessly complex
movements that make up what we can see of life. And as when God revealed
himself to his ancient prophet He came not in the earthquake or the
tempest but in a voice that was still and small, so that divine spark
the Soul, as it takes up its brief abode in this realm of fleeting
phenomena, chooses not the central sun where elemental forces forever
blaze and clash, but selects an outlying terrestrial nook where see