22 Address of the President. 



and our knowledge of all those great questions has been, and 

 still is, so limited that any absolute proposal may be very 

 probably overturned by continued research. I would recom- 

 mend a very careful perusal of this paper, which cannot be 

 understood by any partial extract. 



Attend also to the addresses which were made on opening 

 many of the sections of the last British Association, and the 

 character of a great portion of the papers read before some of 

 the sections, and the discussions which followed, how they 

 bore on the subjects I have alluded to ; members could not 

 help, as it were, introducing them, so much were they in their 

 minds. They even got mixed into the complimentary and 

 after-dinner speeches, but at the same time a greater caution 

 was displayed, a feeling as if the ground they were trying to 

 tread upon was not sufficiently firm under them for certainties 

 to be proclaimed. The same subjects have been more or less 

 taken up by general public speakers and by bishops in their 

 charges. The Bishop of London has very lately given a lec- 

 ture in Edinburgh " On Science and Eevelation." There is an- 

 other sign of the importance with which these points are looked 

 at. A declaration commencing — " We, the undersigned stu- 

 dents of the natural sciences, desire to express our sincere 

 regret that researches into scientific truth are perverted by 

 some in our own times into occasion for casting doubt upon 

 the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures," etc. etc. 



All these are signs or indications which proclaim that 

 fears are roused by the tendency to scepticism which these 

 books and discussions may produce. I declined to sign the 

 declaration because I did not see why we scientific gentlemen 

 or students of natural history should be called upon to make 

 any such declaration, more than other professions, and we 

 deny that we pervert scientific truth to casting doubt upon 

 the Scriptures. I have no fears for the books or discussions, 

 and my reason for introducing the subject here is both in 

 sequence to what I addressed to you last year, and to recom- 



