ANNUAL MEETING. 

 Sir G. G. Stokes, LL.D., F.R.S., President, in the Chair. 



THE UNITY OF TRUTH. 



Being tlie Annual Address of the Victoria Institute for 1899. 

 By the Right Hon. Sir Richard Temple, Bart., G.C.S.I., etc. 



Read June 19th, 1899. 



§ 1. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — I shall at 

 once take up the words of the last speaker, Mr. Howard. He 

 said that truth must prevail, and the more Ave study it, tlie 

 more we shall find it will prevail. That will be the burden 

 of my discourse to you this afternoon. 



I admit, when I was first asked to do myself the honour 

 of addressing you, I was in doubt, after consulting your 

 learned and accomplished Secretary, Captain Petrie, as to 

 what sort of subject I should choose, but then I referred to 

 the letter that I had received from my old Parliamentary 

 friend your very distinguished President, Sir George Stokes, 

 and I observed that he said in his letter that the object of 

 this Society, or Association, is to show how one set of truths 

 must be consistent with another set — that both truths, if they 

 are such, must coincide, and that therefore the Scripture 

 being, as we firmly believe it to be, absolutely true on divine 

 authority, the results of all this science and learning, if true, 

 as 1 believe they are, must agree with Scripture. 



Now that is the text upon Avhich I shall address you, with 

 your permission, this afternoon. I wish to say that the more 

 we pursue research steadily, and learned investigation by 

 scientific methods, the more shall we have confidence in the 

 literal value of the truth of every word of Scripture. Now 

 if we have not done so already it is simply because those 

 sciences have not advanced far enough, or what is still more 

 probable, we have not studied the Scripture sufficiently well 

 — we do not know enougli of the Bible and all that relates to 

 it. I well remember the day, and many of you in this room 

 must remember it, when we were timidly apprehensive as to 

 Avhether our sacred Scriptures would stand at least verbally, 

 word for word, the test of learned science and inquiry. We 

 were prepared to take refuge in generalities — that some 



