t in the progress of more accurate and detailed
knowledge of scientific origins his reputation will grow as it
deserves. With that doubtless will come a better understanding of the
true attitude of the scholars of the time--so many of whom were
churchmen--to so-called physical science in contradistinction to
philosophy, in which of course they had always been profoundly
interested. The work done by Kircher could never have been
accomplished but for the sympathetic interest of those who are falsely
supposed to have been bitterly opposed to all progress in the natural
sciences, but whose opposition was really limited to theoretic phases
of scientific inquiry that threatened, as has scientific theory so
often since, to prove directly contradictory to revealed truth.

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VI.

BISHOP STENSEN: ANATOMIST AND FATHER OF GEOLOGY.

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God makes sages and saints that they may be fountain-heads of wisdom
and virtue for all who yearn and aspire: and whoever has superior
knowledge or ability is thereby committed to more effectual and
unselfish service of his fellow-men. If the love of fame be but an
infirmity of noble souls, the craving of professional reputation is
but conceit and vanity. To be of help, and to be of help not merely to
animals, but to immortal, pure, loving spirits this is the noblest
earthly fate.--BISHOP SPALDING: _The Physician's Calling and
Education_.

[Illustration: NICOLAUS STENONIS]

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VI.

BISHOP STENSEN, ANATOMIST AND FATHER OF GEOLOGY.

In the sketch of the life of Father Athanasius Kircher, the
distinguished Jesuit scientist, mathematician, and Orientalist, I
called attention to the fact that, at the very time when Galileo was
tried and condemned at Rome, because of his abuse of Scripture for the
demonstration of scientific thesis, a condemnation which has been
often since proclaimed to be due to the Church's intolerant opposition
to science, the ecclesiastical authorities at Rome invited Father
Kircher, who was at that time teaching mathematics in Germany, to come
to Rome, and during the next half-century encouraged him in every way
in the cultivation of all the physical sciences of the times. It was
to popes and cardinals, as well as to influential members of his own
order of the Jesuits, that Father Kircher owed his opportunities for
the foundation of a complete and magnificent museum, illustrating many
phases of natural science--the first of its kind in the world, an