sition and in ceaseless motion, the whole system of
theology suffered a serious shock. Where were heaven and hell in the
new version astronomy gave of things? Where did Jesus' spirit go on
his death? Where is limbo, and where is purgatory? Whither did he go
when he ascended bodily into the air? Since this earth is uncounted
myriads of miles from the spot in space which it occupied this morning
when we awoke, what became of the inspired geography of the _terra
incognita_, according to which the several receptacles of spirits were
mapped out with such unfaltering precision?

With the vanishing of the pre-eminent claims advanced by a rudimentary
science on behalf of this earth, and supported by the unsuspecting
theology of the childhood of the world, the earth-born philosophy of
things wrapped up in its fate must also disappear. While the earth
dwindles into a spot in endless space, its "little systems" share its
fate, and our Western cathedral shrinks to the dimensions of "a chapel
in the infinite".

Or, look at the matter numerically. Jesus, who avowedly confined his
missionary efforts to his own race, "for to them only am I sent," is
made by the writer of Matthew's Gospel to give a world-wide commission
to his disciples on the very eve of his mysterious disappearance from
earth: "Go ye and teach all nations," he is reported to have enjoined
upon them. Peter, doubtless, was present upon this occasion, or, at
any rate, we cannot conceive him ignorant of the commission; and yet we
find him refusing point-blank to admit Cornelius the centurion--the
first candidate who offered himself--into the Church, and, according to
the Acts, a sheet full of animals had to be let through the roof of his
house before he could be turned from his purpose of confining the new
religion exclusively to Jews. The explanation, of course, of such
universality as Christianity has attained is mainly due to the
influence of the cosmopolitan Saul of Tarsus, though the idea of an
Oecumenical Society was by no means his original thought. The Stoics
were full of the ideal, and the Cynics before them, while Socrates
refused to describe himself as a citizen of Athens, but claimed the
whole world as his fatherland, and the outer barbarians, as the
exclusive Greeks styled them, he called his brethren.

And, now, how many of the human family are enrolled as "citizens of the
holy places"; what numbers assemble for worship in the great cathedral?
S