an sects, both
Catholic and Protestant.

The intolerance of the Church in every age has driven many scientists
into infidelity; for it cannot be doubted that the tendency of
scientific investigation has been to make scientific men incredulous of
divine inspiration, and hence to undermine their faith in dogmas which
good men have ever received, and which are supported by evidence that is
not merely probable but almost certain. And all now that seems wanting
to harmonize science with revelation is, on the one hand, the
re-examination of the Scripture texts on which are based the principia
from which deductions are made, and which we call theology; and, on the
other hand, the rejection of indefensible statements which are at war
with both science and consciousness, except in those matters which claim
special supernatural agency, which we can neither prove nor disprove by
reason; for supernaturalism claims to transcend the realm of reason
altogether in what relates to the government of God,--ways that no
searching will ever enable us to find out with our limited faculties and
obscured understanding. When the two realms of reason and faith are
kept distinct, and neither encroaches on the other, then the
discoveries and claims of science will meet with but little opposition
from theologians, and they will be left to be sifted by men who alone
are capable of the task.

Thus far science, outside of pure mathematics, is made up of theories
which are greatly modified by advancing knowledge, so that they cannot
claim in all respects to be eternally established, like the laws of
Kepler and the discoveries of Copernicus,--the latter of which were only
true in the main fact that the earth revolves around the sun. But even
he retained epicycles and excentrics, and could not explain the unequal
orbits of planetary motion. In fact he retained many of the errors of
Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Much, too, as we are inclined to ridicule the
astronomy of the ancients because they made the earth the centre, we
should remember that they also resolved the orbits of the heavenly
bodies into circular motions, discovered the precession of the
equinoxes, and knew also the apparent motions of the planets and their
periods. They could predict eclipses of the sun and moon, and knew that
the orbit of the sun and planets was through a belt in the heavens, of a
few degrees in width, which they called the Zodiac. They did not know,
indeed, the difference be