talline spheres revolving slowly about the earth. In the second
canto of Paradise, he speaks of the blessed motors who make the holy
spheres revolve. These motors are angels of various orders resident in
the spheres and transmitting to them the efficacy of the Divine
Intelligence. Thus infant science had to challenge the appearance of
things to the eye, and a system bound up with the religious view of the
world.

It is obvious that the old geocentric view of the world, which thought
of the earth as the center of the universe, was nothing more than a
statement of the apparent relations of the visible heavens to the broad
earth which stretches out on either hand as far as eye can see. That
this natural view of things was taken up into the religious picture of
the universe was the occurrence to be expected. Had it not been and
had the priests and prophets enunciated the Copernican theory, there
would be reason to suspect a hidden source of revelation. Needless to
say such a reversal of the natural sequence never occurs.

It is only when we grasp the naive outlook of early days that we can
realize the full significance of many Christian doctrines. Let us take
the articles of the {102} creed. We are taught to believe that Jesus
descended into Hell and then ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the
right hand of God. What is this Hell into which Jesus is supposed to
have descended? It is the Sheol of the old Hebrews, a misty region
below the surface of the earth; it is the Hades of the Greeks, the
place of the departed shades; it is the Avernus of the Romans, the
lower regions where ghosts flit and gibber. This place of the dead is
at first the grave and sinks deeper into the earth as time passes and
the myth-making fancy has been directed upon it. But it is thought of
literally as in the bowels of the earth. All through the Middle ages
this naive view was held. There was an absolute down and a
subterranean Hell, and every country told of some cavern which was one
of its many mouths. With the advent of the Copernican view what
becomes of these age-old ideas? To save them they must be transformed
and given another location or a merely symbolic meaning. But why save
them? They are as pure myths as any others to be found in olden days.
They are brother to Tartarus and the Battle of the Titans and the
Slaying of Rahab. The early Christians believed in a literal Hell
beneath the surface of the earth. Their belie