rful; the Sermon on the Mount, "the first
commandment, and the second, which is like unto it," the definition
of "pure religion and undefiled" by St. James, appeal no less to
the deepest things in the human heart. In the realm of morals, too,
serviceable as the idea of firebrands thrown by the right hand of
an avenging God to scare a naughty world might seem, any competent
historian must find that the destruction of the old theological cometary
theory was followed by moral improvement rather than by deterioration.
We have but to compare the general moral tone of society to-day,
wretchedly imperfect as it is, with that existing in the time when this
superstition had its strongest hold. We have only to compare the court
of Henry VIII with the court of Victoria, the reign of the later Valois
and earlier Bourbon princes with the present French Republic, the period
of the Medici and Sforzas and Borgias with the period of Leo XIII and
Humbert, the monstrous wickedness of the Thirty Years' War with the
ennobling patriotism of the Franco-Prussian struggle, and the despotism
of the miserable German princelings of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries with the reign of the Emperor William. The gain is not simply
that mankind has arrived at a clearer conception of law in the universe;
not merely that thinking men see more clearly that we are part of a
system not requiring constant patching and arbitrary interference; but
perhaps best of all is the fact that science has cleared away one more
series of those dogmas which tend to debase rather than to develop man's
whole moral and religious nature. In this emancipation from terror and
fanaticism, as in so many other results of scientific thinking, we have
a proof of the inspiration of those great words, "THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE
YOU FREE."

CHAPTER V. FROM GENESIS TO GEOLOGY.

I. GROWTH OF THEOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS.

Among the philosophers of Greece we find, even at an early period, germs
of geological truth, and, what is of vast importance, an atmosphere
in which such germs could grow. These germs were transmitted to Roman
thought; an atmosphere of tolerance continued; there was nothing which
forbade unfettered reasoning regarding either the earth's strata or
the remains of former life found in them, and under the Roman Empire a
period of fruitful observation seemed sure to begin.

But, as Christianity took control of the world, there came a great
change. The earlies