SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 51 



ly impressed with the truth of certain things which lie outside the 

 discoveries of reason or the investigations of science, and which bear 

 on the whole conduct of his life here, and on his hopes regarding life 

 hereafter. He believes these truths to be divine, and, accordingly, 

 that no legitimate deduction of human reason is liable to come in con- 

 flict with them. But the precise mode in which a conviction of the 

 truth of these things was arrived at depends, to a considerable extent, 

 on each man's idiosyncrasy. His natural bent of mind, his early train- 

 ing, his later associations, have all a good deal to do with it. Divine 

 truth is one thing ; our own apprehension of it, and the steps by which 

 in our own minds it has been arrived at, are another. These are liable 

 to human imperfection, and we may not attribute to them the infalli- 

 bility which belongs to that which is divine. We are not to confound 

 the scaffolding wdth the building ; nor, if we are anxious for the safety 

 of the edifice, need we therefore fear that, if the scaffolding were 

 tampered with, the whole might come tumbling down, nor should we 

 regard as a dynamiter a fellow- workman who would remove a pole 

 or two. 



That truth must be self -consistent, come from where it may, is an 

 axiom w^hich nobody would dispute ; the only question can be. What 

 is truth ? Now, there are truths which we know by intuition, such as 

 the axioms of mathematics ; and there are others, again, which, though 

 we do not perceive them by intuition, yet demonstrably follow from 

 what we do so perceive ; such, for example, are the propositions of 

 mathematics. Then there are other conclusions which we accept as 

 the result of the application of our reason to a study of Nature. Here 

 the evidence is not demonstrative, and the conclusion may have all de- 

 grees of support, from such overwhelming evidence as that on which 

 we accept universal gravitation, to what hardly raises the conclusion 

 above the rank of a conjecture. On the other hand, there are conclu- 

 sions which we accept on totally different grounds ; namely, because 

 we think that they have been revealed. Why we accept a revelation at 

 all, is a very wide question which I can not here enter into. That we 

 do accept it is implied in the membership of this Institute. But, grant- 

 ing the acceptance of revelation, the question remains. What and how 

 much is involved in revelation ? That is a question respecting which 

 there are differences of opinion among those who frankly accept a reve- 

 lation, and with it the supernatural. 



Now, the primary object of the establishment of the Victoria In- 

 stitute was to examine the questions as to which there was a prima 

 facie appearance of conflict between the conclusions of science and 

 the teachings of revelation. In order that such examination may be 

 usefully carried out, it must be undertaken in a thoroughly impartial 

 spirit, with a readiness honestly to follow truth wherever it may lead. 

 It will not do to assume that the immunity from error which belongs 

 to the divine belongs also to our apprehension of what constitutes the 



