WESLEY naturalists' SOCIETY. 185 



potential responsibilities ; it only quickens it, and opens new 

 realms in which he can constantly expand it. Moreover, it is the 

 very means by which the intellect may be more thoroughly filled 

 with the luminosity which will keep it clear in its direction towards 

 God. Sterility is begotten of prejudice. The Church was robbed 

 of music in one of its forms, and we are robbed of many other 

 things, simply because the prejudices of men have suddenly gone 

 in a different direction. Now, my perception of reHgion is that 

 it is the central light of our nature. It must diffuse our entire 

 being, touch our senses, touch our intellect, and fill our spiritual 

 nature with its true vitality. .Can, then, a man be less capable of 

 searching into Nature because he feels that God is his Father ? 

 Surely not. It was not faith, but cowardice. Dr. Dallinger argued, 

 which led a man to say : " Stop ! we can go no further," directly 

 he meets something in Nature which he cannot understand. He 

 condemned the shallowness of those men who, unless they could 

 see everything, believed there was nothing to be seen ; and to 

 further confound their unbelief the Doctor pointed to the many 

 things revealed by science in the last fifty years, leading men to 

 see that He who is perfect could only create what is perfect. 

 There was unity of perfection, adjustment, and adaptation every- 

 where, and if in the interpretation of that unity man sometimes 

 stumbled for want of knowledge here and there, was he to say, 

 " Do not search any more — you will lose your faith " ? Or should 

 he not rather buckle on the armour and work ahead, in the con- 

 fidence that light would come in the end ? It is because I believe 

 in God that I am not afraid. It is because I know that I am 

 finite and God is infinite that I fear not. Though I stumble and 

 fall I get up again and try to recover myself from the bruises, and 

 in the darkness I work on, knowing that there is light and that 

 there is reconciliation beyond. We who realise the certainty of 

 the spiritual life have no fear of any investigation of nature, nor 

 of any complex difficulty that may present itself in the course of 

 the investigation. My deep desire is that this Society should be 

 the means of boldly and fearlessly expressing to society at large in 

 this country and America that we who deeply and profoundly 

 believe in the spiritual life of man and in the salvation that has 

 come to us in Christ are not in the slightest degree afraid of the 

 advance of science, but, on the contrary, that we do what we can 

 to advance it more rapidly without fear of the issue. 



Rev. John Scott Lidgett, the next speaker, outlined the work 

 which would be undertaken in the proposed settlement in 

 Bermondsey, and pointed out how the Wesley Scientific Society 

 could assist in that work. 



