Anaxagoras (500 B.C.) taught that there was but one god, and that the sun was only a fiery globe and should not be worshiped. He attempted to explain eclipses and other celestial phenomena by natural causes, saying that there is no such thing as chances, these being only names for unknown laws. For this audacity and impiety, as his countrymen considered it, he and his family were doomed to perpetual banishment. "Man," said Protagoras of Abra (430 B.C.), "is the measure of all things.... Of the Gods I know nothing, neither whether they be nor whether they be not; for there is much that stands in the way of knowledge, as well the obscurity of the matter as the shortness of human life." St. John begins his writings: "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." But John, like many others of his time, knew nothing more than the use of words to make riddles, which he himself could not see through and no one else could understand. The man or men who first composed that part of scripture that informs us how the sun and earth were created, certainly knew nothing about it, because all that is at present known is of comparatively recent date. For many centuries, the established religion, the church, and the representatives of the theo-Christian organization, did all in their power to prevent light from penetrating their hidden benighted doings. They looked upon themselves as being all in all, knowing all in all--as having had everything worth knowing revealed to them by an agency no one else had access to. The ideas of their mysterious doings, of their mysterious Gods, are hidden from view in deep obscurity--like the temple of the Egyptian Isis, that bore the inscription: "I am all that is, that was, and that will be, and no mortal has lifted my veil." The ancient writers of the scripture were full of deep, mysterious ways, and their writings of hidden meanings. Ordinary mortals were prohibited from making inquiry because the subject was considered too mysterious, and much too sacred. Since then, many mysteries have been dissolved, or have been analyzed by the crucial test of science, and it has been discovered that there is nothing hidden except what our ignorance prevents us from knowing. We have lifted the sacred veil and looked into the temple of nature, as she is, and not as she appears. The more we search, the more we discover, the nearer we get to the truth. There is not the slightest reason why every man, woman, and child at proper age should not be instructed in matters wherein they are immediately interested, the knowledge whereof would undoubtedly be to their benefit.