The doctrine of the Earth’s rotundity and motion is now shown to be unconditionally false; and therefore the scriptures which assert the contrary, are, in their philosophical teachings at least, _literally true_. In practical science therefore, atheism and denial of scriptural authority have no foundation. If human theories are cast aside, and the facts of nature, and legitimate reasoning alone depended upon, it will be seen that religion and true philosophy are not antagonistic, and that the hopes which both encourage may be fully relied upon. To the religious mind this matter is most important, it is indeed no less than a sacred question, for it renders complete the evidence that the Jewish and Christian scriptures are true, and must have been communicated to mankind by an anterior and supernal Being. For if after so many ages of mental struggling, of speculation and trial, and change and counterchange, we have at length discovered that all astronomical theories are false, that the Earth is a plane, and motionless, and that the various luminaries above it are lights only and not worlds; and that these very doctrines have been taught and recorded in a work which has been handed down to us from the earliest times; from a time, in fact, when mankind could not have had sufficient experience to enable them to criticise and doubt, much less to invent, it follows that whoever dictated and caused such doctrines to be recorded and preserved to all future generations, must have been superhuman, omniscient, and, to the Earth and its inhabitants pre-existent.