V NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNEIi SPEECH 121 



when I ventured to point out the difficulties their 

 students would have to encounter from scientific 

 thought, they replied: " Our Church has lasted 

 many ages, and has passed safely through many 

 storms. The present is but a new gust of the 

 old tempest, and we do not turn out our young 

 men less fitted to weather it, than they have been, 

 in former times, to cope with the difficulties of 

 those times. The heresies of the day are explained 

 to them by their professors of philosophy and sci- 

 ence, and they are taught how those heresies are to 

 be met." 



I heartily respect an organisation which faces 

 its enemies in this way; and I wish that all 

 ecclesiastical organisations were in as effective a 

 condition. I think it would be better, not only 

 for them, but for us. The army of liberal thought 

 is, at present, in very loose order;, and many a 

 spirited free-thinker makes use of his freedom 

 mainly to vent nonsense. We should be the better 

 for a vigorous and watchful enemy to hammer us 

 into cohesion and discipline; and I, for one, 

 lament that the bench of Bishops cannot show a 

 man of the calibre of Butler of the " Analogy," 

 who, if he were alive, would make short work of 

 much of the current a priori " infidelity." 



I hope you will consider that the argu- 

 ments I have now stated, even if there were no 

 better ones, constitute a sufficient apology for 



