We
lose nothing that ought to be really comforting in the ancient creeds;
we are relieved from much that is burdensome to the imagination and to
the intellect. Those creeds were indeed in great part the work of the
best and ablest of our forefathers; they therefore provide some
expression for the highest emotions of which our nature is capable; but,
to say nothing of the lower elements which have intruded, of the
concessions made to bad passions, and to the wants of a ruder form of
society, they are at best the approximations to the truth of men who
entertained a radically erroneous conception of the universe.
Astronomers who went on the Ptolemaic theory managed to provide a very
fair description of the actual phenomena of the heavens; but the solid
result of their labors was not lost when the Copernican system took its
place; and incalculable advantages followed from casting aside the old
cumbrous machinery of cycles and epicycles in favor of the simpler
conceptions of the new doctrine. A similar change follows when man is
placed at the centre of the religious and moral system.
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