This was the state of things, when at last science awoke from its long slumber, and began for the first time to employ its energies in the right direction. Very soon discoveries were made which startled the minds of all believers in the Bible. The first shock which the old belief sustained was from the establishment of the Copernican view of the Solar System. That the world was the immovable centre of the universe, around which sun, moon, and planets moved in their appointed courses, was universally held to be the express teaching of the Bible; and when Galileo ventured to maintain the new views in Italy, the Roman Curia took up the question, and by the agency of the Inquisition wrung from him a reluctant retractation of his so-called heresy. But it was of no avail. The new doctrine was true, and it could not be crushed. Fresh evidence of its truth was continually coming forward, till at last it was universally received. Then the defenders of the Bible had recourse to the suggestion that as the Bible was not intended to teach us science, such errors were of no consequence, But this argument, though perfectly sound with reference to such passages as Joshua x. 12-14, where an event is described as it appeared to those who witnessed it, is not admissible in such a passage as Psalm xcvi. 10, where the supposed immobility of the earth is alleged as a proof of God's sovereignty, and is made the foundation of the duty of proclaiming that sovereignty among the heathen. When the supposed proof was found to be a fallacy, the statement in support of which it was alleged would be more or less shaken. In such a passage, then, the theory of limited inspiration is evidently untenable. At last the only sensible course was adopted. Recourse was had to the original, and it was at once apparent that the supposed difficulty had no real existence, but that there was a very trifling inaccuracy in the translation; for that the word translated "shall not be moved" really signified "shall not be shaken or totter." The same word is used in Psalm xvii. 5, "Hold up my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps SLIP NOT." Instead, then, of an error, we have an exact description of the earth's motion--a motion so steady and equable, that for thousands of years no single individual out of the myriads who were continually carried along by it had ever suspected its existence.