It is also to be remembered that there are thousands of quiet thinkers who have never given in their adhesion to this startling theory, and more, that the great masses of the church at least, have no confidence in it. Those preparing to launch their ships upon this current had better, as a matter of common prudence at least, wait a while at least till the mists have rolled away. DISCARDED THEORIES OF THE PAST. Prof. George Frederick Wright says, "The history of science is little else than one of discarded theories.... The so-called science of the present day is largely going the way so steadily followed in the past. The things about which true science is certain are very few and could be contained in a short chapter of a small book." (_The Advance_, May 12, 1902.) It is sometimes charged to the church that it has held theories which the discoveries of science have shown to be untrue. But it must be borne in mind that these false theories were just as firmly held by the scientists of the day as by the church. Dr. Andrew White has written two great volumes on the warfare between science and theology. He might write many and larger volumes on the wars between the theories of science. Every one of these discarded theories, and they are numbered by thousands, has been the center of terrific conflicts. Galileo's discovery of the satellites of Jupiter was opposed by his fellow astronomers, who even refused to look at them through his telescope. Dr. J. A. Zahm quotes Cardinal Wiseman as saying that the French Institute in 1860 could count more than eighty theories opposed to Scripture, not one of which has stood still or deserves to be recorded. At a meeting of the British Association, Sir William Thomson announced that he believed life had come to this globe by a meteor. His theory lived less than a year. Mr. Huxley said that the origin of life was a sheet of gelatinous living matter which covered the bottom of the ocean. This theory had even a shorter life. Among the most recent reversals of this kind is that of a universally held theory, namely, that coral reefs are built up by the coral insects in their desire to keep near the surface as the ocean's bottom sinks. Prof. A. Agassiz has just demolished this theory. Scholars were unanimous a short time ago that Troy was a myth. But Dr. Schliemann's great discoveries have overthrown that "consensus of scholarship." Prof. Harnack, one of the greatest of critics in his great work, _The Chronology of the Christian Scriptures_, admits that science, meaning Higher Criticism, has made many mistakes and has much to repent of. Joseph Cook said, "Within the memory of man yet comparatively young, the mythical theory of Strauss has had its rise, its fall, its burial." The thirty thousand citizens of St. Pierre on Martinique, trusting in the assurances of the scientists, remained in their fated city and the next day were overwhelmed in the most awful calamity of modern times.