SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND BIBLICAL STUDY. 37 



We look back witli deep thankfulness to the fact that progress 

 has been in the right direction, and that the ancient foundations 

 of our belief have stood without the smallest shadow giving 

 way under the storm of the last thirty years, as they have done 

 under the storms of centuries before this. 



The E.ev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma, M.A. — I think during the last 

 thirty years there has been an approach of science to religion. 

 The attitude of scientific men generally is better than it was 

 thirty years ago. It seems to be a little more courteous, and they 

 speak with a little more reserve than they used to in the past. 



It seems to me that science and religion are not altogether on 

 parallel lines, but in many matters they are on converging lines, 

 and we have had this to some extent illustrated by the instance 

 which the reader of the paper gave of a sheet of paper seen by the 

 eye on the table and afterwards touched by the hand. 



There is much cheap wit spread about by sceptical people, who 

 think themselves clever, to show that science and religion are two 

 distinct things, but whea they get to know a little more they will 

 find that what the Christian Church has taught in ages gone by 

 will ultimately be proved to be the truth, even from a scientific 

 standpoint. 



Rev. A. LoWY, D.D. — There are a great many points on which 

 I totally differ from the author ; but we are not assembled here 

 in order to indulge in controversy, and therefore I will not occupy 

 your time with a single observation regarding matters on which 

 every man and woman will form opinions peculiar to themselves. 



There is one thing that I would ask the learned lecturer which 

 interested me very much, because it is the first time I had heard 

 about it, and that is the provincialisms in the Old Testament. It 

 is a thing to which my attention has never been called in the Bible. 

 I consider there are certain books in the Bible which have quite a 

 different style of expression, and evidently the original was com- 

 posed in a part where Hebrew was spoken in a very peculiar way ; 

 for instance, in Job and in Isaiah there are certain phrases which 

 are quite unintelligible and create differences even between Chris- 

 tians themselves sometimes. Tor instance, in the 34th chapter of 

 Isaiah you find that the deserted places shall be inhabited by the 

 bittern and the cormorant, and in the new version it is the porcu- 

 pine and the pelican, l^ow you see this interpretation shows that 

 we do not always understand certain terms. I do not call them 



