Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/420

404 at the price of reality" Rev. Dr. Hatch, not only proves that a majority of the rites of the Grecian mysteries have been transported into the Christian Church, but he also solemnly asserts that the peculiar tendency of the Greek mind to speculate, define, and dogmatize led to the establishment of the orthodox faith. The original meaning of dogmas are "simply personal convictions," and, while the statement of one man's convictions may be accepted by other men, still they never can be quite positive that they fully grasp the meaning of the original framer. "The belief that metaphysical theology is more than this, is the chief bequest of Greece to religious thought, and it has been a damnosa hereditas. It has given to later Christianity that part of it which is doomed to perish, but which yet, while it lives, holds the key to the prison-house of many souls."



N article by M. L. Niesten, published in the thirty-ninth volume of the Monthly, showed how greatly science is indebted to amateur astronomers; that about half of the living astronomers whose work had gained a footing in science were amateurs; that many of the most important discoveries in the heavens had been made by them; and further, that "other laborers than astronomers have assisted in the advance of the science by furnishing amateurs easier means of examining the sky and bringing the greatest exactness into their observations." An eminent demonstration of the truth of M. Niesten's remark, and of the value of the assistance which an amateur has been able to render astronomy in both sides of the work as described by him, is afforded by the subject of this sketch. Educated for the legal profession, and having begun his career in it, he gave it up for the more favored pursuit of astronomical observation; perfected instruments; and performed the most essential part in introducing and establishing the photographic method under which the most rapid advances in the science are now made.

was born at Morrisania, N. Y., November 25, 1816, and died at his country home, Tranquillity, N. J., May 30, 1892. He could trace a Scottish ancestry on his father's side through seven hundred years. His grandfather, John Rutherfurd, was a nephew of our Revolutionary major-general William Alexander, or Lord Stirling, and was United States Senator from New Jersey from 1791 to 1798. His mother was a direct descendant of Lewis Morris, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He entered the sophomore class of Williams