These people were not Christians. They were the followers, for the most part, of an impostor--of a pretended prophet of a false God. And yet while the true Christians, the men selected by the true God and filled with the Holy Ghost were tearing out the tongues of heretics, these wretches were irreverently tracing the orbits of the stars. While the true believers were flaying philosophers and extinguishing the eyes of thinkers, these godless followers of Mohammed were founding colleges, collecting manuscripts, investigating the facts of nature and giving their attention to science. Afterward the followers of Mohammed became the enemies of science and hated facts as intensely and honestly as Christians. Whoever has a revelation from God will defend it with all his strength--will abhor reason and deny facts. But it is well to know that we are indebted to the Moors--to the followers of Mohammed--for having laid the foundations of modern science. It is well to know that we are not indebted to the church, to Christianity, for any useful fact. It is well to know that the seeds of thought were sown in our minds by the Greeks and Romans, and that our literature came from those seeds. The great literature of our language is Pagan in its thought--Pagan in its beauty--Pagan in its perfection. It is well to know that when Mohammedans were the friends of science, Christians were its enemies. How consoling it is to think that the friends of science--the men who educated their fellows--are now in hell, and that the men who persecuted and killed philosophers are now in heaven! Such is the justice of God. The Christians of the Middle Ages, the men who were filled with the Holy Ghost, knew all about the worlds beyond the grave, but nothing about the world in which they lived. They thought the earth was flat--a little dishing if anything--that it was about five thousand years old, and that the stars were little sparkles made to beautify the night. The fact is that Christianity was in existence for fifteen hundred years before there was an astronomer in Christendom. No follower of Christ knew the shape of the earth. The earth was demonstrated to be a globe, not by a pope or cardinal--not by a collection of clergymen--not by the "called" or the "set apart," but by a sailor. Magellan left Seville, Spain, August 10th, 1519, sailed west and kept sailing west, and the ship reached Seville, the port it left, on Sept. 7th, 1522. The world had been circumnavigated. The earth was known to be round. There had been a dispute between the Scriptures and a sailor. The fact took the sailor's side. In 1543 Copernicus published his book, "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies." He had some idea of the vastness of the stars--of the astronomical spaces--of the insignificance of this world.