JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 103 



that which is much harder to be borne than all these, the 

 unfeigned astonishment and hardly disguised contempt 

 of a brilliant society, composed of men whose sympathy 

 and esteem must have been most dear to him, and to 

 whom it was simply incomprehensible that a philoso- 

 pher should seriously occupy himself with any form of 

 Christianity. 



It appears to me that the man who, setting before 

 himself such an ideal of life, acted up to it consistently, 

 is worthy of the deepest respect, whatever opinion may 

 be entertained as to the real value of the tenets which 

 he so zealously propagated and defended. 



But I am sure that I speak not only for myself, but 

 for all this assemblage, when I say that our purpose 

 to-day is to do honour, not to Priestley, the Unitarian 

 divine, but to Priestley, the fearless defender of rational 

 freedom in thought and in action : to Priestley, the phil- 

 osophic thinker ; to that Priestley who held a foremost 

 place among " the swift runners who hand over the lamp 

 of life," * and transmit from one generation to another 

 the fire kindled, in the childhood of the world, at the 

 Promethean altar of Science. 



The main incidents of Priestley's life are so well 

 known that I need dwell upon them at no great length. 



Born in 1Y33, at Fieldhead, near Leeds, and brought 

 up among Calvinists of the straitest orthodoxy, the boy's 



* " Quasi cursores, vitai lampada tradunt." Lucn. De Rerum Nat. 

 ii. 78. 



