in front of them, or drew
them after. He also taught that each angel that pushed a star took great
pains to observe what the other angels were doing, so that the relative
distances between the stars might always remain the same. He also gave
his idea as to the form of the world.

He stated that the world was a vast parallelogram; that on the outside
was a strip of land, like the frame of a common slate; that then there
was a strip of water, and in the middle a great piece of land; that
Adam and Eve lived on the outer strip; that their descendants, with
the exception of the Noah family, were drowned by a flood on this outer
strip; that the ark finally rested on the middle piece of land where we
now are. He accounted for night and day by saying that on the outside
strip of land there was a high mountain, around which the sun and moon
revolved, and that when the sun was on the other side of the mountain,
it was night; and when on this side, it was day.

He also declared that the earth was flat. This he proved by many
passages from the bible. Among other reasons for believing the earth
to be flat, he brought forward the following: We are told in the new
testament that Christ shall come again in glory and power, and all the
world shall see him. Now, if the world is round, how are the people
on the other side going to see Christ when he comes? That settled the
question, and the church not only endorsed the book, but declared that
whoever believed less or more than stated by Cosmos, was a heretic.

In those blessed days, Ignorance was a king and Science an outcast.

They knew the moment this earth ceased to be the centre of the universe,
and became a mere speck in the starry heaven of existence, that their
religion would become a childish fable of the past.

In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, men enslaved their
fellow men; they trampled upon the rights of women and children. In the
name and by the authority of ghosts, they bought and sold and destroyed
each other; they filled heaven with tyrants and earth with slaves, the
present with despair and the future with horror. In the name and by the
authority of the ghosts, they imprisoned the human mind, polluted the
conscience, hardened the heart, subverted justice, crowned robbery,
sainted hypocrisy, and extinguished for a thousand years the torch of
reason.

I have endeavored, in some faint degree, to show you what has happened,
and what always will happen when