in recent years and, by presenting
sympathetic lives of great clergymen scientists, to show that not only
is there no essential opposition between science and religion, but on
the contrary that the quiet peace of the cloister and of a religious
life have often contributed not a little to that precious placidity of
mind which seems to be so necessary for the discovery of great, new
scientific truths.

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II.

COPERNICUS AND HIS TIMES.

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All the vast and most progressive systems that human wisdom has
brought forth as substitutes for religion, have never succeeded in
interesting any but the learned, the ambitious, or at most the
prosperous and happy. But the great majority of mankind can never come
under these categories. The great majority of men are suffering, and
suffering from moral as well as physical evils. Man's first bread is
grief, and his first want is consolation. Now which of these systems
has ever consoled an afflicted heart, or repeopled a lonely one? Which
of these teachers has ever shown men how to wipe away a tear?
Christianity alone has from the beginning promised to console man in
the sorrows incidental to life by purifying the inclinations of his
heart, and she alone has kept her promise.--MONTALEMBERT,
Introduction to _Life of St. Elizabeth_.

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[Illustration: NICOLAO COPERNICO]

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II.

COPERNICUS AND HIS TIMES.

The association of the name of Copernicus with that of Galileo has
always cast an air of unorthodoxy about the great astronomer. The
condemnation of certain propositions in his work on astronomy in which
Copernicus first set forth the idea of the universe as we know it at
present, in contradistinction to the old Ptolemaic system of
astronomy, would seem to emphasize this suspicion of unorthodox
thinking. He is rightly looked upon as one of the great pioneers of
our modern physical science, and, as it is generally supposed that
scientific tendencies lead away from religion, there are doubtless
many who look upon Copernicus as naturally one of the leaders in this
rationalistic movement. It is forgotten that scarcely any of the great
original thinkers have escaped the stigma of having certain
propositions in some of their books condemned, and that this indeed is
only an index of the fallibility of the human mind and of the need
there is for some authoritative teacher. The sentences in Copernicus's
book requiring correction were but few, and were rathe